Press release by Adelaide Cinematheque
South Australia’s premier film society Adelaide Cinematheque is celebrating its quarter century anniversary this year. 25 years ago a passionate group of cinephiles came together to create a society dedicated to the viewing and appreciation of international film culture. On March 29, 25 years later, the 2012 program is being launched by Adelaide filmmaker extraordinaire Dario Russo, creator of Danger 5 and internet sensation Italian Spiderman.
Russo says "Cinematheque has provided me with the opportunity to see some of my favourite, obscure classics up on the big screen, on 35mm, the way they were intended to be seen. In the age of the torrent, this is always an inspirational experience."
The 2012 Adelaide Cinematheque runs every Monday and Thursday evening for 41 weeks screening a diverse selection of quality cinema, from the Greek masters to punk, to old Hollywood, to Eighties gems. Audiences this year can join in heated discussion after the screenings in the fabulous newly refurbished Mercury Cinema foyer.
Highlights of the 2012 season include a focus on the luminous Isabelle Huppert, whose long and productive working relationships with the likes of Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Claire Denis have created a series of cool, precise, and intensely hypnotic performances. She shimmers in Cactus under the direction of Australian auteur Paul Cox and in Michael Haneke’s typically dystopian The Time of the Wolf.
Delving into punk cinema we see some early examples of raw, unconventional filmmaking including Rude Boy (Jack Hazan & David Mingay), Suburbia (Penelope Spheeris) and Rock’n’Roll High School (Allan Arkush). Hollywood takes a good, hard look at itself in David Lynch’s modern classic Mulholland Drive, the beguiling Sunset Boulevard, Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful and Robert Aldrich’s Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Fame is on-point, kicking off the Eighties indulgence with Footloose, Flashdance and Dirty Dancing. Leg warmers are welcome. Then looking to the future, we see an overpopulated planet as imagined by Richard Fleischer in Soylent Green, the cult classic Logan’s Run (Michael Anderson), and of course Ridley Scott’s early masterpiece Alien.
Cinematheque programmer Mat Kesting cites some of the perennial favourite sessions of the last 25 years as Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter with Robert Mitchum and Shelley Winters, Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire, Bill Murray in Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters, David Lynch’s Eraserhead, Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and the zombie classic Night of the Living Dead.
Screenings are only available to society members, but anyone can join and becoming Cinematheque member is easy and great value. For more information about Season One or to become a member visit www.mercurycinema.org.au or phone 08 8410 0979.