FILM LIST
YELLOW EARTH
Yellow Earth (PG) Chen Kaige, China, 1984) Xue Bai, Wang Xueqi. 90 mins. Although the Japanese cinema is by now regarded as part and parcel oi the world movie scene, the Chinese cinema has yet to make the sort oi breakthrough and impact that her oriental neighbour did with Kurosawa’s Bashomon back in 1950. However, that situation seems to be at an end with Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth entering British distribution alter its enormous success at the 1985 Edinburgh Film Festival trom which it went on to win the year’s British Film Institue Award. The lilm itselt centres on the clash between the ancient and the modern, between the traditional values and rituals ot a remote mountain tribe and the new-tangled ideologies ot a Communist soldier sent to study them in 1939. This sort ol conllict is a recurrent theme in the Chinese cinema, perhaps not surprislngly tor a country trying to haul its larther-ilung
Unfortunately where there was once taut, coiled tension there now lurks the conventional framework of a whodunnit; methodical flashbacks laced with liberal concern. Disappointing. Strathclyde; Haldance Film Society
0 Soylent Green (15) (Richard Fleischer, US, 1983) Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Leigh-Taylor Young. 96 mins. New York, 2022. The city’s 40 million people subsist on the Soylent company’s synthetic food products. Investigating the death of one of the city‘s few wealthy citizens, detective Heston stumbles upon a government conspiracy and the startling truth about the ingredients of Soylent Green.
Imaginative, futuristic ecological thriller with an impressive set design and poignant swansong from Robinson as an old man who fondly recalls life in the good old days.
Based on the novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, this screening will be followed by a discussion with Harrison, Guest of Honour at the Glasgow Science Fiction Conference. Glasgow; GET 0 Svpergirl (PG) (Jeannot Szwarc, UK, 1984) Faye Dunaway, Helen
areas into the 20th century, as was deonstrated by Zhang Nuanxin’s Sacrificed Youth at this year’s Film Festival, but what marks Kaige’s debut ieature apart is the aesthetic daring with which it takes the proloundly curious (to Western observers) and hauntingly beautllul images at the Shaanxi and their art and transforms them into a cinematic experience at extravagant colour and movement which has tew peers in contemporary cinema, save perhaps Sergo Paradianov's extraordinary The Colour 0t Pomegranates.
Yellow Earth’s unforgettable power derives Irom its tragic sense at inevitability asthe soldier is unable to prevent the 12 year-old heroine's arranged marriage, trorn the quite lively melodies oi her songs, and irom the tumultuoustlnal sequence at the
marriage ceremony and celebrations in
all its mesmeric strangeness. It is an ascent into the miraculous.
Slater. Peter O’Toole. 124 mins. When the satellite community of Argo City loses its Omegahedron, Superman‘s cousin wings her way to earth to retrieve said object. Unfortunately it has fallen into the hands of amateur witch Dunaway and she doesn’t want to part with it. Variable effects, slapdash sets and
a lack of internal logic reduce this to
supertrash although Dunaway’s camp wicked lady is cherishable. Edinburgh; Filmhouse
o Survivors-The Blues Today (PG) (Robert Schwaryz, Cork Marcheschi, US, 1984) 87 mins. Film
record of a weekend blues festival in
St Paul, Minnesota featuring
interviews and concert footage ofthe .
Barking Ducks, Willie Murphy, John Lee Hooker, Archie Shepp and other cool cats. Glasgow; ABC Sauchiehall Street
0 Sweet Liberty (PG) fir (Alan Alda, US, 1985) Alan Alda, Michael Caine, Michelle Pfeiffer, Bob Hoskins, Lillian Gish. 107 mins.
Alda is a smalltown history professor ;
beset by the usual domestic worries of a dotty, aged mother and his half-hearted commitment to a permanent future with his younger
DIRECTOR OF
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“AN EXTRAORDINARY FILM illuminated by
a superb performance by Gary Oldman. Splendid,
' w—T WWW—WW Ell Hal {3.1
imaginative, original, and often very funny. See it”
Lil;ARDI-\\
“A GRIPPING PIECE OF CINEMA” some: “Savager brilliant.” . .. “Truly moving.” . ~
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Soundtrack — BUDDY HOLLY ~ PATSY CLINE ELVIS PRESLEY GENE VINCENT - JOHNNY CASH
NOW SHOWING - FILMHOUSE, EDINBURGH
FROM OCT 5- FILM THEATRE, GLASGOW .
- 19 Sept — 2 Oct 21