Hello. Thank you again for joining us.
Next Screening
Earwig | Lucile Hadžihalilović’ | 7pm Tuesday 23 August at The Elizabeth
Somewhere in Europe, mid-20th century. Albert is employed to look after Mia, a girl whose teeth must be laboriously made from ice each day. Mia never leaves the apartment but remains cloistered in its darkness until one day Albert is instructed that he must prepare the child to leave. A mesmerising fable of long-repressed secrets and awakening memories.
Lucile Hadžihalilović’s third feature and her first in English, Earwig continues her rich creation of suggestive worlds. While her previous features—Innocence and Evolution—were filmed from the perspective of children, finding their way through mysterious societies, Earwig inverts this structure to explore the power (and trauma) of the guardian and educator. An oneiric and sensual film, filled with redolent textures, Earwig loops its way through uncanny interlocking images and rippling memories.
As part of this screening, we have worked with film scholar Alison Taylor to put together a dossier on on her films for Senses of Cinema along with an extensive interview with Lucile Hadžihalilović here.
With thanks to Lucile Hadžihalilović and Petit Films
Unrated 18+
Free to all members with membership available online or at the Elizabeth box office.
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)
Upcoming Screenings
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’ll shortly be announcing our next slate of screenings. A few special things.
International Festival Lineups
Venice, Toronto and the main section of New York Film Festival have announced their lineups.
Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s White Noise seems to come pre-annointed with the film opening both Venice and NYFF. Venice has an impressive lineup with world premieres from Baumbach, Darren Aronofsky with The Whale, Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All, Joanna Hogg’s The Eternal Daughter, Jafar Panahi’s No Bears, Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Frederick Wiseman’s A Couple, Lav Diaz’s When the Waves Are Gone, Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener, Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom Exodus and Nicolas Winding Refn’s Copenhagen Cowboy all catching out attention. Most of these films are big enough that their release schedule has long been determined, but we’ll be paying close attention to Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (pictured).
Toronto and New York mark the end of the year’s festival circuit. Toronto is always an overwhelming and messy festival. Its strength lies in being the first major North American festival where east coast critics and audiences could catchup on all the films that have debuted in Europe earlier in the year. New York Film Festival is charming in its confidence. A small lineup, little concern with world premieres, but an enviable quality control. It’s pretty easy to tell which are the major Venice titles—simply cross-check which ones also appear at New York. Both TIFF and NYFF are complemented by two of the year’s key experimental and moving image showcases: Wavelengths and Currents respectively.
Wavelength’s 2022 lineup is typically focused (we can’t help but notice Container screenings like Dry Ground Burning, Will-o’-the-Wisp, Pacifiction, along with a few other yet to be announced Container titles), but we do regret the continued reduction in its shorts program which has historically been its strongest and most distinctive section. Currents has struggled over the last couple of years, since it replaced the previous experimental showcase Projections in 2020, with a much more variable and scattered approach. This year’s lineup surveys some of the years key films (…) with Will-o’-the-Wisp as opening night film and some standouts from the recent Locarno Film Festival (The Adventures of Gigi the Law, Human Flowers of Flesh and Tales of the Purple House) folded into the mix. Interesting world premieres include Heinz Emigholz’s Slaughterhouses of Modernity, along with new shorts from Mary Helena Clark (Exhibition) Nicolás Pereda (Flora), and Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s (45th Parallel).
In Queer Time
A quick shoutout to QAGOMA’s film series In Queer Time, curated by the artist Callum McGrath along with his interview with Lizzie Borden, director of Born in Flames.
Thank you. We hope to catch you on Tuesday for Earwig and the following email will contain more new on our 6 September screening of Will-o’- the-Wisp (pictured), a very queer, very political, musical adjacent film about princes and firefighters.