Thursday, March 27, 2008

[screenings] Delete This Message (March 28,28,30 2008)

Ten signs the machines are taking over

1. You wake up early morning and instead of the birds, the chai-wallahs and M.S. Subhalakshsmi you hear the symphony of Windows starting in a million PCs.
2. With your cell-phone in your pocket you feel ‘phantom vibrations’ or hear ‘phantom ringtones’ even when it is not ringing.
3. Instead of burning protest candles at Mahatma Gandhi Chowk you start an online petition and circulate it among your friends and acquaintances.
4. You think you’ll get a pre-paid rickshaw after 10 at night but find the printer is not working and end up paying according to the flying meter. You think it’s a conspiracy between the police and the auto. But maybe it’s the printer and the meter. Maybe.
5. You quietly pay for your soft drink you haven’t ordered for just because the teller has ‘already entered it in the machine’ and now, can’t seem to do anything about it.
6. Your counterfeit operating system stopped functioning because it automatically downloaded an update which you never really asked for.
7. On the first of every month your mobile balance reads in negatives because you inadvertently applied for every update from stocks to cricket to health tips even when you really did not want to.
8. When you’re trying to light a cigarette at M.G. Road you’re afraid that maybe ‘they’ are looking at you.
9. You think 1984 and 2001 are years gone by.
10. You cried when Arnold Schwarzenegger descended into the hot vat of iron at the end of Terminator 2.

Be afraid. This computer screen is looking at you. Studying your every move.

For further information on how to identify suspicious activity among gadgets ranging from pen drives to your seeming friendly microwave ovens, Bangalore Film Society invites you to share your experiences and learn what you can do about it from the experts- Jean Luc-Godard, Fritz Lang, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke.

BFS presents ‘Delete this message after you have read it’

“It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open..”
-Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein

Please note change in regular timings. Movie screenings begin at 6.15pm.


Friday 28th March, 2008 Time: 6.15pm






Alphaville, The Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (‘65/99mn) Dir: Jean Luc-Godard

Godard’s freewheeling comic book take on the sci-fi genre follows hulking, tough talking private eye Lemmy Caution as he arrives to infiltrate the strange city of Alphaville which is being ruled over by a supercomputer by the name of Alpha 60, which has replaced all love and human contact with clinical logic. Winner of Golden Bear 65’.

Saturday 29th March, 2008 Time: 6.15pm






2001: A Space Odyssey (‘68/141mn) Dir: Stanley Kubrick
(Tribute to late Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), sci-fi messiah and a man who saw tomorrow)

One of the greatest films ever made. An epic tale of the story of man. A chronicle of birth, life, desire, progress and extinction. A meditation on the absolute. Kubrick and Clarke’s sci-fi spectacle rejects easy definition. Featuring pioneering special effects and haunting symphonic pieces in hypnotic sequences and one of the most iconic villains (supercomputer HAL 9000) of all time, 2001 is as all-encompassing an experience as cinema can be.

Sunday 30th March, 2008 Time: 6.15pm






The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (‘33/122min) Dir: Fritz Lang

Auteur Lang’s prophetic and subversive pulp suspense that predicted the rise of the German Third Reich follows heroic Inspector Lohmann’s efforts to investigate a series of fiendish crimes seemingly committed by the evil genius Dr. Mabuse. But what is most worrying is that Dr. Mabuse is currently locked up not just physically but mentally in an asylum for the criminally insane. An inspiration for the likes of Claude Chabrol, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was one of the chief reasons Lang had to leave native Germany for Hollywood.

Venue: Ashirvad, 30, St. Mark's Road cross, Op. State Bank of IndiaTel: 2549 2774/ 2549 3705/ 9886213516ADMISSION FOR MEMBERS ONLY. NON-MEMBERS ARE REQUESTED TO ARRIVE 15MINS EARLY AND REGISTER.(Members whose membership has expired are requested to kindly renew their membership.)


(pics by: Musicman, Impawards, Ibaicu)