Film Lectures at the Revue
The Genius of French Cinema lecture series.
The Revue is pleased to present a lecture series for movie lovers who want to learn more about films, directors and the volatile industry that produces them. Once a month, Shlomo Schwartzberg takes us to France for a look at that nation’s innovative, creative and sophisticated filmmaking, in his program: The Genius of French Cinema.
For his fifth and final lecture FRENCH MINORITIES ON FILM on Tuesday, August 18th, at 7 p.m., Shlomo Schwartzberg will discuss French films dealing with minorities. It's an unofficial mandate of French cinema to fund and thus accurately portray the various minority groups that together make up a large part of the nation’s society and culture. Thus, a raft of filmmakers, Arab, Jewish and Black, have presented their outsider views of being part and apart from the dominant culture. Theirs are some of the most provocative and gripping films of recent years.
Films discussed will include: La Haine, Days of Glory, Lila Says, Portraits Chinois, La Petite Jerusalem
(Special $12 price Tuesday for the lecture and cinefranco presents screening of Un roman policier (A Police Romance) at 9:30pm.
CLICK HERE for an article about this final lecture
-
For his fourth lecture on Tuesday, July 7th, at 7 p.m., Shlomo introduces us to French films about another favourite subject of Gallic directors: politics and society. From Jean Renoir’s controversial depiction of the French bourgeoisie in La règle du jeu (Rules of the Game) (1939) to Benoit Jacquot’s equally scathing but gentler social critique Pas De Scandale(1999), French moviemakers have never hesitated to uncover the poisonous underpinnings of their society. True, they’ve avoided direct attacks on political leaders, perhaps feeling that it’s best not to bite the hand that funds you, but everything else seems to be fair game for their cinematic wrath.
Scroll down for the complete programs with film lists for Shlomo's The Genius of French Cinema as well as for the lecture series, now completed, by film critic and writer Kevin Courrier: Produced and Abandoned: The Best Films You've Never Seen and Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors, American Movies and the Politics of Idealism.
The Genius of French Cinema
Always innovative and sophisticated, the French cinema has, over the years, been consistently good. Critic Shlomo Schwartzberg shows us just how good in a series of five lectures.
LECTURE 1: Tuesday, April 7, 7 p.m.
CONTEMPORARY FRENCH CINEMA
Varied, provocative and complex, today's French cinema is an embarrassment of riches. Denis, Jacquot, Cantet, Veber, Klapisch and Cantet are just some of the directors who are currently at the top of their game in France.
Films: Vendredi Soir; School of Flesh; The Dinner Game; Time Out; L'Auberge Espagnole, Tell No One
LECTURE 2: Tuesday, May 5, 7 p.m.
THE NEW WAVE / LA NOUVELLE VAGUE
In the late ’50s, a group of filmmakers changed the way movies were made and how we viewed them on screen. Truffaut, Godard, Rivette, Rohmer and Chabrol are among the pioneers who are still acclaimed to this day.
Films: The 400 Blows, Weekend, Va Savoir, My Night at Maud's, La Femme Infidèle
LECTURE 3: Tuesday. June 2nd at 7:00 PM
LOVE AND SEX
Nobody makes movies about love the way the French do. And no one treats sex in cinema like them, either. Passionate, provocative and delightfully erotic, those are the elements paramount in French love stories.
Films: Betty Blue, A Very Long Engagement, La Ronde, Bad Blood, A Christmas Tale
click here to read more about the lecture
LECTURE 4: Tuesday, July 7th at 7:00 PM
POLITICS AND SOCIETY
Since their beginnings, French movies have always been concerned with societal issues and their emotional underpinnings, which propel and affect the country's body politic. There's a lot going on under the surface in France, and these movies lay those undercurrents bare.
Films, The Rules of the Game, The Witnesses, Le Petit Lieutenant, Baise-Moi, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
LECTURE 5: August Tuesday. August 18th at 7:00 PM
FRENCH MINORITIES ON FILM
It's an unofficial mandate of French cinema to fund and thus accurately portray the various minority groups that together make up a large part of the nation’s society and culture. Thus, a raft of filmmakers, Arab, Jewish and Black, have presented their outsider views of being part and apart from the dominant culture. Theirs are some of the most provocative and gripping films of recent years.
Films: La Haine, Days of Glory, Lila Says, Portraits Chinois, La Petite Jerusalem
ADMISSION:
Regular Revue evening pricing: $6 for seniors, $7.00 for members or $6 with the purchase of a ReelFest card
Hollywood's fascinating orphaned films
Produced and Abandoned: The Best Films You've Never Seen was inspired by an anthology of movie reviews published by The National Society of Film Critics in 1990. The series will explore this practice of shelving films and introduce, from various genres, some orphans that Hollywood ignored and audiences forgot or simply never saw.
LECTURE 1
INTRODUCTION: HERE TODAY, GONE TOMORROW
Saturday Feb. 7, 10:30 a.m.
Why the phenomenon occurred, illustrated by the fate of two quality films that were produced and abandoned.
Films: Duma, The Stuntman
LECTURE 2
BIOGRAPHICAL ICONS: I'M NOT LEGEND
Saturday Feb. 21, 10:30 a.m.
The type of biographies Hollywood loves and why some are ignored.
Films: Cobb, Sweet Dreams, Melvin and Howard,Vincent & Theo, Shattered Glass
LECTURE 3
LOVE IN THE DARK: SEX AND THE CINEMA
Saturday, March 7, 10:30 a.m.
Sex has always been a taboo subject, scrutinized by pressure groups and government censors, but these pictures were barely exposed at all. Why?
Films: Stage Beauty, The Triumph of Love, Personal Best, Rambling Rose, Heartbreakers (dir. Bobby Roth)
LECTURE 4
BEYOND POLITICS
Saturday, March 21, 10:30 a.m.
Political movies usually do well when they tell us what to think. These abandoned movies showed us how to think.
Films: Dark Blue, We Were Soldiers, Tears of the Sun, Under Fire, Casualties of War
LECTURE 5
INVISIBLE WORDS: PAGE TO SCREEN
Saturday, April 4, 10:30 a.m.
Films: The Dead, The Claim, Last Orders, The Browning Version, Dreamchild, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, Unstrung Heroes
LECTURE 6
DOCUMENTARIES: UNSEEN TRUTHS
Saturday, April 18, 10:30 a.m.
Films: Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey, Stone Reader, Lost in La Mancha, Thy Kingdom Come
LECTURE 7
THE HORROR, THE HORROR
Saturday, May 2, 10:30 a.m.
Films: The Stepfather, The Fury Dreamscape
LECTURE 8
UNCLASSIFIABLE TREASURES
Saturday, May 16, 10:30 a.m.
Films: Second Best, Vanya on 42nd Street, The Rapture, The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, Starting Out in the Evening, The Secret Lives of Dentists
Download the Produced and Abandoned PDF flyer!
This is the second lecture series by author and critic Kevin Courrier at the Revue Cinema. In 2008, he presented Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors: American Movies and the Politics of Idealism, which traced how films embodied underlying social and political attitudes during U.S. presidencies from John Kennedy to George W. Bush.
Trained in media arts, Kevin has worked for CBC Radio, co-hosted an arts program for CJRT-FM and written about popular culture for newspapers and magazines. He has published five books.
Here is some audience reaction from a survey following his last Revue series:
“Kevin Courrier and his lectures are nothing short of brilliant. Thank you.”
“I was impressed by and delighted with the wealth of interpretation and information.”
“An interesting analysis of the link between politics and popular culture.”
“Loved the lectures and his enthusiasm. His knowledge. Loved it all.”
SHLOMO SCHWARTZBERG
Shlomo Schwartzberg has been a film critic and arts reporter for more
than 20 years. Among the publications he has written for are The Toronto
Star, The Globe and Mail, The New York Times, The Jerusalem Report magazine,
The South China Morning Post, the Canadian Jewish News and the Bloor and Revue cinema magazines. He is the current chair of the Toronto Jewish Film Society and also teaches courses on film criticism and The Image of the Jew in Film and Television, a course he created, at the Miles Nadal JCC and at Ryerson University. From 1996-2004 he was the Director of Programming for the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.
Have you found a store that rents or sells films mentioned by Kevin Courrier in his lecture series? Let your fellow Revue patrons know. Please email the information to e_moorhouse@sympatico.ca and we'll post it on the website.
See you at the next lecture!
FILMOGRAPHY FOR COURRIER'S PROGRAM
ON FILMS AND AMERICAN POLITICS
Kevin Courrier covered lots of ground in his lecture series last year, American Reflections in the Hall of Mirrors, American Movies and the Politics of Idealism. Here’s a list of the films he discussed in the lectures.
LECTURE 1
THE KENNEDY ERA: 1960-1963
Charade, The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May, Dr. Strangelove
LECTURE 2
THE JOHNSON ERA: 1964-1968
In the Heat of the Night, Bonnie and Clyde, Cool Hand Luke, Bullitt, Night of the Living Dead, The Wild Bunch, Easy Rider, Alice's Restaurant
LECTURE 3
THE NIXON ERA: 1968-1974
Dirty Harry, Walking Tall, Billy Jack, The Godfather I & II, Up the Sandbox, Blume in Love, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, The Stepford Wives, Sweet Sweetback's Baaadasss Song, Shaft, Superfly, Cleopatra Jones, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
LECTURE 4
THE CARTER ERA: 1976-1980
Night Moves, The Conversation, Network, Taxi Driver, Nashville, Who'll Stop the Rain, Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, The Parallax View, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Winter Kills, Star Wars, Heaven’s Gate, Apocalypse Now
LECTURE 5
THE REAGAN ERA: 1980-1988
Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, The Border, Uncommon Valor, Diner, Under Fire, Rambo: First Blood Part Two, Salvador, Moscow on the Hudson, Blade Runner, Blue Velvet, Something Wild, The Stepfather
LECTURE 6
THE BUSH ERA -- 1988-1992
Field of Dreams, Dances With Wolves, JFK, Glory, Everybody Wins, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon
LECTURE 7
THE CLINTON ERA: 1992-2008
In the Line of Fire, True Believer, Forrest Gump, The English Patient, The Fisher King, Schindler's List, Dave, One False Move, Pulp Fiction, The New Age, My New Gun, Wag the Dog, Primary Colors
LECTURE 6
THE BUSH II ERA: 2000-2008
Three Kings, The Siege, We Were Soldiers, Tears of the Sun, The 25th Hour, Fahrenheit 9/11, The Passion of the Christ, Team America: World Police
And looking forward: A new film that reflects the inclusiveness of the Obama approach: Rachel Getting Married
