VIFC presents Ruiz's KLIMT & TIME REGAINED and Watkin's EDVARD MUNCH

RETURN ENGAGEMENT // VANCITY THEATRE EXCLUSIVE

Far from a classical historical biopic, Raoul Ruiz's warped take on the life of famed art nouveaux symbolist Gustav Klimt-played by John Malkovich-treats fin-de-siècle Vienna as a vibrant, lively painting waiting to be immortalized. Ruiz sees Klimt's life as something deeply personal that can only be understood through the painter's own eyes, and forges a feverishly stylish portrait of erotic deception and delusion, coming and going from Klimt's death bed, through his studio, and into smoky Viennese cafes and high society.

During the 1900 World Exposition in Paris, the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt met Lea de Castro. To him she seemed like a fantastic muse, the personification of his heroic ideals and his carnal desires. The film focuses on the artist's passion for the woman, his fight for creative freedom, his tireless battle for new forms of expression, and Vienna's reaction to the social and artistic spirit that swept the city between the late 1800s and the early 1900s.

"This film is not a linear biopic of the life and times of Gustav Klimt. It is more a fantasy, or, if you like, a phantasmagory. Rather more like one of his paintings, in which material and imaginary figures blend and spiral around a central point: the painter Klimt. I intend to draw on the unique stylistic characteristic of Klimt's artwork, the prevailing beauty, excess of colour, spatial distortion and complex angles in order to bring to life and illuminate one of the riches, most contradictory and eerie epochs in modern history." -Raoul Ruiz

Ruiz sees Klimt's life as something deeply personal that can only be understood through the painter's own eyes, and forges a feverishly stylish portrait of erotic deception and delusion, coming and going from Klimt's death bed, through his studio, and into smoky Viennese cafes and high society.

"The time portrayed in the film was one of the highlights of Viennese culture, which had burst onto the scene very quickly and in which the first seeds of decay were evident almost straight away, since such brilliance rarely lasts. We have Klimt, his private life, the world around him in all its splendour, but in the background we feel something malignant that quietly gains prominence, something contagious."-Raoul Ruiz

Raúl Ruiz (born July 25, 1941) is a Chilean filmmaker and one of the most prolific filmakers of the last 50 years. He was trained as a painter. He spent some years at the University of Santa Fe, Argentina's cinema school. Back in Chile he directed his first feature films in the the late sixties and early seventies. He was somewhat of an outsider among the politically oriented cinematographers of his generation such as Miguel Littin and Helvio Soto, his work beeing far more ironic, surrealistic and deeply experimental. In 1973 he left Chile and settled in France. After several years producing and directing low-budget telefilms, his career took off in 1996 with Three Lives and one Death, starring Marcello Mastroiani followed by Genealogies of a Crime (1997) starring Catherine Deneuve and Time Regained (1999)

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This intensely personal biographical recreation of the early years of struggle endured by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch is considered by many to be the most successful portrayal of the artistic process ever depicted on film.

Famously described by Ingmar Bergman as a "work of genius", Peter Watkins' multi-faceted masterpiece is more than just a bio-pic of the iconic Norwegian Expressionist painter. Focusing initially on Munch's formative years in late 19th Century Kristiania (now Oslo), Watkins uses his trademark style to create a vivid picture of the emotional, political and social upheavals that would have such an effect on his art. The young artist (Geir Westby) has an affair with "Mrs Heiberg" (Gro Fraas), a devastating experience that will haunt him for the rest of his life, and his work is viciously attacked by the critics and public alike. He is forced to leave his home country for Berlin, where, along with the notorious Swedish playwright August Strindberg, he becomes part of the cultural storm that is to sweep Europe.

"Edvard Munch is the most personal film I have ever made. Its genesis lies in a visit to the Edvard Munch Museum in Oslo, in 1968, during the time of a screening of several of my films by the Oslo University. I was awestruck by the strength of Munch's canvases, especially those depicting the sad life of his family, and was very moved by the artist's directness - with the people in his canvases looking straight at us. " -Peter Watkins

Peter Watkins began his career in advertising as an assistant producer and turned to amateur filmmaking in the late 1950s. In the mid-60s Watkins was commissioned by BBC-TV to make two feature-length docudramas incorporating a quasi-newsreel style and nonprofessional actors. The second of these, The War Game (1965), graphically portrayed the nightmare of nuclear war and was banned from broadcast. It was subsequently released in theaters and earned a best documentary Oscar in 1966. Watkins enjoyed modest success with the commercial feature film, Privilege (1967), but has subsequently worked primarily in the documentary genre, based in various Scandanavian countries. One of his more recent films, Resan (1988), is a 873 minute (14 hours) epic that addresses such issues as the arms race and global hunger.

"Extraordinary in execution and impact...this film is a meditation on sex and death, repression and liberation, and the world as we see it and as we experience it within, and it is riveting from first moment to last. Watkins has created a magnificent portrait both of a crushingly repressive culture and of a man tormented by religion, madness, sexual jealousy and ever-present death."-Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

"One of those giant achievements that causes everything else to be revalued."-The Guardian
 

Read interview in Cinemascope with Peter Watkins : Peter Watkins Interview

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With brilliant execution, Time Regained realizes the mixture of space and time, of image and memory, which flows throughout Proust's multi-volume "Remebrance of Things Past." Aided by and outstanding cast of international film stars, including Catherine Deneuve, John Malkovich, Emmanuelle Béart and Vincent Perez, Ruiz has made a glowing reverie on a passing age that both overwhelms and entertains.

Time Regined (the title of Proust's last volume) opens in 1922, as Proust is on his deathbed, looking through photos and remembering his life. Gradually, we watch as his own experiences give way to the characters in his novel; fiction eclipsing reality. Ruiz, with incredible visual dexterity, shows how the author's creations combine with his own experiences, like slides projected onto the wall of his room. Memories of the idyllic days of the lost paradise that was Proust's childhood alternate with the rich recollections of his life in turn-of-the-century Parisian society. The drama of the Great War, examined in the context of spectacular soirées and grand parties, becomes in Ruiz's hands, an elaborate comedy of manners.

In Time Regained, Ruiz discovers the impossible: the intangible timelessness that was the object of Proust's novels, blending both the baroque and the surreal. The result is a montage of moving snapshots and feverish dreams that makes the film the ultimate in Proustian cinema, succeeding magnificently where other adaptations of his work have failed. Enriched by stellar performances, Time Regained is a "gorgeous, meticulously crafted spectacle" (Jack Matthews, NY Daily News).

"Taking the final part of Marcel Proust's vast contemplative work, Ruiz weaves a rich film that rewards re-viewing." - Nick Hilditch, BBC

"The match of filmmaker and material is felicitous, and its prospects are not diminished by a stellar cast." - Janet Maslin, New York Times

"An exceptionally subtle and intelligent film." -The Village Voice

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