12 / 19 / 27 March
Into the night...
Dark alleys, people coming and going. You can’t see them, but they’re there. The sun has set, streetlights are on. We’re allowed to commit crimes, to fall in our lovers’ arms, to chase temptation, to enchant one another. To roam the streets endlessly, looking for danger. The mystery of the nocturnal offers us what we can’t have during the day. These films bring you the witching hours. Nightly escapades, midnight mischief. Places you can get lost in. Elevators, for example. Or dusty hotels. Step into the night with this curated selection of films that (mostly) unfold over the course of one night.
Donderdag 12 maart, 20:30
CLASSIC
Into the night...
Toute une nuit
Chantal Akerman | 1982 | Belgium, France | 90’ | EN subtitles
Toute une Nuit is a film consisting of fragments, snippets from the lives of dozens of people during a night in Brussels in the summer.
A door swings open. A woman throws herself into a man's arms; she is holding her shoes in her hand. A café. A man looks at a woman; he stands up, she does too. Love at first sight. They rush into each other's arms and lose themselves in a dance. A phone rings, a man comes running, out of breath. Grinding music echoes through the feverish night. A girl pulls a man towards her. A woman throws open the door and storms up the stairs. A man grabs a woman. Resistance. Two men separate. A highly emotional woman collapses into a taxi.
In a city, on a hot, tumultuous summer night, men, women, and children, seized by desire, capable of anything, allow themselves to be carried away by their frenzied feelings, sometimes to the point of madness. As long as the night lasts.
Donderdag 19 maart, 20:30
CLASSIC
Into the night...
Nightshift
Robina Rose | 1981 | USA | 68’ | EN subtitles
A gorgeously photographed work of surreal, somnambulant cinema, Robina Rose’s singular snapshot of London’s early 1980s art scene casts a hypnotic spell all its own. Over the course of a single nightshift, a West London hotel clerk plays silent witness to a nocturnal constellation of guests ranging from punk rockers and scenester magicians to seemingly staid businessmen and old-world gentry. As the hours march deeper into night and the varied clientele depart the waking world, the hotel transforms into an otherworldly liminal space swaying between the everyday and the enchanting. Screening the 4K restoration.
Nightshift has been digitally restored by Lightbox Film Center (Philadelphia) in collaboration with the British Film Institute and Cinenova. Restoration funding provided by Ron and Suzanne Naples. Film distributed by Cinenova.
Vrijdag 27 maart, 20:30
CLASSIC
Into the night...
Elevator to the Gallows
Louis Malle | 1958 | France | 93’ | EN subtitles
Haunting, melancholy, and achingly cool, Louis Malle’s 1958 debut Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour L’échafaud) laid the cinematic foundations for motifs and aesthetics that are now shorthand for French New Wave. This tautly paced noir thriller, which takes place over the course of a long, nightmarish night and morning in and around Paris, weaves together murder and mistaken identity to elevate a relatively straightfoward plot into high melodrama.
Ex-French Foreign Legion paratrooper Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) and his mistress Florence Carala (a luminous Jeanne Moreau) connive to dispatch her husband, a high-rolling military contractor who happens to be Julien’s boss. It was never going to be the perfect crime, even if ill timing and worse luck hadn’t contrived to trap Julien in his office elevator after carrying out the deed. It’s an absurd turn of events, played with utmost gravitas by all involved. Unlike the train-in-tunnel symbolism of other films of the era, this elevator is exactly what it claims to be.