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Film Retrospective

K-College European Film Series 
    Summer 2004

Recital Hall, Light Fine Arts Building*

Kalamazoo College, 1200 Academy Street, Kalamazoo, Mi  49006

*Light Fine Arts Building is located on the northeast corner of Thompson and Academy Streets 

Sponsored by Kalamazoo College

These films are free and open to the public

All foreign-language films have English subtitles 

PLEASE NOTE: This page is presented as a courtesy to K-College. Their Film Series is not affiliated with the Kalamazoo Film Society. Questions or comments regarding this series should be directed to K-College at: 337-7136.

Wednesday, June 23, 2004 at 7 PM

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (1999) 101 mins. Director: Pedro Almodovar  (Spain)

Almodovar’s most mature and moving film.  Manuela, a single mother living in Madrid, loses her son in a tragic accident.  Shattered, she flees to Barcelona to discover both her lost past and a newfound bond with a group of remarkable women – including a high strung stage star, a brassy transsexual prostitute and a saintly, pregnant nun.  Academy Award winner.

Wednesday, July 7, 2004 at 7 PM

LA PROMESSE (1997)  93mins.  Director: Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (Belgium)

In a decaying industrial suburb of Lieges, a father and son operate a modern-day slave trade by smuggling in illegal aliens.  But the tight, complex symbiosis between them begins to unravel when the son becomes secretly fascinated with a West African woman, leading to a powerful moral awakening.   

Wednesday, July 14, 2004 at 7 PM

THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL (1990) 70 mins.  Director: Aki Kaurismaki (Finland)
(Includes 6 minute short: THOSE WERE THE DAYS with The Leningrad Cowboys)

Selected as one of the top ten films of ’92 by Rolling Stone, Newsweek and The Village Voice, THE MATCH FACTORY GIRL is a very dark, feminist comedy of murder and revenge.  The film follows the bleak existence of Iris, a young factory worker in Finland who is cruelly ignored at home, at work and at the dreary nightclubs she attends.  A new red dress leads to a one-night stand, pregnancy and a packet of rat poison that Iris does not intend to take herself.

Wednesday, July 21, 2004 at 7 PM

SOLAS (1999) 101 mins. Director: Benito Zambrano (Spain)

A quietly powerful study of urban alienation, family discord, and personal redemption, this film was a surprise box-office smash in Spain.  Maria, a tense, frayed 35-year-old living in an unnamed Andalusian city, is reunited with her provincial parents when her domineering father is hospitalized and her stoical mother becomes an unwelcome houseguest.  Maria has enough problems of her own – she hates her menial job, and she has just become pregnant by her abusive lover.  Initially ignored by her daughter, the mother begins to break down her daughter’s wall of despair. 

Wednesday, August 4, 2004 at 7 PM

THE FAREWELL (2000) 91 mins.  Director: Jan Schutte  (Germany)

In this incisive portrait, seminal modern dramatist Bertolt Brecht, director Jan Schutte crystallizes the conflicts of Brecht’s life into a single August day at the writer’s lakeside retreat.  There, both pampered and penned in by the East German communist regime he ambivalently serves, Brecht presides over a curious ménage that includes his protective wife, pyromaniac daughter, former mistress, and current young favorites.  The film’s approach is more subtly Chekhovian than epically Brechtian, mixing bitter comedy with muted tragedy, petty tiffs with looming historical change.

Wednesday, August 11, 2004 at 7 PM

THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS (1971/1997) 95 mins.  Director: Vittorio De Sica (Italy)

This haunting portrait of the twilight of pre-war Italian Jewry won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film.  The film tells the story of the last years of the aristocratic Finzi-Continis, who live on a vast walled estate that offers a deceptive refuge from the gathering storm.  This lyrical, almost-poetic motion picture, illustrates the false belief held by some privileged Jewish citizens that, if they isolated themselves from the ugliness of the political climate, they might be spared its ravages. 

For more information, contact the Foreign Language Division at 337-7136

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