Braidwood Film Club

Braidwood Film Club Inc.

Film Screenings for 2014
This year 2014 we will run two, or occasionally three, films on Saturday, once a month; there will be two
Friday night screenings April and November. Each Saturday evening screening will be preceded by a pot- luck dinner to which everyone is welcome (bring something to share) about two hours before the film screening. As usual...Braidwood Film Club reserves the right to make programme changes when we can’t source films or obtain screening rights.
March Saturday 22 at 3pm & 8pm
Crackerjack Aust 2002 director: Paul Moloney, 92 mins comedy M
A wisecracking layabout, Jack Simpson (Mick Molloy) joins a lawn bowls club in order to be allowed to use a free parking space. When the club enters financial difficulty, Simpson is forced to play bowls with the much older crowd, in order to stop the influence of ‘Pokies King’ Bernie Fowler (John Clarke).!
Beautiful Kate Aust 2009 director: Rachel Ward 90 mins drama/mystery R
A writer, Ned Kendall, is asked to return to the family home by his sister Sally, to say goodbye to his father who is dying. The family home is in a very remote and isolated area. While back home, Ned starts having memories of his beautiful twin sister and himself when they were children. These memories awaken long- buried secrets from the family's past.

April Friday 25 6:30pm
Woman of the Dunes Japan 1964 director: Hiroshi Teshigahara 123 mins drama/ thriller NR
Jumpei Niki, a Tokyo based entomologist and educator, is in a poor seaside village collecting specimens of sand insects. As it is late in the day and as he has missed the last bus back to the city, some of the local villagers suggest that he spend the night there, they offering to find him a place to stay. That place is the home of a young woman, whose house is located at the bottom of a sand pit accessible only by ladder. He later learns that the woman's husband and child died in a sandstorm, their undiscovered bodies buried somewhere near the house. The next morning as he tries to leave, he finds that the ladder is gone - he realizing that the ladder he climbed down was a rope ladder which is anchored above the pit - meaning that he is trapped with the young woman as the walls of the pit are sand with no grip. He also realizes that this entrapment was the villagers and the young woman's plan for him to stay there permanently to be her helper in the never-ending task of digging out the sand, which if not done will swallow them alive. They are dependent upon the villagers to help remove the sand, but also for their rations including water. He learns that the sand is the young woman's life, and that she knows or wants no other life. Thus, it is no use either to blackmail or kill her as she is willing to live and die by this life, and as such he will surely die if she is dead. His life tasks become to figure out a way to escape while co-exist with the woman in what he considers their prison. As time goes on, he also learns that there are other tasks which will consume him.
Saturday 26 3 pm & 7 pm
Elena Russia 2011 director: Andrey Zvyagintsev 109 mins drama NR
The film depicts the social and cultural distance between the inhabitants of an exclusive apartment in downtown Moscow and a crumbling khrushchevka in Moscow's industrial suburb. Elena is a woman with a proletarian background who connects these disparate worlds. She met Vladimir, an elderly business tycoon, in a hospital when she was his nurse. Their alliance has been described by a critic as "a morganatic marriage nearly a century after the October Revolution".[4]
Elena's son from a previous marriage is poor and wants money from Vladimir to have one of his sons enrolled in a university, keeping him out of the compulsory military service. After Vladimir makes it clear that he is not going to subsidize Elena's relatives, she decides to poison him in order to inherit his fortune. Vladimir plans to leave the apartment to his only daughter from an earlier marriage.
A Common Thread French 2004 director: Eleonora Faucher drama 89 mins
Seventeen year old schoolgirl Claire Moutiers (Lola Neymark) lives in a small studio apartment in Angoulème, relying on her part-time job as supermarket cashier to pay the bills. But more importantly, it allows her to indulge in her passion - designing intricate embroideries. When she finds out she is five months pregnant, she decides to keep the news a secret from everyone - even her parents, and takes a job with Madame Melikian (Ariane Ascaride), an embroiderer for haute couture designers. Madame Melikian has her own grief to bear - her only son was recently killed in a motorcycle accident involving Guillaume (Thomas Laroppe), the brother of Claire's best friend Lucile (Marie Félix). As the two women sit and embroider together day by day, a bond grows between them.

May Saturday 24 1 pm, 3 pm & 7 pm The Shiralee UK Aust 1957 director: Leslie Norman drama 99 mins
When Jim Macauley finds his wife with another man, he takes their young daughter and they hit the road. With a young child as his responsibility, he finds he can't be quite the fancy-free wanderer that he had been.
The Shiralee Aust 1987 director: George Ogilvie drama TV movie 100 mins
Macauley is a swagman on the road in the 1940s looking for work. He's a laid back, laconic sort of bloke but when he gets landed with his daughter after his drunken play-girl wife in Adelaide makes him face up to what she believes are his responsibilities, neither he nor his daughter are ready for each other. But in the beginning he's all she's got, and at the end, she's all he's got.
The Crossing USA 1990 director: George Ogilvie drama/romance 92 mins
After 18 months Sam returns to his place of birth. He wants to ask his girlfriend Meg who he had let down when he left, to go with him to the big city. However Meg was deeply sad because of Sam's leaving, that she had started a relation with his best friend Johnny. At the night of Sam's unexpected return, Johhny asks Meg to marry him. Meg is forced to make a choice! That Saturday night, Meg and a desperate and drunk Johhny deceide to escape from their dancing night. The only problem is, that Sam at that same time leaves the village to go to the big city and he pursues them. In this tragical night, two cars are racing on the freeway on their way to the level crossing and a frontal car accident...!

June Saturday 28 3 pm & 7 pm Amarcord USA 1973 director: Federico Fellini comedy 123 mins
Federico Fellini's warmly nostalgic memory piece examines daily life in the Italian village of Rimini during the reign of Mussolini, and won the 1974 Academy Award as Best Foreign Film. The film's greatest asset is its ability to be sweet without being cloying, due in great part to Danilo Donati's surrealistic art direction and to the frequently bawdy injections of sex and politics by screenwriters Fellini and Tonino Guerra. Fellini clearly has deep affection for the people of this seaside village, warts and all, and communicates it through episodic visual anecdotes which are seen as if through the mists of a favorite dream, playfully scored by Nino Rota and lovingly photographed by Giuseppe Rotunno.
Incendies Canada 2010 director: Denis Villeneuve mystery drama 140 mins
Director Denis Villeneuve adapts Wajdi Mouawad's play concerning a pair of twins who make a life-altering discovery following the death of their mother. Upon learning that their absentee father is still very much alive and they also have a brother they have never met, the pair travels to the Middle East on a mission to uncover the truth about their mystery-shrouded past.

July Saturday 19 3pm & 7pm
The Overlanders USA 1946 director: Harry Watt Adventure/Western 91 mins.
It's the start of WWII in Northern Australia. The Japanese are getting close. People are evacuating and burning everything in a "scorched earth" policy. Rather than kill all their cattle, a disparate group decides to drive them overland half way across the continent.
The Sapphires Aust 2012 director: Wayne Blair biography/comedy/drama 103 mins
It's 1968, and four young, talented Australian Aboriginal girls learn about love, friendship and war when their all-girl group The Sapphires entertain the US troops in Vietnam.

August Saturday 23 3pm & 7pm
Empire of the Sun USA 1987 director: Steven Spielberg drama 153 mins
Based on J.G. Ballard's autobiographical novel, Empire of the Sun stars Christian Bale as a spoiled young British boy, living with his wealthy family in pre-World War II Shanghai. During the Japanese invasion, Bale is separated from his parents. With the help of soldier-of-fortune John Malkovich, Bale learns to survive without a retinue of servants at his beck and call. By the time Malkovich and Bale are tossed into a Japanese prison camp, the boy has picked up enough street-smarts and developed enough intestinal fortitude to regard his imprisonment as an exciting adventure. The story ends during the 1945 liberation: on the verge of manhood, the 13-year-old Bale will never again be the pampered, privileged brat whom we met in the early scenes.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy UK 2011 director: Thomas Alfredson drama/mystery/ thriller 127 mins
Amidst the Cold War in the 70s, the head of Britain's MI6, Control (John Hurt), sends Jim Prideau (Mark Strong) to Budapest to talk a Hungarian General into defecting. The General knows the true identity of the mole within MI6, who has been passing secrets to Karla, the Russian spy master. Control has narrowed down the suspects to five men, and code-named them according to the old nursery rhyme: Tinker for careerist Percy Alleline (Toby Jones); Tailor, the urbane Bill Haydon (Colin Firth); Soldier, Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds); Poor Man, the weakling Toby Esterhase (David Dencik); and Beggarman, Control's right-hand man, George Smiley (Gary Oldman). Prideau's mission is a terrible failure. Some time later, Undersecretary Oliver Lacon (Simon McBurney) recalls Smiley from retirement to find the mole. Control, now dead from a heart attack, may well have guessed right. Smiley, needing a current insider, takes on Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch) to retrieve documents from the archives.

September Saturday 20 3pm & 7pm The Searchers USA 1956 director: John Ford Western 119 mins
A Civil War veteran embarks on a journey to rescue his niece from an Indian tribe. With complex characterisation, it is arguably one of the best westerns ever made .
Meek’s Cutoff USA 2010 director: Kelly Reichardt drama 104 mins
The year is 1845, the earliest days of the Oregon Trail, and a wagon team of three families has hired the mountain man Stephen Meek to guide them over the Cascade Mountains. Claiming to know a short cut, Meek leads the group on an unmarked path across the high plain desert, only to become lost in the dry rock and sage. Over the coming days, the emigrants must face the scourges of hunger, thirst and their own lack of faith in each other's instincts for survival. When a Native American wanderer crosses their path, the emigrants are torn between their trust in a guide who has proven himself unreliable and a man who has always been seen as the natural enemy.

October Saturday 25 3pm & 8pm
My Man Godfrey USA 1936 director: Gregory La Cava comedy
Nick and Nora Charles, a former detective and his rich, playful wife, investigate a murder case mostly for the fun of it. An engaging classic which spawned numerous sequels and series.
The Thin Man USA 1934 director: W.S,Van Dyke comedy/crime/film noir
Nick and Nora Charles, a former detective and his rich, playful wife, investigate a murder case mostly for the fun of it. An engaging classic which spawned numerous sequels and series.

November Friday 28 7pm / Saturday 29 3pm & 7pm
The Return of Martin Guerre France 1982, director Daniel Vigne, 106 minutes
In 1542 in provincial France a soldier returns home from eight years at war and is accused of being an imposter. A fascinating true story.
The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter USA 1980, director Connie Field, 65 minutes, documentary
This engaging documentary deals with women who occupied technically skilled jobs in American during WW II and showcases first-hand interviews with some who experienced both a unique opportunity to learn “men’s work”, and a devastating loss of empowerment soon thereafter as their menfolk returned from service.
The Best Years of our Lives USA 1946, director William Wyler, 172 minutes
A strong but low-key story of three World War II servicemen from different stations of society who return home to small-town America to discover that they and their families have been irreparably changed and considerable social re-adjustment is required of them. Their crises form a microcosm of the experiences of many American warriors who found an alien world awaiting them when they came marching home. The film won eight Oscars.

December Saturday 20 8pm Christmas pot-luck dinner together to wind up the year.
Cabaret USA 1972 director: Bob Fosse drama/musical 124 mins
Was the rise of the Nazi party in the Weimar Republic accompanied by a rise in bisexuality, homosexuality, sadomasochism, and assorted other activities? It reeks of extreme oversimplification but sure makes for entertaining cinema in the hands of the right director. The cabaret of the title takes place in Berlin circa 1930 in which decadence and sexual ambiguity were just part of the ambience. Director Bob Fosse doesn't aim for the usual "happy" musical but has gone right to the bleak heart of the material and stayed there well enough to win an Academy Award for Best Director.