The International Film Series is back for the fall semester!

Wednesday, September 16th – CLO 110 @ 6:30pm

Italian for Beginners

2000 – Denmark/Sweden – Directed by Lone Scherfig

The film takes place in a squalid Copenhagen suburb where emotions and anxiety seemingly run amok. While the actual narrative is simplistic, it profiles six desperately needy and complicated individuals looking to fulfill themselves. Just as life shoots uncontrollable twists and turns at these folks, the characters also turn their attention into mastering the Italian tongue. The focus is meant to ease their frustrations over life and love, to the point where the “beginners” literally beg for a whole new beginning. Conquering the foreign language is a metaphor for the mending of a broken heart or the escape from the vicious circle of daily life. Italian for Beginners is an intoxicatingly spry and entertaining romantic comedy produced under the auspices of Lars Von Trier’s Dogme 95 guidelines. – Frank Ochieng (FilmCritic.com)

Tuesday, September 22nd – CLO 110 @ 6:30pm

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

2008 – United States – Directed by Woody Allen

Bathed in light so lusciously golden and honeyed that you might be tempted to lick the screen, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” is a rueful comedy about two young American women who, during a summertime European idyll, savor many of the Continental delicacies that such travelers often take pleasure in: art, music, culture, yes, but also strange bodies and unexpected dreams. These bodies and dreams open possibilities for the women, intimating freer, somehow different lives, despite the persistent tugging of a voice that hovers at the edge of this story trying to pull it and its characters down to earth, where desire can fade quickly. – Mahnola Dargis (New York Times)

Wednesday, September 30th – CLO 110 @ 6:30pm

The Dreamers

2004 – France – Directed by Bernando Bertolucci

Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” is an ambitious and exciting piece of work, a movie about sex and movies made by a filmmaker who understands the power of each to set off fantasy, create addiction, incite danger and transform the spirit. The film also touches on politics, but politics at a time when politics was also inseparable from fantasy — the spring of 1968, in Paris — a period of student protest and riots. As films are discussed or re-enacted, Bertolucci cuts to brief snippets from the original movies, using the clips not as points of reference but as a way of depicting how these fragmentary moments, little sparks of consciousness, can light up the imagination. I have never seen a film that better captures the interface of movies and real life, and there’s something thrilling in that. – Mick LaSalle (San Francisco Chronicle)

Disclaimer – The Dreamers is rated NC-17 for nudity and strong sexuality