Container #2: Next Screening: Dry Ground Burning
And the 70th Melbourne International Film Festival along with a few local screenings.
Hello and many thank to those who joined us last Tuesday for our debut screening of Peter Strickland’s Flux Gourmet. And thank you Peter for your terrapin introduction.
Container is an offshoot of Queensland Film Festival and a membership-based screening series. We screen important new films—typically still on their festival run—fortnightly on Tuesday at 7pm at The Elizabeth Picture Theatre. Once you’re a member, you can attend these screenings for free, and we’ve done our best to keep prices as low as possible with joining fees ranging from $30 (six months concession) to $100 (annual regular).
Next Screening
Dry Ground Burning | Joana Pimenta & Adirley Quierós | 7pm Tuesday 26 July at The Elizabeth
A queer female gang from the favela of Sol Nascente moves in on the illegal petrol trade of Brazil in this fascinating hybrid that blurs documentary and genre fiction. Berlinale 2022.
Joana Darc Furtado and Léa Alves da Silva perform as sisters Chitara and Léa, and stylised versions of themselves, as they lead their team, negotiate with rival gangs, and undertake their perilous oil theft against the background of a militarised and authoritarian government. Filmed over three years, some scenes are actuality, others performed, while others blur the line with giddy staging. Deeply political, Pimenta and Quierós’ docu-fiction takes place against the backdrop of increasing crackdowns against the social mix of favelas and the entrenchment of the Bolsanaro government. Dry Ground Burning melds the immersive chiaroscuro collaborative portraiture of Pedro Costa with the classical genre touchstones of Mad Max and John Carpenter.
Free to all members with membership available online or at the Elizabeth box office.
With thanks to Terratreme. Unrated 18+
Upcoming
26 July: Joana Pimenta & Adirley Queirós’ Dry Ground Burning
9 August: Rhayne Vermette’s Ste. Anne
23 August: Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Earwig
6 September: João Pedro Rodrigues’ Will-o’-the-Wisp
20 September: Gasper Noé’s Lux Æterna (presented in partnership with Static Vision)
4 October: Michelangelo Frammartino’s Il Buco
p.s. we just signed a new Cannes 2022 title which we’re looking forward to revealing soon.
We condemn the sentencing of Jafar Panahi to six years imprisonment.
One of Iran’s key filmmakers, Panahi (The Circle, This Is Not A Film - pictured) has been banned from making films since 2010, and this recent detention follows the imprisonment of fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad. More information can be found here.
Melbourne International Film Festival has announced its 2022 lineup
After two years of lockdown and online festivals, MIFF returns to Melbourne’s cinemas for its 70th anniversary. Though sometimes overwhelming in its variety, MIFF is still the model for film festivals in Australia. This list is slightly biased (you may recognise some names from above) but these are our top 15 picks of MIFF2022:
Peter Strickland’s Flux Gourmet
Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Earwig
João Pedro Rodrigues’ Will-o’-the-Wisp
Michelangelo Frammartino’s Il Buco
Artavazd Peleshian's La Nature
Albert Serra’s Pacifiction
Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Gasper Noé’s Vortex
Alena Lodkina’s Petrol (pictured)
Denis Côté’s That Kind of Summer
Claire Denis’ Stars at Noon
Kiro Russo’s El Gran Movimiento
Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men
Miguel Gomes’s The Tsugua Diaries
David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future
With a particularly happy grin at the Lucile Hadžihalilović retrospective that joins MIFF’s screening of her latest film Earwig.
Local one-off screenings: Oldboy and Inland Empire
A quick shoutout to two classics screening at New Farm Cinemas shortly.
The first is a 4k restoration of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy scanned from the original 35mm. Park’s latest Decision to Leave played at Cannes 2022 and we’re keenly looking forward to it.
The second is a 4k AI upscale of David Lynch’s Inland Empire on Saturday 13 August. Inland Empire’s distinct look was created by shooting on low-resolution digital cameras and then transferring the image to 35mm film. Taking the original digital files and using algorithms to ‘guess’ the missing detail creates something new—not a restoration, but something unexpectedly odd with faces having more detail than other elements because there are more online photographs of faces to reference. It’s a bit away, but while we remember.
Thank you. We hope to catch you next Tuesday and the following email will contain more news on our 9 August screening of Ste. Anne, a lyrical debut from Métis First Nation artist Rhayne Vermette which revitalises the drama of family reunion through a tactile blurring of subjectivity and landscape.