February 6

Opening Night 2019

The opening night of our 2019 program features a recent restoration of one of the great “last works” of any director in the history of cinema, Sergio Leone’s (1929–1989) truly monumental, deeply cinephilic and profoundly knowing final film, Once Upon a Time in America. Notoriously cut down to a length of 139 minutes for its botched US release, in the year the Melbourne Cinémathèque was launched, this gangster epic is one of the great accounts of the hopes of migration, the corruption of unfettered capitalism and the wasted opportunities and distorted perspectives of the “American Century”. Drawing on many of the themes, ideas and motifs found in Leone’s celebrated Spaghetti Westerns, and tapping into the sensibility of the Italian crime films of the 1970s, this 2012 restoration is truly one of the defining post-classical genre films, a movie whose vaunted reputation has continued to gather momentum over the last 35 years and that provides a perfect opening to our 2019 calendar.

February 6

7:00pm – ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA
(Extended Version)

Sergio Leone (1984) 251 mins Unclassified 18+

A crime saga truly unparalleled in scope, Leone’s audacious gangster epic traverses five decades in the lives of David “Noodles” Aaronson (Robert De Niro) and Max Bercovicz (James Woods), from their hardscrabble beginnings in the milieu of a Brooklyn Jewish ghetto to the peak of their Prohibition-era bootlegging empire. Leone is at his most daringly experimental as he jumps freely through time and space, deeply probing themes of greed, violence, betrayal and the inexorable passage of time. The Italian master’s final – and perhaps greatest – film presents an outsider’s perspective on the immigrant experience and the grand illusion of the American Dream. Famously mutilated by an overly cautious distributor for US release, this 2012 restoration is the closest contemporary audiences are likely to come to Leone’s original vision.

Featuring one of Ennio Morricone’s greatest and most affecting scores, and an extraordinary gallery of supporting performances from Elizabeth McGovern, Treat Williams, Tuesday Weld and Joe Pesci.

CTEQ ANNOTATION
‘Fractured images and tainted dreams: Sergio Leone’s Once upon a Time in America by Danica van de Velde.

8 February – 22 February
“THE ART IS VERY JEALOUS”: TONINO GUERRA, WRITING IMAGES

1 March – 15 March
MODEL AND SOUL: THE UNCOMPROMISING CINEMA OF ROBERT BRESSON

22 March – 5 April
CRYING ON THE INSIDE: THE EMPATHETIC STARDOM OF TONY LEUNG CHIU-WAI

12 April – 26 April
RETURN FIRE: MARILYN MONROE, ACTOR AND ICON

3 May – 17 May
SOFT AND HARD: THE HIGH-WIRE CAREER OF BURT LANCASTER

24 May
“THE STUFF OF CINEMA”: THE PROLIFIC INDEPENDENCE OF BILL MOUSOULIS

31 May – 14 June
ONE DAY AT A TIME: THE CINEMA OF TSAI MING-LIANG

21 June – 5 July
EVERYONE HAS THEIR REASONS: THE FILMS OF PETER BOGDANOVICH

12 July – 19 July
MAGIC, WHIMSY AND LIGHTBULB MOMENTS: ILDIKÓ ENYEDI’S TRANSPORTIVE CINEMA

26 July
POWER IN THE COLLECTIVE: THE KEY WORKS OF MERATA MITA

30 August – 13 September
GANGSTERS, GUNS AND GAULOISES: FRENCH CRIME CINEMA, 1945–60

20 September
LOTTIE LYELL, AUSTRALIA’S FIRST FILM STAR

27 September – 11 October
“ALL THE WORLD’S BEDLAM”: SCREWBALL, CZECHOSLOVAK STYLE

18 October – 1 November
NOW! CRIME, POLITICS AND REVOLUTION IN 1960s BRAZILIAN CINEMA

8 November
TEMENOS: THE SHARED VISIONS OF GREGORY J. MARKOPOULOS AND ROBERT BEAVERS

15–22 November
BEHIND THE SCREEN: KINUYO TANAKA, TRAILBLAZING FILMMAKER

29 November
COMING TO AUSTRALIA: WOMEN FILMMAKERS AND THE MIGRANT EXPERIENCE

6–20 December
OSTERN POWERS: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE EASTERN EUROPEAN WESTERN