WED JUNE 8, 2022 7:30 PM BREAKING THE WAVES / CHINESE ROULETTE $8.00 (member) ; $13.00 (general admission) Aero Theatre | Introduction to BREAKING THE WAVES by film critic Katie Walsh. Introduction to CHINESE ROULETTE by filmmaker Brandon Wilson. ‘BLEAK WEEK: Cinema of Despair’ Series Tickets are no longer on sale for this event.
ABOUT THE FILMS: BREAKING THE WAVES, 1996, Janus Films, 159 min, Denmark, Dir: Lars von Trier. Lars von Trier became an international sensation with this galvanizing realist fable about sex and spiritual transcendence. In an Oscar-nominated performance, Emily Watson stuns as Bess, a simple, pious newlywed in a tiny Scottish village who gives herself up to a shocking form of martyrdom after her husband (Stellan Skarsgård) is paralyzed in an oil rig accident. BREAKING THE WAVES, both brazen and tender, profane and pure, is a gut-wrenching examination of the expansiveness of faith and of its limits. FORMAT: 35mm, courtesy of the Academy Film Archive CHINESE ROULETTE, 1976, Janus Films, 96 min, Germany, Dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder goes Gothic with this character-driven, wicked mosaic of intertwining mysteries. Industrial magnate Gerhard Christ (Alexander Allerson) takes his longtime French mistress Irene (Anna Karina) on a weekend getaway to his luxurious countryside chateau. He gets quite a shock when he discovers his wife, Ariane, and disabled teenage daughter, Angela, already at the manse. Angela, who has deviously planned this meeting and is armed with her mute governess (Brigitte Mira) and a collection of grotesque dolls, devises a diabolical and psychologically vicious truth game of “Chinese Roulette” for the adults to play. FORMAT: 35mm