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eXclusive First Run
The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu
Culled from over one thousand hours of archival footage, Andrei Ujică's The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu is an expansive documentary on former dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu. Even as Romania plunged into mass poverty under his draconian austerity programme, Ceauşescu was knighted by the Queen of England, visited by President Nixon, and received warmly by Charles de Gaulle and Mao Tse-tung. His eventual fall was brutal: a two-hour televised mock trial preceded his execution on Christmas day, 1989. Eschewing voice-over commentary, Autobiography creates a montage of sanctioned state propaganda and private footage to paint a stirring portrait.
January 4, 5, 8. More Info.
EXPERIENCE ESSENTIAL CINEMA
Andrei Tarkovsky
Russian master and mystic Andrei Tarkovsky was once lauded by Ingmar Bergman as "the greatest, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream." Steeped in Eastern Orthodox mysticism, abounding in elemental symbolism, sometimes venturing forth into hauntingly enigmatic science fiction, Tarkovsky’s films are among the most influential, acclaimed, audacious, and awe-inspiring works to emerge from postwar Europe. This retrospective showcases six of the seven feature films made by this visionary artist — all presented from 35mm prints — starting with January screenings of Andrei Rublev, Ivan's Childhood, and The Mirror.
January 6-7, 9, 11-16; February 3-5, 18-19. More Info.
January 20-22 + 27-29
Established in 2001 by the Toronto International Film Festival, Canada’s Top Ten is an annual poll celebrating excellence in Canadian filmmaking. The year’s ten best Canadian feature-length films and ten best Canadian short films are chosen by two separate independent panels of filmmakers, festival programmers, journalists, academics, and industry professionals from across the country.
This year's feature selections are: Café de Flore (Jean-Marc Vallée), Edwin Boyd (Nathan Morlando), Hobo with a Shotgun (Jason Eisener), Keyhole (Guy Maddin), Monsieur Lazhar (Philippe Falardeau), The Salesman / Le vendeur (Sébastien Pilote), Starbuck (Ken Scott) Take This Waltz (Sarah Polley,) Wetlands / Marécages (Guy Édoin), and A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg, not screening here due to a conflict with its theatrical release).
This year's short film selections include Choke (Michelle Latimer), No Words Came Down (Ryan Flowers, Lisa Pham), and We Ate the Children Last (Andrew Cividino).
ENTER TO WIN any Canada's Top Ten double bill for you and a friend! Email your contact info and preferred double bill screening night to:
contest@cinematheque.bc.ca
Contest ends noon, MONDAY, JANUARY 16. Three winners will be selected at random. Good luck!
New 35mm Print
Red Desert
 Michelangelo Antonioni's multi-layered masterpiece of expressionistic colour and modern-day alienation stars Monica Vitti as a neurotic, unhappily married woman searching for meaning in an industrial wasteland. In the aftermath of a suicide attempt, she begins a brief affair with the factory owner (Richard Harris) who employs her engineer husband (Carlo Chionetti). Red Desert’s symbolic, psychological use of colour was among the first experiments of its kind in the cinema, with colour inextricably linked to character and theme. "I have to put into the landscape the colors needed," Antonioni said, "to express a certain state of mind ... to violate, so to speak, this reality, to adapt it to the purposes of my story."
January 12-16. More Info.
EXPERIENCE ESSENTIAL CINEMA
Sergei Eisenstein
 One of the cinema’s paramount creative geniuses, both as a director and as a theorist, the great Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948) was a seminal figure in the development of cinema as a distinct art form with its own unique grammar and language. This retrospective offers the rare opportunity to see the bulk of Eisenstein’s work, so often circulated on inferior 16mm copies, in proper 35mm prints. Included are six of Eisenstein’s seven completed features, as well as reconstructions of two legendary "lost masterpieces," Que Viva Mexico! (1933) and Bezhin Meadow (1937).
January 25-26, February 1-2, 6, 8-10. More Info.
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