TERROR'S ADVOCATE
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May 16--19 ONLY: Fri & Sat 9:00, Sun 3:10, Mon 8:20 (ends Monday)
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(France 2007 dir by Barbet Schroeder)
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The subject of this fascinating documentary, the controversial lawyer Jacques Vergès, has made it his life’s work to defend some of modern history’s most controversial figures, including mass-murderer Pol Pot, Carlos the Jackal, and Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie.
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From the lawyer’s inflammatory and provocative cases to his controversial terrorist links, the film follows the trail left by this devil’s advocate as he forges his unique path in law and politics. Barbet (REVERSAL OF FORTUNE, BARFLY) Schroeder illuminates this enigmatic figure while digging into the roots of modern international terrorism. Perhaps best known for having defended Barbie (the “Butcher of Lyon”), Verges met Pol Pot when both were students at the Sorbonne, married the heroine of the Algerian War of Independence (whom he rescued from a death penalty), then disappeared from 1970-78, when he was an instrumental go-between in a number of affairs of state involving what some would dub freedom-fighters and others would define as terrorists. In French with subtitles.
unrated. 137 mins.. |
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ROMAN DE GARE
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Starts May 23: check for showtimes
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(France 2008, dir by Claude Lelouch)
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In this stylish thriller from the director of A MAN AND A WOMAN, nobody is who they say they are.
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Roman de gare translates as "railway novel," you know, the kind of books you buy to pass time on a trip. Fanny Ardent plays Judith, the author of several successful romans de gare who has just released her first "serious" novel. As she basks in the praise of critics, we suddenly cut to Huguette (Audrey Dana) who's just been literally dumped by her fiancee at a rest stop, and a mysterious man (Dominique Pinon) who offers aid, claiming to be Judith's ghostwriter. Zigzagging between three parallel stories, the film offers slick James-Bond-style action and gripping suspense. In French with subtitles.
unrated. 103 mins. |
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ALEXANDRA
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Starts May 23: check for showtimes
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(Russia 2007, dir by Alexander Sokurov)
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An 81-year-old Russian opera singer stars as the titular character in this poetic film from the director of RUSSIAN ARK.
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Tiny but tough, Alexandra (Galina Vishnevskaya) boldly makes her way to the Chechen front in search of her grandson Denis (Vasily Shevtsov), eager to visit with him and also to see what life is like on his military base. She roams the camp, talking and bonding with the bored soldiers, who take an almost courtly interest in her. The contradictions between old and young, life and death strike an eerie note. With its elegant imagery, beautifully shot on location in Chechnya, ALEXANDRA is a quiet, haunting meditation on life in the military versus life outside it, and on Russia itself. In Russian with subtitles.
unrated. 92mins. |
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UP THE YANGTZE
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May 30–June 5: check for showtimes
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(Canada 2008, dir by Yung Chang)
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In China, it is simply known as “The River.” But the Yangtze—and all of the life that surrounds it—is undergoing a truly astonishing transformation wrought by the largest hydroelectric project in history, the Three Gorges Dam.
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Filmmaker Chang returns to the now-disappearing landscape of his grandfather’s youth to trace the surreal life of a farewell cruise on a luxury liner that traverses the gargantuan waterway. His Upstairs Downstairs approach beautifully captures the microcosmic society of the ship. Below deck: A bewildered young peasant girl is washing dishes having been shipped off to escape her family’s impending relocation due to the dam. Above deck: A phalanx of wealthy international tourists set sail to catch a last glance of a country in dramatic flux. UP THE YANGTZE gives a human dimension to the wrenching changes facing not only an increasingly globalized China, but the world at large. In English, Mandarin and Sichuan with subtitles.
unrated. 93mins. |
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Blade Runner
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MAY 30-JUNE 5. check for showtimes
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(US 1982, dir by Ridley Scott)
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2019 is only 11 years away...
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The final-final director’s cut of Ridley Scott's dystopian vision reinvigorates a cult classic, a futuristic film noir that finds bounty hunter Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) hunting down a pack of replicants (humanoid androids) bent on prolonging their expiration dates. Rutger Hauer plays Roy Batty, the lead replicant and Deckard’s dark reflection, and Sean Young co-stars as a beautiful femme fatale uncertain of her humanity.
R. 117mins. |
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BONNIE & CLYDE
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June 8: 1:00
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IN PERSON Sunday, June 8 from 1:00pm to 5:00pm. Mark Harris, author of Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood. Book signing and reception follow the post-screening discussion. Part of the Dutchess County Arts Council's Arts Fund Out of the Box, a series of casual, art-centric events which support the 2008 Arts Fund.
To reserve your seat, contact the Arts Council at 845-454-3222 or via email at info@artsmidhudson.org. Reservations for this event are required by Monday, June 2. Seating is limited; first come, first served. Learn about other events at www.artsmidhudson.org
What's It Cost? You will be asked to make a contribution to the Dutchess County Arts Fund. The expenses of these events are being donated by the hosts to ensure that 100% of your contribution goes to the Arts Fund.
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(US 1967, dir by Arthur Penn)
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When Bonnie and Clyde was released in 1967, it caused a sensation.
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It made a star of Faye Dunaway and earned Gene Hackman a leading role in The French Connection; it cemented the reputation of Warren Beatty as a “player”; and added another notch in director Arthur Penn’s canon. And it shocked critics and audiences alike with its ferocious yet balletic violence. The film charts the rise and fall of two attractive, anti-authoritarian bank robbers and their helpers.
R. 112 mins. |
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DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE
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June 20–26: check for showtimes
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(Italy 1962, dir by Pietro Germi)
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A brisk counterpoint to his contemporary Fellini's LA DOLCE VITA is Germi’s comedia all’Italiana, a dark farce of Southern Italians trapped by social constructs.
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Middle-aged Baron Cefalu (Marcello Mastroianni) daydreams of marrying his virginal teenage cousin (Stefania Sandrelli), but first he must get rid of his smothering wife (Daniela Rocca). Divorce is illegal, but if he catches his wife in bed with another man, the law will look the other way if he kills her in a crime of passion. So the Baron is off to find his wife a lover. In Italian with subtitles.
unrated. 118 mins. |
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SEDUCED & ABANDONED
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June 27–July 3: check for showtimes
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(Italy 1964, dir by Pietro Germi)
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“It’s a man’s right to ask, a woman’s duty to refuse!”
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While the rest of her family takes a siesta on a hot and lazy afternoon, virginal 16-year-old Agnese (Stefania Sandrelli) first fights off but then gives in to the blunt advances of her older sister’s boyfriend Peppino (Aldo Puglisi). Her father, Don Vincenzo (Saro Urzì, named Best Actor at Cannes for his work here) winds up storming all over town in hapless attempts to keep the situation under control. A dizzyingly paced comic masterpiece. In Italian with subtitles.
unrated. 118 mins. |
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SON OF RAMBOW
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Check for dates & showtimes
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(UK, 2007 dir by Garth Jennings)
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An unusual film about childhood and imagination based on an unusual premise: the director’s childhood fascination with 1982’s Rambo: First Blood.
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In writer-director Jennings’ improbable coming-of-age tale, a shy eleven-year-old (Bill Milner) escapes the confines of a strict religious upbringing by re-enacting the macho exploits of Sly Stallone in the English countryside under the direction of Lee Carter (Will Poulter), a bullying fellow student with a hunger to become a filmmaker.
PG-13. 96 mins. |
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THE SINGING REVOLUTION
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Check for dates & showtimes
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(US, 2006 dir by James Tusty & Maureen Castle Tusty)
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“Imagine the scene in Casablanca in which the French patrons sing ‘La Marseillaise’ in defiance of the Germans, then multiply its power by a factor of thousands, and you’ve only begun to imagine the force of The Singing Revolution.” – Matt Zoller Seitz, NY TIMES.
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Song was the weapon of choice when, between 1986 and 1991, Estonians sought to free themselves from decades of Soviet occupation. "The young people, without any political party, and without any politicians, just came together ... not only tens of thousands but hundreds of thousands ... to gather and to sing and to give this nation a new spirit," remarks Mart Laar, a Singing Revolution leader featured in the film and the first post-Soviet Prime Minister of Estonia.
unrated. 94 mins. |
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CRITICAL CONDITION
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Check for dates & showtimes & guest speaker
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(US 2008, dir by Roger Weisberg)
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What happens if you fall sick and are one of 47 million people in America without health insurance?
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Roger (WAGING A LIVING, P.O.V. 2006) Weisberg, whose previous documentaries have won Emmy, DuPont-Columbia and Peabody awards, puts a human face on the nation's growing health care crisis by capturing the harrowing struggles of four critically ill Americans who discover that being uninsured can cost them their jobs, health, home, savings, and even their lives. Filmed in verité style, CRITICAL CONDITION offers a moving and invaluable exposé at a time when the nation is debating how to extend health insurance to all Americans.
IN COLLABORATION WITH P.O.V.’s community outreach. P.O.V. (a cinematic term for “point of view”), television’s longest-running showcase for independent non-fiction films, premieres bold and innovative programming every year on PBS. Since 1988, P.O.V. has presented over 225 films to public television audiences across the country. P.O.V. films are known for their intimacy, their unforgettable storytelling and their timeliness, putting a human face on contemporary social issues.
unrated. 90mins. |
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TRACES OF THE TRADE
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Check for dates & showtimes & guest speaker
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(US 2008, dir by Katrina Browne)
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Imagine finding out that your family was once the largest slave-trading family in U.S. history.
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That’s what first-time filmmaker Katrina Browne found out about her New England ancestors. She is a seventh generation descendant of Mark Anthony deWolf, the family’s first slave trader. She and nine fellow descendants set off to retrace the Triangle Trade: from their old hometown in Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana to sugar plantation ruins in Cuba. Step by step, they uncover the vast extent of Northern complicity in slavery while also stumbling through the minefield of contemporary race relations. In this bicentennial year of the U.S. abolition of the slave trade, TRACES OF THE TRADE offers powerful new perspectives on the black/white divide.
IN COLLABORATION WITH P.O.V.’s community outreach. P.O.V. (a cinematic term for “point of view”), television’s longest-running showcase for independent non-fiction films, premieres bold and innovative programming every year on PBS. Since 1988, P.O.V. has presented over 225 films to public television audiences across the country. P.O.V. films are known for their intimacy, their unforgettable storytelling and their timeliness, putting a human face on contemporary social issues.
unrated. 90mins. |
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THEN SHE FOUND ME
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Check for dates & showtimes
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(US, 2008 dir by Helen Hunt)
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Actress Helen Hunt does double duty in her directorial debut, a bittersweet comedy about the biological ticking clock and how families are forged both by blood and by choice.
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April Epner (Hunt) is an anxious 39-year-old kindergarten teacher in New York City, and no wonder. Her husband (Matthew Broderick) bails out on her, her adoptive mother dies, and she is stalked by a brassy talk show host (Bette Midler) who claims to be her biological mother. Even as April seems to find solace with Frank, (Colin Firth) the father of one of her students, it seems that life’s mysteries and questions cannot be so easily resolved. Based on a novel by Elinor Lipman.
R. 100 mins. |
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ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD
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Check for dates & showtimes
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(US, 2007 dir by Werner Herzog)
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Ever since Ernest Shackleton explored the South Pole over a century ago, this frozen end-of-the-line place has lured eccentrics, and filmmaker Werner Herzog certainly qualifies.
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He and his crew traveled to McMurdo Station, the headquarters for the National Science Foundation and home to 1,100 persons between October and February who live and work together in scientific research. As Herzog explores the harsh yet beautiful world, we meet a forklift operator with a Ph.D., a woman who traveled to South America in a sewage pipe on the back of a truck, and experts on mad penguins. At times Herzog’s narration ponders the malevolence of nature. This is offset by the stark beauty of Antarctica, which he allows us to experience set to a soundtrack of choral music.
PG. 99 mins. |
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THE EDGE OF HEAVEN
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Check for dates & showtimes
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(Germany 2008, dir by Fatih Akin)
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German-born Fatih (HEAD ON) Akin, who’s of Turkish descent, juggles six protagonists whose lives are inextricably linked.
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Ayten (Nurgül Yesilçay) is a radical Kurdish activist who’s wanted by German police but is given refuge by Lotte (Patrycia Ziolkowska), a German student who brandishes her own naïve brand of sexual politics. Lotte’s dispproving mother Susanne is played by Hannah Schygulla who decades ago played lead roles for Fassbinder. The filmmaker throws into the mix his special knowledge of how Europe’s borders are disappearing, bringing people together in random, dangerous, exciting and sometimes fatal ways. In German, Turkish and English with subtitles.
unrated. 112 mins. |
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MONGOL
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Check for dates & showtimes
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(Germany, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia 2007 dir by Sergei Bodrov)
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Award-winning Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov (PRISONER OF THE MOUNTAINS) illuminates the life and legend of Genghis Khan in his stunning historical epic shot against a nomad's landscape of endless space, climatic extremes and ever-present danger.
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This multidimensional portrait of the future conqueror reveals him not as the evil brute of hoary stereotype, but as an inspiring, fearless and visionary leader. Masterfully blending action and emotion against some of the most arresting terrain on earth, Bodrov delivers an exciting tale of survival and triumph. In many languages with subtitles.
R. 124 mins. |
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FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON
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Check for dates & showtimes
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(France, 2008 dir by Hou Hsaio-hsien)
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West meets East and art meets life in this paean to Albert Lamorisse’s beloved THE RED BALLOON by heralded Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien, in his first film set outside Asia.
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Inspired by the classic short, this homage features Juliette Binoche, playing a harried mother and artist who works as a puppeteer. She takes in a Taiwanese film student, Song (Song Fang), to serve as a nanny for her son, seven-year-old Simon (Simon Iteanu). Soon, Song and Simon are sharing an imaginary world in which a strange red balloon follows them, even through the exhibition space of the Musée d’Orsay. Subtle and transformative. In French with subtitles.
unrated (not for kids). 113 mins. |
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