Deeply personable and relatable, the acclaimed new drama from director Joanna Hogg (The Exhibition, Archipelago) is a semi-autobiographical account of a dysfunctional relationship between a young, ambitious film student and an older, smooth-talking man, set in 1980s west London. The film won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at Sundance in early 2019.
Julie (newcomer Honor Swinton Byrne) is finding her place as an artist, trying to shed her sheltered and privileged upbringing and immerse herself in the real world for the sake of her art. Her journey is derailed by Anthony (Tom Burke, television’s War & Peace and The Musketeers), whose charm is equal to his depravity but whom she cannot help but love — much to the dismay of her mother (played by Swinton Byrne’s real-life mother, Tilda Swinton, I Am Love , We Need to Talk About Kevin ) and her friends. Theentanglement threatens to demolish Julie’s dream of becoming a filmmaker.
Hogg sincerely captures the intensity and naiveté of a first adult love. The Souvenir is at once a period piece depicting a modern relationship long before the era of smartphones and social media, and a time capsule of our collective bad decisions and tormented relationships. A sequel is in the works, promising that life after a bad romance can continue.
Director: Joanna Hogg
Stars: Tilda Swinton, Honor Swinton Byrne, Tom Burke
UK; 119 minutes
“The Souvenir clearly stands out as one of the year’s best films: pointedly personal art that somehow manages, in its specificity, to hit on something universal.”
—Alissa Wilkinson, VOX
Tickets: $11 Adult, $10 with Film Buff Card, $8 Youth.
All prices include HST.
FilmBuffs save $1 and enjoy free popcorn!
Doors open 45 minutes before showtime. General admission seating, tickets at the door.
Thank you to our community partners Kew Home, Bailey House B&B, Bridgetown Watch & Clock Repair, and Oakhaven Bike Barn/Joy Elliott Landscape Architectural Design.
THE GREAT BUSTER celebrates the life and career of one of the most influential and celebrated filmmakers and comedians, Buster Keaton, whose singular style and fertile output during the silent era created his legacy as a true cinematic visionary. Filled with stunningly restored archival Keaton films, Directed by Peter Bogdanovich.
Keaton’s beginnings on the vaudeville circuit are chronicled, as is the development of his trademark physical comedy and deadpan expression that earned him the lifelong moniker of “The Great Stone Face”, all of which led to his career-high years as the director, writer, producer and star of his own short films and features. Interspersed throughout are interviews with nearly two-dozen collaborators, filmmakers,performers andfriends, including Mel Brooks, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, Dick van Dyke and Johnny Knoxville, who discuss Keaton’s influence on modern comedy and cinema itself. The loss of artistic independence and career decline that marked his later years are also covered by Bogdanovich, before he casts a close eye on Keaton’s extraordinary output from 1923 to 1929, which yielded 10 remarkable feature films (including 1926’s The General and 1928’s Steamboat Bill, Jr.) that immortalized him as one of the greatest actor-filmmakers in the history of cinema.
USA
1h 42min.
“The Great Buster” is a solid primer on what made Keaton not just one of the most important – and funniest – comedians in the history of the movies but also one of its most visionary directors.”
—The Boston Globe
Tickets: $11 Adult, $10 with Film Buff Card, $8 Youth.
All prices include HST.
FilmBuffs save $1 and enjoy free popcorn!
Doors open 45 minutes before showtime. General admission seating, tickets at the door.
Thank you to our community partners Kew Home, Bailey House B&B, Bridgetown Watch & Clock Repair, and Oakhaven Bike Barn/Joy Elliott Landscape Architectural Design.
From the director whose films rank amongst the highest grossingin South Korea comes a black family comedy (of sorts) about a wealthy Korean family in a modern-day Downton Abbey upstairs-downstairs situation.Bong Joon-ho’s 2019 Palme d’Or winner tells the story of two families: the Kims and the Parks. The Kims are an impoverished family living in squalor, but they are resourceful. When opportunity strikes, they seize it — and never let go.
After a family friend decides to move to the United States, he encourages Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik, Okja) to replace him as a tutor to the daughter of the wealthy Park family. Ki-woo is unqualified for the job,but forges the credentials he needs with the help of his sister Ki-jung(Park So-dam).
One by one, each member of the Kim family finds their way into servitude to the Parks — without the Parks discovering who they really are. “Rich people are naive,” remarks the patriarch of the Kim family. The Parks are the source of survival for the Kims now. There is only one family member left to onboard: Kim matriarch Chung-Sook (Chang Hyae-jin).
The film travels through genres seamlessly to tell a story about greed and social disparity that is tragic (or maybe comedic) on a Shakespearean scale.
—Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
Tickets: $11 Adult, $10 with Film Buff Card, $8 Youth.
All prices include HST.FilmBuffs save $1 and enjoy free popcorn!Doors open 45 minutes before showtime. General admission seating, tickets at the door.Thank you to our community partners Kew Home, Bailey House B&B, Bridgetown Watch & Clock Repair, and Oakhaven Bike Barn/Joy Elliott Landscape Architectural Design.
An intimate portrait and exploration of the career, music and influence of legendary Canadian musical icon, Gordon Lightfoot. With unprecedented access to the artist, the film takes audiences from high school auditoriums in straight-laced, small town Ontario in the 50s to the coffee houses of Yorkville and Greenwich Village in the 60s, through Lightfoot’s turbulent, substance-fueled arena shows of the 70s, and finally to the artist in present day. Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Barbra Streisand are only a handful of the stars whose recordings of “Early Morning Rain” and other hits helped Lightfoot’s artistry leap across borders, but no matter how far his music travelled, he continued to write passionately about the country he called home. As fellow music icon Burton Cummings sums it up, “Gordon’s stuff screamed Canada.” The documentary features interviews from many notable voices in the music industry including Lightfoot peers Ian and Sylvia Tyson, Randy Bachman, and Steve Earle; famous fans Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee from Rush, Anne Murray and Sarah McLachlan; as well as behind the scenes stories from members of his longtime band.
“While the film could easily indulge in baby boomer nostalgia, Lightfoot doesn’t let it. Now 80, he’s gregarious and reflective, grateful for his accomplishments without overlooking his faults. Considering the depth of his career – which, with songs like The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald and the Canadian Railroad Trilogy, defined a ruggedly sensitive version of Canadiana – that makes him almost the perfect subject.”
–NOWMagazine
DIRECTORS: MARTHA KEHOE, JOAN TOSONI
CANADA
90 MINUTES
Tickets: $11 Adult, $10 with Film Buff Card, $8 Youth.
All prices include HST.
FilmBuffs save $1 and enjoy free popcorn!
Doors open 45 minutes before showtime. General admission seating, tickets at the door.
Thank you to our community partners Kew Home, Bailey House B&B, Bridgetown Watch & Clock Repair, and Oakhaven Bike Barn/Joy Elliott Landscape Architectural Design.
Leonardo da Vinci as you’ve never seen him before
Leonardo da Vinci is acclaimed as the world’s favourite artist. Many TV shows and feature films have showcased this extraordinary genius but often not examined closely enough is the most crucial element of all: his art. Leonardo’s peerless paintings and drawings will be the focus of Leonardo: The Works, as EXHIBITION ON SCREEN presents every single attributed painting, in Ultra HD quality, never seen before on the big screen. Key works include The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, Lady with an Ermine, Ginevra de’ Benci, Madonna Litta, Virgin of the Rocks, and more than a dozen others.
This film also looks afresh at Leonardo’s life – his inventiveness, his sculptural skills, his military foresight and his ability to navigate the treacherous politics of the day – through the prism of his art. To be released on the 500th anniversary of his death, this is the definitive film about Leonardo: the first to truly tell the whole story.
Directed by Phil Grabsky
Running time: 102 minutes
Tickets: $12 Adult, $6 Youth.
$30 for all three in Reel Art 2020 series at King’s Theatre, deadline January 7, 2020.
All prices include HST.
Doors open 45 minutes before showtime. General admission seating, tickets at the door.
Reel Art Film at ARTsPLACE
Gerhard Richter Painting
From Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands – in the panoramas Gauguin saw and portrayed – to the American museums of frenetic and hyper-modern metropolises where his greatest masterpieces are now preserved: New York – Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chicago – Art Institute, Washington – National Gallery of Art, Boston – Museum of Fine Arts. Marked by rebellion and other worlds’ craving, he died of syphilis – abandoned by everyone in the remote village of Hiva Oa.
In 1891 Gauguin leaves Marseille for the Pacific. It’s the beginning of a journey towards the essence of life and art, that will make him one of the greatest modern painters. Gauguin in Tahiti. Paradise Lost will take us to French Polynesia, in Tahiti and Marquesas Islands – to experience the landscapes that inspired him, amongst the locals whom he loved, on the trail of a story that has become myth. In the places where he built houses with bamboo and leaves, discovered light and colours which changed his painting forever, of the sensuality free of inhibitions of the indigenous girls. The documentary will also bring us to Paris, Bretagne, Edinburgh, and to the most prestigious art museums of the United States, where most of his masterpieces are preserved: The Metropolitan Museum of Art – New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; The National Gallery of Art – Washington; The Museum of Fine Arts – Boston.
Directed by Claudio Poli
Running time: 127 minutes
Tickets: $12 Adult, $6 Youth.
$30 for all three in Reel Art 2020 series at King’s Theatre, deadline January 7, 2020.
All prices include HST.
Doors open 45 minutes before showtime. General admission seating, tickets at the door.
Location: ARTsPLACE
The Price of Everything
by Nathaniel Kahn, 2018
With unprecedented access to pivotal artists and the white-hot market surrounding them, this film dives deep into the contemporary art world, holding a mirror up to our values and our times–where everything can be bought and sold.
The film highlights the two sides of Frida Kahlo’s spirit:
on one side the revolutionary, pioneering artist of contemporary feminism and on the other, the human being, victim of her tortured body and a tormented relationship. With Asia Argento as narrator, the two faces of the artist will be revealed, by pursuing a common thread consisting of Frida’s own words: letters, diaries and private confessions. The film alternates interviews, with original documents, captivating reconstructions and Frida Kahlo’s own paintings, kept in some of the most amazing museums in Mexico.
Directed by Giovanni Troilo
Running time: 130 minutes
Tickets: $12 Adult, $6 Youth.
$30 for all three in Reel Art 2020 series at King’s Theatre, deadline January 7, 2020.
All prices include HST.
Doors open 45 minutes before showtime. General admission seating, tickets at the door.
Location: ARTsPLACE
Beauty Is Embarrassing : The Wayne White Story
Beauty Is Embarrassing is a funny, irreverent, joyful and inspiring documentary featuring the life and current times of one of America’s most important artists, Wayne White.
Raised in the mountains of Tennessee, Wayne White started his career as a cartoonist in New York City. He quickly found success as one of the creators of the TV show, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, which led to more work designing some of the most arresting and iconic images in pop culture. Most recently, his word paintings, which feature pithy and often sarcastic text statements crafted onto vintage landscape paintings, have made him a darling of the fine art world.
Beauty Is Embarrassing chronicles the vaulted highs and the crushing lows of a commercial artist struggling to find peace and balance between his work and his art. Acting as his own narrator, Wayne guides us through his life using moments from his latest creation: a hilarious, biographical one-man show. The pieces are drawn from performances at venues in Tennessee, New York and Los Angeles including the famous Roseland Ballroom and the Largo Theater.
Whether he’s parading a twenty foot tall puppet through the Tennessee hillside, romping around the Hollywood Hills dressed in his LBJ puppet suit, relaxing in his studio pickin’ his banjo, or watching his children grow up much too soon, Wayne White always seems to have a youthful grin and a desperate drive to create art and objects. It is an infectious quality that will inspire everyone to find their pleasure in life and pursue it at all costs.
At its core, Beauty Is Embarrassing is a reminder that we should all follow our passion. It is those creative impulses that will lead us to where we need to go.