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Monthly Screenings

Project Life

The Florida Project - the beautiful film at the center of this month's program - is situated within a multi-apartment building with many neighbors, a kind of motel or housing. The residents live on the edge of Disney's vast amusement park in Florida. This structure plays a central role in the characterizing the heroines, in describing the relationship between them and in creating the atmosphere, and serves as a secondary, but significant hero in the film: a bubble that protects its heroines and enables them to distance themselves from the world and the reality outside it.

The program we present this month showcases a series of films which like The Florida Project take place in the world of housing projects. The projects are homes to ordinary people, its repetitive structures are a testament to the routine and its simple materials express the mundane. Cinema enjoys using this starting point to suggest dramatic moves that consist primarily of escaping the labels associated with this setting, to say that beneath the occult hides something else. And so behind its windows are dreamers, peeping men, children who fantasize of other worlds, boys in love or those who sink into crime. Housing projects are the land from which this fantasy or nightmare grows. The significance of these narrative moves stems from the way in which the housing project is shaped, and the way of escape or redemption depends on the baggage attributed to it. The films presented in this program move on this axis, where the housing project can be a crime scene or a house of love, and The Florida Project surely belongs to the most compassionate opposite: a comforting family place, if only its heroines can survive and continue to live there.

The Florida Project

Dir.: Sean Baker
| 111 minutes

Six-year-old mischievous Moonee and her friends spend their days roaming the surroundings of the cheap motel where they live in Orlando, Florida. Her mother, barely an adult herself, tries to keep them afloat. An exceptional and heartfelt gem that you will not want to miss. 

The Sound and the Fury

Dir.: Jean-Claude Brisseau
| 95 minutes

The Sound and the Fury was one of the most affective films of the 1980s, bringing forth an uncompromising portrait of life in a Paris dormitory-suburb – a world of alienated individuals which boils over to cruelty and violence. 

Nobody Knows

Dir.: Hirokazu Koreeda
| 140 minutes

12-year-old Akira lives in a small apartment in Tokyo with his three brothers. Their mother is out of the picture and it is Akira’s responsibility to take care of the family. 

La Haine

Dir.: Mathieu Kassovitz
| 97 minutes

Following three malcontent teenagers around Paris while the suburbs are rocked by riots, La Haine is a bullet in the face of French cinema – a direct work, in affective black-and-white cinematography, which quickly moves from the dramatic to the mundane. 

Gomorrah

Dir.: Matteo Garrone
| 136 minutes

Matteo Garrone presents a cold look at the life of the Neopolitan mafia through five narrative threads describing the violent hold of the Camorra family. “Powerful, stripped to its very essence and featuring a spectacular cast” (Hollywood Reporter). 

Onsite screening

Rocco and his Brothers

Dir.: Luchino Visconti
| 180 minutes

After the death of her husband, Rosaria leaves Sicily with her sons for Milan, where her eldest, Vincenzo, has been living for some time. Visconti’s sharp lens follows them through the five years they live in northern Italy.

Sweet Sixteen

Dir.: Ken Loach
| 104 minutes

iam is about to turn 16, just as his mother is about to be released from prison. Liam is determined that this time everything is going to be different.... 

Beautiful Thing

Dir.: Hettie MacDonald
| 91 minutes

An optimistic and honest portrayal of working class England and the lives of three youths, developing into a homosexual love story between two of the protagonists who discover their emerging sexuality together.

Into the West

Dir.: Michael Newell
| 102 minutes

Two kids from Dublin take into the hills on a beautiful white stallion. A charming and complex mixture of adventure and Gallic myths results in a sweeping film for all. 

A Short Film About Love

Dir.: Krzysztof Kieslowski
| 86 minutes

A 19-year-old postal clerk, obsessed with a beautiful, older artist, monitors the woman’s every move. The two eventually have an encounter which almost succeeds in destroying the young man.

Onsite screening

Lovesick on Nana St.

Dir.: Savi Gabizon
| 94 minutes

 A romantic young man who lives with his mother in the slums, falls in love with a blonde actress from Tel-Aviv who comes to live in the area to teach drama. 

Rear Window

Dir.: Alfred Hitchcock
| 112 minutes

 A photographer, confined to his apartment, passes the time by peeking into his neighbors windows. When he suspects a murder had taken place, he will risk everything to prove his claims. A gripping thriller that is both thought-provoking and great entertainment. 

Precious – Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

Dir.: Lee Daniels
| 110 minutes

 16-year-old Precious’ life is unbearable; she is abused by her family, living on welfare, and cannot read and write. Precious ends up in an alternative school, where you either learn or you leave. Precious has to find the strength to change her future.