Film society choices

Press, 5 July 1978, Page 16

Film society choices

Half-yearly subscriptions will again be' introduced by the Canterbury Film Society this week for the 17 programmes still to be

shown, and a special concession will be offered to students. Members will also pay reduced admission prices to the Christchurch film festival this

month in the Carlton Cinema. This week’s programme features “Ankur (The Seedling)” a new film from India, directed by Shyam Benegal. This film, which deals with the social implications of arranged marriages and caste, is restricted by the Censor to film society members. The rest of the year’s selection includes “The Sudden Wealth of the Poor People of Kombach,” “The Brutalisation of Franz Blum,” and “Lina Braake and the Interests of the Bank” (all West Germany), “Purgatorio” (Sweden), Chabrol’s “Les Bonnes Femmes,” Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim” (a special screening at the Academy), Bertocelli’s “Paulina 1880,” “Projection Privee,” Satyajit Ray’s “Two Daughters,” Polanski’s “Chinatown,” and the Australian “Let The Balloon Go.” Classics include George Cukor’s “The Women,” Hitchcock’s “Thirty-nine Steps,” Buster Keaton’s “The General,” the German “Der Golem,” and Dovzhenko’s “Earth.” Members will have first preference for tickets for a special screening on July 16 at the Academy Cinema of “A State of Siege,” based on the novel by Janet Frame. This is a 50-minute feature in colour by two young Christchurch film-makers, Timothy White and Vincent Ward, both honours students in the film course at the University of Canter-

bury. It will have its New Zealand premiere at the Wellington film festival the previous evening. Also that week the society will feature three Academy Award winners directed by Elia Kazan “Gentleman’s Agreement” (July 17), “On the Waterfront” (July 18), and “A Streetcar Named Desire” (July 20), all at the Museum Theatre only. The prints have been brought to New Zealand by the American Centre (formerly the United States Information Service) to mark this year’s fiftieth anniversary of the award. “Wings,” the first film to win an Oscar (in 1928), will be shown at the Museum Theatre only on July 19, with the already scheduled “The General.” The last of the silent spectaculars, “Wings” was directed by William Wellman and stars Charles Rogers, Clara Bow, and Richard Arlen. Also additional to the scheduled programme will be a lecture, illustrated with films, at the Museum Theatre on July 12 by Albert Johnson, a lecturer in film at the University of California, Berkeley. Mr Johnson, a well-known and influential film critic, was co-founder of “Film Quarterly” in 1958, and programme director of the San Francisco international film festival from 1965 to 1972. The normal screening at the Museum Theatre that evening will be at 5.45 instead of 7.30, and Mr Johnson’s lecture will be at 8 p.m.