Recent Film Events
From: January 5, 2010 20:00 To: January 5, 2010 22:00
Location: Ballina Arts Centre
Ballina Film presents KurosawaSeven Samurai (Dir: Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1954)Set in 16th century Japan, Seven Samurai follows the story of a village of farmers that hire seven masterless samurai (ronin) to combat bandits who will return after the harvest to steal their crops.They succeed in hiring the veteran Kambei Shimada who advises that they need six other samurai to protect their lands. Kambei recruits the necessary five samurai and the brave jester Kikuchiyo and move to the village. After a feared reception, Kambei plots a defense strategy and the samurai start training the farmers how to defend their lands and families ...
From: January 5, 2010 20:00 To: January 5, 2010 22:00
Location: Ballina Arts Centre
Ballina Film Club presents… Akira KurosawaMonth-long programme of events celebrating the life and work of one of world cinema’s greatest talents. Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) was one of the 20th century most important filmmakers. In a career that spanned 50 years, Kurosawa directed 30 films, and is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in film history. In 1989, he was awarded the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement “for cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world”.
From: January 12, 2010 20:00 To: January 12, 2010 22:00
Location: Ballina Arts Centre
The Hidden Fortress (Dir: Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1958 The Hidden Fortress begins with two luckless peasants, Tahei and Matashichi (Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara) escaping the aftermath of a battle. While trying to make their way home, they meet and begin to travel with General Rokurota Makabe (Toshiro Mifune). The General is trying to transport the princess of a defeated royal family and what remains of their wealth to safe territory in secret. The peasants mostly impede his mission, sometimes trying to run off with the gold. They are later joined by a farmer’s daughter (Toshiko Higuchi), whom they acquire ...
From: January 19, 2010 20:00 To: January 19, 2010 22:00
Location: Ballina Arts Centre
Stray Dog, Kurosawa's ninth film, is generally considered his first masterpiece. Dostoyevskian themes and motifs – humanism, class conflict, masculine pain and guilt, doppelgangers – abound. There are stellar performances throughout, including the first great teaming of Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura (in their fourth appearance together in a Kurosawa film). And of course the film's elaborate visuals, formal complexities, and dramatic pacing announce a career that would be internationally acclaimed with Rashomon just a year later. Rookie homicide detective Murakami (Toshir? Mifune) frantically seeks his stolen Colt pistol which, to his shame, has been pickpocketed on a bus. ...
From: January 26, 2010 20:00 To: January 26, 2010 22:00
Location: Ballina Arts Centre
Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous job for thirty years. After learning he has stomach cancer and has less than a year to live, Watanabe attempts to come to terms with his impending death. After a chance encounter with one of his former subordinates, Watanabe is attracted to her joyous love of life and enthusiasm. He opens up to her by saying he just wants to live one day in such a carefree, youthful way like she does. She reveals that her happiness comes from her new job, making toys, which ...
From: February 9, 2010 20:00 To: February 9, 2010 22:00
Location: Ballina Arts Centre
Jan Troell’s period drama tells the story of Maria (Maria Heiskanen), a simple woman married to a charming but hopeless redneck, who became a photographer at a time when no woman would have dreamt of embracing such a profession and no man, certainly not the kind of working class lout she had for a husband, would condone it. Maria, wins a camera in a lottery, but ignores it for years, being far too busy working her fingers to the bone, first as a cleaning woman and then as a seamstress. One day she tries to sell the camera to the ...
From: February 23, 2010 20:00 To: February 23, 2010 22:00
Location: Ballina Arts Centre
Unsung theatre director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is living his artistically unfulfilling life in Schenecdaty, New York, when his wife Adele (Catherine Keener) leaves him to follow her flourishing painting career to Berlin. A rebound relationship with his comely receptionist Hazel (Samantha Morton) never seems to get off the ground, and he finds himself struck by a mysterious illness that is systematically shutting down his autonomic functions. Then, news of a MacArthur Grant allows Caden to happily abandon both regional theatre and his personal woes to begin an epic production which he envisions will become a great American masterpiece. ...
From: March 9, 2010 20:00 To: March 9, 2010 22:00
Location: Ballina Arts Centre
Broken Embraces (Dir: Pedro Almodovar, Spain, 2009)A man writes, lives and loves in darkness. Fourteen years before, he was in a brutal car crash on the island of Lanzarote. In the accident, he didn’t lose only his sight, he also lost Lena, the love of his life. This man uses two names: Harry Caine, a playful pseudonym with which he signs his literary works, stories and scripts, and Mateo Blanco, his real name, but a name he has tried hard to forget.Today, Harry (Lluis Homar) lives thanks to the scripts he writes and to the help he gets from his ...
From: March 23, 2010 20:00 To: March 23, 2010 22:00
Location: Ballina Arts Centre
Helen (Dir: Christine Molloy & Joe Lawlor, Ireland/UK, 2008)Helen is a subtly drawn story of a young woman poised on the brink of adult life, and an auspicious feature debut for its writer-directors. Dubliners Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor (also known as ‘Desperate Optimists’) adopt the same approach as in their series of nine short films, the Civic Life Series – shooting in 35mm scope in mainly long takes, featuring local non professional actors – but here add an all-important element of storytelling. When a young woman, Joy, disappears, the police ask for help in staging a reconstruction. Helen (Annie ...
From: April 6, 2010 20:00 To: April 6, 2010 22:00
Location: Ballina Arts Centre
Let the Right One In (Dir: Tomas Alfredson, Sweden, 2008)Starring: Kare Hedebrant, Lina Leandersson, Per Ragnar and Henrik Dahl Let the Right One In is an angular and lusty teen horror movie based on John Ajvide Lindqvist’s bestseller in which lonesome 12-year-old Oskar (Kare Hedebrant) becomes smitten by a young, female vampire named Eli (Lina Leandersson). After initiating an adorable romance in the snow-coated forecourt of their glum housing complex, they soon realise that both of them are baying for blood. He’s privately fantasising about stabbing up his schoolyard tormentors with a pocket knife and she needs to sate an ...
