Hamilton Film Society's 2012 Season screens at the Lido Cinema, The Balcony, Centreplace, 501 Victoria Street, Hamilton, March – December, Mondays at 8:00pm, as noted below. Please note: no screenings on public holidays. We screen on the following Tuesday.

Most screenings are members only. Please arrive early – no guaranteed seating.

We reluctantly reserve the right to change the programme if a film does not arrive. Late changes will be advised on the home page of this website.

Opening Night
5th March
8:00 pmMy Week with Marilyn
Simon Curtis | UK / USA | 2011 | 99 minutes
Colin Clark, an employee of Sir Laurence Olivier's, documents the tense interaction between Olivier and Marilyn Monroe during production of The Prince and the Showgirl.
Thanks to the LIDO CINEMA

12th March
8:00 pmWAKE IN FRIGHT
Ted Kotcheff | Australia | 1971 | 35mm | R16
"This gritty classic follows the increasingly off-kilter journey of very proper and uptight teacher whose one night in the outback turns into a shattering hallucination of gambling, drinking and brutality. Controversial and groundbreaking. One of the great beacons of Australian cinema." - ACMI

19th March
8:00 pmTHE ASPHALT JUNGLE
John Huston | USA | 1950 | 35mm | PG low level violence
The big daddy of big caper movies, this brilliant, chilling thriller revolves around a million-dollar jewel heist. A taut, unsentimental study in character and relative morality. It has spawned countless imitations, few of which even remotely approach the intelligence and detail of the original." - Time Out

26th March
8:00 pmWALKABOUT
Nicolas Roeg | Australia | 1971 | 35mm | PG
A fable-like story of a teenage girl and her young brother stranded in the Australian outback. "It's that rare thing, the intellectually haunting film - the movie that doesn't shock with its gore or stun with its violence so much as work its way beneath your senses to terrify with a realization about our species and ourselves that we'd rather not admit is true." - New York Sun

2nd April
8:00 pmMID-AUGUST LUNCH (Pranzo di ferragosto)
Gianni Di Gregorio | Italy | 2008 | DV | PG violence
In this delicate Italian comedy a happily retired bachelor is stuck looking after his aged mother and three other old ladies while Rome empties for a long weekend. "Charming and gently hilarious featuring an extraordinary cast of elderly characters." - Hollywood Reporter

16th April
8:00 pmRED LIKE THE SKY (Rosso come il cielo)
Cristiano Bortano | Italy | 2006 | DV | M offensive language, sexual references
"A nearly sightless boy's discovery of the possibilities of recorded sound gives director Cristiano Bortone both a cinematic and emotional basis for his heart-tugger. The film juggles crowd-pleasing sentiments about the love of movies with anti-authoritarian views that make the film classically Italian." - Variety

23rd April
8:00 pmTHE CONSEQUENCES OF LOVE (Le conseguenze dell'amore)
Paolo Sorrentino | Italy | 2004 | 35mm | M violence, offensive language, drug use
"Echoes of Visconti and Antonioni abound in this exquisitely subdued high-gloss psychological thriller in which a dour Mafia bagman exiled in a Swiss hotel jeopardises his safety with a love affair. Moves seamlessly from stylish stasis into explosive violence to great effect.." - Sight & Sound

30th April
8:00 pmMILDRED PIERCE
Michael Curtiz | USA | 1945 | 35mm | PG low level violence
Joan Crawford won her only Oscar for the title role, as a single mother who toils her way from waitress to successful businesswoman to provide for her spoilt and ungrateful daughter. Director Michael Curtiz followed up the success of Casablanca with this melodramatic noir adaptation of James M Cain's notoriously racy novel.

7th May
8:00 pmTHE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON (Navrat ztraceneho syna)
Ewald Schorm | Czechoslovakia | 1966 | 16mm | GA
Rarely seen Czech gem by little-known filmmaker Ewald Schorm, whose work echoes that of his contemporaries Antonioni and Bergman. This film nervously probes into the damaged psyche of an architect who has been admitted to a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide.

14th May
8:00 pmFIVE DAYS IN SEPTEMBER: The Rebirth of an Orchestra
Barbara Willis Sweete | Canada | 2005 | DV | G
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra gets a new lease on life when new music director Peter Oundjian steps on board, and music lovers get to see a firsthand account of the creative firestorm that follows in this documentary from filmmaker Barbara Willis Sweete. "Absolutely first rate." - Variety

21st May
8:00 pmTABU
FW Murnau | USA | 1931 | 35mm | M
A young Tahitian's forbidden love for a sacred virgin. "Murnau's tragic Polynesian saga liberated him from the studios, enabling him to show his mastery of the natural world. one of the most stunningly beautiful films ever made." - MOMA

28th May
8:00 pmLAST TRAIN HOME (Gui tu lie chie)
Fan Lixin | China | 2009 | DV
"The mind-boggling notion of 130 million Chinese migrant workers making their way home from inhospitable industrial cities to impoverished villages once each year gets a human face in Lixin Fan's extraordinary, vital documentary. Essential viewing." - Entertainment Weekly

11th June
8:00 pmTHE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS (Il giardino dei Finzi Contini)
Vittorio de Sica | Italy | 1970 | 35mm | PG
This late-career triumph from Bicycle Thieves director Vittorio De Sica follows the lives of two Jewish families in the years leading up to World War II. "An autumnal work in two senses - the subject is the last golden flash of freedom before one of history's major tragedies. De Sica' s final great work." - Bright Lights Film Journal

18th June
8:00 pmWORLD ON A WIRE (Welt am Draht)
Rainer Werner Fassbinder | West Germany | 1973 | DV | cert tbc
Fassbinder's long unseen science-fiction epic offers a boundlessly inventive take on future paranoia. "Anticipates Blade Runner in its meditation on artificial and human intelligence and The Matrix in its conception of reality as a computer-generated illusion." - NY Times

25th June
8:00 pmBUDDHA'S LOST CHILDREN
Mark Verkerk | The Netherlands | 2006 | DV | PG violence
"An exquisite and tranquil documentary about a Thai monk and the homeless boys to whom he gives a brand new life, Buddha's Lost Children is richly affecting on many levels. This is a beautiful and uplifting film that leaves us with a genuine sense of harmony." - Urban Cinefile

2nd July
8:00 pmHAMLET
S Gade, H Schall | Germany | 1921 | DV | cert tbc
Legendary Danish actress Asta Nielsen produced and starred in this gender-bending version of Hamlet in which the Prince of Denmark is a girl brought up as a boy. Nielsen's "body language as Hamlet is as self-aware as Tilda Swinton maneuvering between sexes in Orlando." - NotComing.com
Polychrome-tinted 2007 restoration from the German Film Institute.

9th July
8:00 pmNENETTE
Nicolas Philibert | France | 2010 | DV
Born in the jungles of Borneo, Nénette is a 40-year-old orangutan - and the oldest (and most beloved) inhabitant at the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes in Paris. Documentarian Philibert's film is a captivating study of an enigmatic animal and our relationship to her. "Remarkable." - Sight & Sound

16th July
8:00 pmFAREWELL (L'affaire farewell)
Christian Carion | France | 2009 | DV
This tense, atmospheric, true Cold War spy movie centres on a disillusioned KGB colonel who risked everything in the early 80s to let the West know just how thoroughly Soviet spies had infiltrated American security. "Stunningly intelligent. frightening and, finally, very moving." - New Yorker

23rd July
8:00 pmWOODENHEAD
Florian Habicht | New Zealand | 2003 | DV | M sex scenes
A subversive musical fairy-tale, Habicht's carnivalesque oddity follows dump hand Gert on his quest to deliver the dump owner's beautiful mute daughter Princess Plum to her wedding. "A truly unsettling, visually inventive, stylistically thrilling and quite marvellous diamond in the rough." - Melbourne IFF

30th July
8:00 pmPARADISE NOW
Hany Abu-Assas | The Netherlands/Israel | 2004 | DV | M adult themes
Two seemingly ordinary Palestinians are recruited as suicide bombers. "The clammy, chilly, fatal realism of this film is something you could never reproduce in another setting - Saïd and Khaled's video testimonials were shot in a building where real bombers have documented themselves for posterity." - Salon.com

6th August
8:00 pmTHE THIRD KIND (Ta treti)
Jaroslav Balik | Czechoslovakia | 1968 | 16mm | R16
In this swinging, slightly camp Czech drama from the late '60s, middle-aged George smitten by groovy young hitchhiker Eva, but has trouble dealing with her wild and crazy rock'n'roll-loving friends and their rebellious parties. Featuring a cameo appearance by the so-called 'Czech Beatles'.

13th August
8:00 pmAFTERNOON (Ferien)
Thomas Arslan | Germany | 2007 | 35mm | cert tbc
"Ana, Robert and their teenage son Max plan on spending an idyllic sojourn at their remote country house. Their fragile unity is disrupted, however, when more and more members of their extended family show up to vent past resentments and reveal long-kept secrets. A serene, quietly rewarding drama." - Seattle IFF

Hamilton Internation Film Festival - August 23rd to September 9th

10th September
8:00 pmASHES OF TIME REDUX (Dung che sai duk)
Wong Kar-wai | Hong Kong | 1994/2008 | DV | M violence
A new, streamlined version of the hugely costly and ambitious martial arts epic released to widespread incomprehension in 1994. "The changes - a reworked score, less murky colouring - serve to bring out more lustrously than ever the yearning wondrousness of this star-laden treasure." - Daily Telegraph

17th September
8:00 pmVACATION (Ferien)
Thomas Arslan | Germany | 2007 | DV | cert tbc
"Ana, Robert and their teenage son Max plan on spending an idyllic sojourn at their remote country house. Their fragile unity is disrupted, however, when more and more members of their extended family show up to vent past resentments and reveal long-kept secrets. A serene, quietly rewarding drama." - Seattle IFF

24th September
8:00 pmJERICROW
Christian Petzold | Germany | 2007 | DV | M violence, offensive language, sex scenes
The latest version of the pulp classic The Postman Always Rings Twice takes place on the windswept Baltic coast. Lana Turner's character is now the wife of a Turkish kebab stall owner, played by director Christian Petzold's mesmerising regular actress Nina Hoss.

1st October
8:00 pmTHE STRENGTH OF WATER
Armagan Ballantyne | New Zealand | 2009 | DV | M violence, offensive language, sex scenes
The arrival of a stranger to the remote Hokianga precipitates a terrible accident and young twins Kimi and Melody must learn to live apart. "This is a stunningly assured and original debut feature. Viewers may find themselves strangers in their own land but the experience is unforgettable." - Herald on Sunday

8th October
8:00 pmLE SILENCE DE LA MER
Jean-Pierre Melville | France | 1949 | 35mm | G
Melville's first film is one of the most disturbing and poetic films on the Occupation. A naïve, unpolitical German officer is billeted in the country with an old man and his niece, who maintain a disdainful silence in the soldier's presence. "A root influence on Bresson and the whole French New Wave." - Time Out

15th October
8:00 pmBLINDSIGHT
Lucy Walker | UK | 2006 | DV | PG
When the first blind man to climb Mt Everest, Erik Weihenmayer, challenges six blind Tibetan school children to climb its neighbour, Lhakpa Ri, failure is not an option. "A strikingly photographed doc that unfolds into a story of human achievement and a study of the East-West culture clash." - The Times

29th October
8:00 pmCASQUE D'OR
Jacques Becker | France | 1952 | 35mm | PG low level violence
Based on actual events, Becker's tale of doomed love in the Belle Epoque underworld features Simone Signoret as a beautiful blonde cabaret enchantress who abandons her gangster beau for the love of an honest carpenter. "Becker's masterpiece, one of the great movie romances." - Village Voice

5th November
8:00 pmBLERTA REVISITED
Geoff Murphy | New Zealand | 2001 | DV | M adult themes
Bruno Lawrence's Electric Revelation and Travelling Apparition was a changing line-up of musicians, filmmakers, lovers and hangers-on who between 1971 and 1976 toured New Zealand in a flower-powered bus. Murphy's documentary on the group is structured to resemble one of their crazy vaudeville shows.

12th November
8:00 pmA MAO E A LUVA
Roberto Orazi | Brazil/Italy | 2010 | DV
The story of poet and musician Ricardo Gomes Ferraz, better known as Kcal, who has turned his house in the favela Pina in Recife, Brazil into a library for the children of his community by scrounging and collecting books for over 15 years.

19th November
8:00 pmTHE OUTING (Our Pick of Student Films)

26th November
8:00 pmSUPRISE SCREENING AND END OF YEAR PARTY