Academy Cinemas, 44 Lorne St, Auckland City
Auckland Film Society's 2013 Season screens at the Academy Cinemas, 44 Lorne St, Auckland City, March October,
Mondays at 6:30pm, except as noted below. Special bonus screening 04 November. 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
Monday 11 March
6:30 pm TWO-LANE BLACKTOP Seventies classics Trailer
Monte Hellman | USA | 1971 | HD 2.35:1 | 102 mins | M offensive language
With its gorgeous widescreen compositions and sophisticated look at American male obsession, this stripped-down narrative from maverick director Monte Hellman is one of the artistic high points of 1970s cinema, and possibly the greatest road movie ever made. Restored HD digital transfer.
AFS thanks Time Out Bookstore Ltd
Monday 18 March Classics
6:30 pm DEEP END  Trailer
Jerzy Skolimowski | West Germany/UK | 1970 | HD 1.85:1 | 90 mins| R18 
“London’s swinging ’60s get a gothic makeover in this tale of an awkward teenager’s crush on a mod coworker, set in a seedy public bath. Starring Jane Asher, with music by Cat Stevens and Can. “The most brilliantly baleful British comedy of the era” – Guide to World Cinema
Monday 25 March Pop Surrealism
6:30 pm VIDEODROME   Trailer
David Cronenberg | Canada | 1983 | HD 1.85:1 | 87 mins | R18 content may offend
James Woods discovers a strange television feed, which leads him on a hallucinatory journey of right-wing conspiracies, sadomasochism and bodily transformation in Cronenberg’s techno-surrealist masterpiece. “No other director integrates the creepy with the cerebral quite like Cronenberg.” – AV Club
AFS thanks Video Ezy Grey Lynn
Tuesday 02 April Screwball Comedy
6:30 pm DESIGN FOR LIVING View clip
Ernst Lubitsch | USA | 1933 | HD 1.37:1 | 91 mins | PG
A love triangle of expat Americans in Paris, playwright Fredric March, painter Gary Cooper and their self-appointed muse Miriam Hopkins, resolve to live together on a strictly platonic basis. This risque pre-Code comedy sees maestro Lubitsch at his dextrous best. 
Monday 08 April Claire Denis  
6:30 pm BEAU TRAVAIL Trailer
Claire Denis | France | 1999 | DV 1.66: 1| 92 mins | M low level offensive language
Denis reimagines Melville’s Billy Budd as a tale of jealousy and homoerotic desire among a company of French Legionnaires in remote Djibouti. “Denis’ visual style is hypnotic, rapturous… she makes barren landscapes look gorgeous, hard men look vulnerable.” – Entertainment Weekly 
Monday 15 April Claire Denis
6:30 pm WHITE MATERIAL  Trailer
Claire Denis | France/Cameroon | 2009 | HD 16:9 | 101 mins | R16 violence, content may disturb
Isabelle Huppert is mesmerising as a French coffee plantation owner refusing to budge from a West Africa riven by civil war in Denis’ apocalyptic vision of the postcolonial present. “A tense, convulsive portrait of change and a thing of terrible beauty.” – Village Voice
Monday 22 April Claire Denis
6:30 pm TROUBLE EVERY DAY Trailer
Claire Denis | France/Germany/Japan | 2001 | DV 1.85:1 | 102 mins | R18 violence, sexual violence, sex scenes
Featuring a zomboid Vincent Gallo and a feral Béatrice Dalle stricken with a gruesome sexual compulsion, Denis’ hard-hitting mélange of science fiction and body horror may be her most misunderstood work. “Denis’ darkest film… and one of her funniest.” – SF Bay Guardian
plus short, The Great Barrier, Jack Woon, NZ. 10 min, PG
Monday 29 April Pop Surrealism
6:30 pm ERASERHEAD followed by Auckland Film Society AGM
David Lynch | USA | 1977 | HD 1.85:1 | 85 mins | M violence
Three decades on, David Lynch’s debut feature, a self-described “dream of dark and troubling things”, remains a work of queasy genius. “It astounds through its expressionist sets and photography, the startling, sinister soundtrack, and relentless imaginative fluency.” – Time Out
Monday 06 May Seventies Classics
6:30 pm BADLANDS Trailer
Terrence Malick | USA | 1973 | HD 1.85:1 | 94 mins | R16 violence
Malick’s first film is still one of American cinema’s most powerful and daring debuts. Starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. “Transcendent themes of love and death are fused with a pop-culture sensibility and played out against a Midwestern background.” – Dave Kehr
AFS thanks 95bFM
Monday 13 May Claire Denis
6:30 pm 35 SHOTS OF RUM 35 rhums Trailer
Claire Denis | France/Germany | 2008 | DV 1.85:1 | 100 mins | M
This subtle, intimate portrait of the easygoing bond between a young woman and her widower father stars Alex Descas and Grégoire Colin. “The warmth radiating from 35 Shots of Rum… reminds viewers how rarely movies capture the easygoing love embodied in a functional family.” – Variety
AFS thanks The Surrey Hotel
Monday 20 May SKYCITY Theatre Léos Carax Trailer
6:30 pm THE LOVERS ON THE BRIDGE
Les amants du Pont-Neuf
Léos Carax | France | 1991 | 35mm 1.85:1 | 125 mins | M violence, offensive language
Léos Carax earned the title of enfant terrible with this ambitious love story set along the banks of the Seine. Denis Lavant and Juliette Binoche portray two lovers from very different walks of life drawn together by l'amour fou. “The great urban expressionist fantasy of the '90s.” – Chicago Reader
Monday 27 May SKYCITY Theatre Léos Carax
6:30 pm BOY MEETS GIRL Trailer
Léos Carax | France | 1984 | 35mm 1.85:1 B&W | 100 mins | R16 sexual themes, content may disturb
Léos Carax’s critically acclaimed debut feature. “Shot in luminous black and white, Boy Meets Girl moves with the youthful, anarchic spirit of Godard's early work, endlessly detouring through surreal comedy, romantic philosophizing, and spontaneous flights of fancy.” – AV Club
AFS thanks Metropolitan Rentals Ltd
Tuesday 04 June Dreileben Trilogy Dreileben trailer
6:30 pm BEATS BEING DEAD Etwas besseres als den Tod View clip
Christian Petzold | Germany | 2011 | HD 1.85:1 | 88 mins | M sex scenes, offensive language
A convicted killer escapes from police custody at the start of Petzold’s genre-bending and wonderfully unpredictable first installment. While the focus shifts to an offbeat romance between a shy hospital orderly and the Bosnian refugee he rescues from her abusive boyfriend, a police manhunt proceeds apace.
Monday 10 June Dreileben Trilogy Dreileben trailer
6:30 pm DON'T FOLLOW ME AROUND Komm mir nicht nach
Dominik Graf | Germany | 2011 | HD 1.85:1 | 88 mins | M violence, nudity
The second installment introduces a big-city police psychologist drafted into the manhunt who finds solace with an old friend with whom she shares a strange secret. Graf’s film deftly juxtaposes their personal drama with the ongoing search for the killer and a corruption scandal engulfing the police force.
Monday 17 June Dreileben Trilogy Dreileben trailer
6:30 pm ONE MINUTE OF DARKNESS Eine Minute Dunkel View clip
Christoph Hochhäusler | Germany | 2011 | HD 1.85:1 | 90 mins | R13 violence, content that may disturb
Hochhäusler’s dark, memorably strange fairytale brings the escaped convict into sharp focus for the nail-biting conclusion of the series. As a grizzled police inspector hot on the trail uncovers some strange inconsistencies in the killer’s conviction, the man himself flees deeper into the possibly enchanted forest.
Monday 24 June From the Archives

6:30 pm THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN + BLOOD OF A POET  
Germaine Dulac + Jean Cocteau | France | 1928 + 1932 | DV 1.37:1 | 95 mins total | PG
Two typically enigmatic surrealist classics. The Seashell and the Clergyman is commonly regarded as the first surrealist film. Blood of a Poet is the debut film of artist Jean Cocteau, whose dreamlike imagery is still influencing filmmakers in the 21st century.
Monday 01 July French Documentaries
6:30 pm FREE RADICALS: A HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM
Pip Chodorov | France | 2011 | DV | 82 mins
Avant-garde cinema in Europe and the USA from early post-war pioneers through to the founding of New York’s Anthology Film Archives, surveying a generation of artists who pushed the boundaries of the medium.
Monday 08 July French Documentaries
6:30 pm NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT Nostalgie de la luz
Patricio Guzmán | France/Germany/Chile | 2010 | HD | 90 mins
Astronomy, archaeology and history are mesmerisingly interwoven and juxtaposed in this visually breathtaking meditation on Chile’s far distant and more recent past by the remarkable documentarian Patricio Guzmán. “Electrifying and unexpected.” – Hollywood Reporter
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