Event

Explore a world of cinema with NVDPL! We will begin our foreign film series with recommendations from the British Film Institute’s Top 100 Greatest Films of All Time List. These films will be shown in their original language with subtitles in English.

January 8: M (Germany, 1931)
M remains Fritz Lang’s most universally admired film. His silent epics of intrigue and iniquity had all but invented the crime genre on film, and with M he laid the blueprint for every serial killer film that followed in its wake. Peter Lorre’s creepy, bulging-eyed performance as the killer who can’t help himself quickly attracted the attention of Hollywood, where he made a career playing sinister desperados. The complexity and originality of its structure and the power of its images and sound guarantee it a place in film history. Voted #36 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In German with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

February 5: Rashomon (Japan, 1950)
The word ‘Rashomon’ has passed into the English language to signify a narrative told from various, unreliable viewpoints. In this case, the mystery relates to the murder of a samurai and the assault of his wife in 11th century Japan, events which are relayed in wildly differing versions by those present: the bandit, the wife, a passing woodcutter and the spirit of the dead samurai. This radically non-linear structure, with its profound implications about the fallibility of perspective, impressed judges at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. They awarded Akira Kurosawa’s film the Golden Lion, helping to encourage a broader interest in Japanese film in the west. With its snaking bolero-like score and poetic use of dappled forest light, Rashomon is a work of enduring ambiguity. Voted #24 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Japanese with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

March 5: The Seventh Seal (Sweden, 1957)
Ingmar Bergman’s allegory about a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) who plays chess with Death (a white-faced, shrouded figure played by Bengt Ekerot) was a landmark of arthouse cinema in the late 1950s. Taking its title from the Book of Revelation, the film examines the knight’s crisis of faith during a dark period of human history, tackling issues of existential doubt and despair that touched a nerve with audiences living in the aftermath of the horror of war. Filmed in sombre black and white The Seventh Seal convincingly evokes a 14th-century of dread and superstition and abounds with startling apocalyptic imagery, from a black bird on the wing against stormy skies to the final, silhouetted danse macabre on a hilltop. Voted #93 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Swedish with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

April 2: L'Avventura (Italy, 1960)
This provocative story about Italy's idle rich brought director Michaelangelo Antonioni to international attention. Young people on a yachting holiday lose one of their number when they land on a volcanic island. The film showcases the director’s ontrolled use of camera movement and visual composition to dramatise the emotional space between people. Voted #21 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Italian with English subtitles. Film is in black and white.)

May 7: The Leopard (Italy, 1963)
Against a dramatic nineteenth-century backdrop of radical Italian Nationalism, Luchino Visconti’s masterful epic, The Leopard, follows the Sicilian Prince of Salina and his family as they adjust to the social turbulence of revolutionary times. Adapted from Tomasi di Lampedusas esteemed novel of the same name, this is a tragicomic depiction of a class eclipsed by history.  Starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon, this gorgeous evocation of an era – beautifully photographed, designed and costumed, with a rousing score by Nino Rota – glitters with superb set pieces, culminating in the climactic 45 minute ballroom section where we can see and feel a society in transition. Voted #90 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Italian with English subtitles.)

June 4: Parasite (South Korea, 2019)
Jobless, penniless, and, above all, hopeless, the unmotivated patriarch, and his equally unambitious family—his supportive wife, his cynical twentysomething daughter, and his college-age son—occupy themselves by working for peanuts in their squalid basement-level apartment. Then, by sheer luck, a lucrative business proposition will pave the way for an insidiously subtle scheme, as the son summons up the courage to pose as an English tutor for the teenage daughter of the affluent Park family. Chameleonic in its genres, shapeshifting from social realism to comedy, thriller to dystopia, Bong Joon Ho’s multilayered masterpiece at once pithily sums up the stark evils of class division (which speaks so universally) while also, prism-like, rewarding endless rewatches and reinterpretations. Winner of 6 Academy Awards. Voted #90 out of the 100 best movies of all time by the British Film Institute. (In Korean with English subtitles.)

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Registration is optional, however seating will be first-come, first-served. Call 604-987-4471, ext. 8175 for information.