YORK FILM SOCIETY
Film List January - December 2020
Screening on second Tuesday of each month at 7.30pm
The Community Resource Centre Avon Terrace
January 14th Children of Huang Shi (Children of the Silk Road) Australian 2008 True story drama - 120 mins NFSA Confirmed
A young British journalist saves a group of orphaned children during the Japanese invasion of China in 1937. Faced with advancing Japanese troops, he leads the 60 children on a thousand mile trek across China to a safe haven.
February 11th Bagdad Café – German Comedy Drama - 104 mins
NFSA Confirmed
German tourist Jasmin Munchgstettner argues with her husband after car trouble strands them along a dusty highway in the American Southwest. Fuming, she storms off and travels by foot to the nearest outpost of civilization — the Bagdad Cafe. Upon arriving, she butts heads with the owner (CCH Pounder), but they soon forge an unlikely friendship. What begins as a few days' respite becomes a prolonged stay as Jasmine finds her niche within this eccentric truck-stop community.
March 10th Bricklane UK 2007 Drama - 102 mins Amalgamated To be confirmed
Everyday Nazneen scrubs her foggy window pane trying to peer out of her dingy Brick Lane flat. She longs to return to her childhood home of Bangladeshi where she and her sister ran free through the lush woods before her father forced her to marry an older man living abroad. Nazneen has been raised not to question her fate, so she does her best to fulfil her duty to her husband and family.
April 14th All About Eve – American Black & White 1950 – 138 mins
NFSA Confirmed
About the rivalry between an ambitious young ingénue and the tempestuous aging star whom she supplants. Margo Channing is a Broadway actress firmly established in the New York theatre, but nevertheless much in need of praise. She responds warmly at first to the blandishments of Eve, a younger woman who ventures to admire her in wide-eyed humility. Received a number of academy awards including best screenplay, best direction and best film.
May 12th Beyond Silence – German Music Drama 1996 – 109 mins
NFSA Confirmed
Lara's parents are deaf and dumb. She consequently has had to accept responsibility from a very early age. After finishing school, Lara plans to leave the small Bavarian town to study music in Berlin. This creates major problems with her father, problems which are intensified by her mother's death.
June 9th Dead Letter Office – Australian 2008 - 93 mins NFSA Confirmed
Years after her father abandoned her, lonely Alice desires to be reunited with him. Taking a job at her local postal facility's dead letter office (from where her undeliverable messages to her father were returned to her), she encounters a Chilean refugee with whom she begins a romance that gives Alice the attention she so desperately seeks.
July 14th As it is in Heaven 2004 Swedish Comedy Drama Music
Amalgamated to be confirmed
A successful international conductor suddenly interrupts his career and returns alone to his childhood village in Norrland, in the far north of Sweden. It doesn't take long before he is asked to come and listen to the fragment of a church choir, which practises every Thursday in the parish hall.
August 11th Love or Leave Me American Musical drama 1955 – 120 mins NFSA Confirmed
A fictionalized account of the career of jazz singer Ruth Etting and her tempestuous marriage to gangster Marty Snyder, who helped propel her to stardom. Starring Doris Day & James Cagney
September 8th Absurdistan – German French Comedy 2008 - 85 mins
NFSA Confirmed
An allegorical comedy centred on two childhood sweethearts who seem destined for one another until the women of their isolated village, angered by male indifference toward the water shortage, go on a sex strike that threatens the young couple's first night of love.
October 13th December Boys – Australian 2006 – 93 mins NFSA Confirmed
They share the same birth month, so the orphanage calls them December Boys. But these teens - Maps, Spit Spark and Misty - Have much more in common. With no hope of ever joining a family, they form their own familial bonds. Then the unexpected news comes that a young couple may adopt one of them, and the long-time pals suddenly share something else: a rivalry to be the chosen one.
November 10th Breaker Morant – Australian 1980 History War NFSA Confirmed
During the Boer War, three Australian lieutenants are on trial for shooting Boer prisoners. Though they acted under orders, they are being used as scapegoats by the General Staff, who hopes to distance themselves from the irregular practices of the war. The trial does not progress as smoothly as expected by the General Staff, as the defence puts up a strong fight in the courtroom.
December 8th Country Dr – French 2016 Comedy Drama 98 mins
Amalgamated To be confirmed
François Cluzet (The Intouchables) is Jean-Pierre, a much-loved doctor in a rural French town. He reassures and cares for his patients day and night, seven days a week. When he becomes sick himself, he keeps this a secret, but soon realises that he needs to find someone to take over his practice. A younger city doctor, Nathalie (Marianne Denicourt), is introduced as the new medic - will she adapt to this new life and take over from the man who thought he was irreplaceable?