Films | Coming Soon

>>SUMMER OF SOUND: MUSIC ON FILM July 24-August 18
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SUMMER OF SOUND ALL ACCESS PASS - $50! Click for details

Get full privileges to a summer of sound with our all access pass!

For only $50 you can see the best in music on film. Our All Access pass gets you in to any and all of the 23 great documentaries and feature films included in our Summer of Sound: Music on Film series screening July 24-August 18, 2009.

PASSES GO ON SALE JULY 1, 2009.

• Door sales only.
• Must be 19 yrs or older and a VIFC Member to purchase.
• No discounts applicable.

THROW DOWN YOUR HEART
Fri Jul 24 - Wed Jul 29
Fri: 6:30 pm, Sat: 4:45 pm, 6:30pm, Sun: 4:45 pm, 8:30 pm, Mon: 6:30 pm, Tue: 8:45 pm, Wed: 6:30 pm

Dir: Sascha Paladino // USA 2008 // 97 min // 35mm

VIFF AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER 2008: BEST DOCUMENTARY

This Buena Vista Social Club of African music features virtuoso banjo player Béla Fleck's journey to Uganda, Tanzania, Gambia and Mali to jam with superb musicians in their village settings. The banjo and Béla Fleck have become almost synonymous in certain circles. But when Fleck (who has won almost every musical award that exists) undertakes a journey back to explore the origins of his chosen instrument, he's in for a very happy series of surprises...more info + tickets

MARIA BETHANIA: MUSIC IS PERFUME
Fri Jul 24 - Sun Jul 26
Fri: 8:30 pm, Sat: 10:00pm, Sun: 6:30 pm

Dir:  Georges Gachot // France/Switzerland 2005 // 82 min // Digibeta

Portrait of Brazilian music legend Bethania. Includes interviews with Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso. 

From VIFF 2005 program: "Samba is sadness dancing," says Brazilian singer/institution Maria Bethânia, a woman who extolls the heart and soul of her nation through song. In a world where pop chanteuses like Britney Spears or Jessica Simpson are more celebrated for their navels than their music, Maria Bethânia is from a very different world. A world of arguably very adult passions and sorrows: loss, heartbreak, slavery, and religion...more info + tickets

MIRIAM MAKEBA LIVE IN STOCKHOLM 1966
Sat Jul 25 // 8:30 pm

Sweden 1966 // 60 min

Live concert from the glory days of the late South African songstress...BUY TICKETS

GYPSY CARAVAN
Mon Jul 27 - Wed Jul 29
Mon: 8:30 pm, Tue: 6:30 pm, Wed: 8:30 pm

Dir:  Jasmine Dellal // 2006 US // 110 min

Five scorching Romany groups tour the USA. Shot by Albert Maysles. Featuring Johnny Depp.

From VIFF 2007 program: Across the globe, gypsy music rears its melodious head, from Romania to Spain to Macedonia to India. Jasmine Dellal's documentary was filmed during the Gypsy Caravan, a six-week concert tour that took four fabulous gypsy bands - Taraf de Haidouks, Majaraja, Fanfare Ciocarlia, Esme Redzepova and the Antonio el Pipa Flamenco Ensemble - on the road together. Shot by the legendary Albert Maysles (who captured the Rolling Stones at the peak of their glory in Gimme Shelter; also in this series), and featuring fierce fans of the form (including Johnny Depp), the film is a gorgeous surround-sound celebration of misery and oppression turned into music...more info + tickets

THE BLUE ANGEL
Fri July 31 // 7:00 & 9:45 pm

Dir: Josef von Sternberg // Germany 1930 // 110 min // 35mm

Dietrich became an international sensation after playing cabaret artiste Lola Lola in this, Germany's first major sound film. Wearing stockings and suspenders, frilly knickers and a top hat, she wraps Emil Jannings' stuffy professor around her little finger, marries and humiliates him. Yet she's not just a vamp, and he's the author of his own ruination. Among several Frederick Hollander songs, “Falling In Love Again” became Marlene's signature...more info + tickets

ALMOST FAMOUS
Sat Aug 1, Mon Aug 3
Sat: 3:00 pm, Mon: 7:00 pm

Dir: Cameron Crowe // USA 2000 // 122 min // 35mm // Cast: Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson, Anna Paquin, Jason Lee

Crowe's semi-autobiographical portrait of a teenage rock journalist prodigy, with Billy Crudup, Kate Hudson and a killer 70s soundtrack. Rolling Stone proclaimed it "pure pleasure... Not since A Hard Day's Night has a movie caught the thrumming exuberance of going where the music takes you."...BUY TICKETS

ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS
Sat Aug 1, Mon Aug 3
Sat: 5:30 & 10:00 pm, Mon: 9:30 pm

Dir: DA Pennebaker // UK 1973 // 90 min // DVD

David Bowie in concert at his peak in 1973, remixed and remastered. Songs include "Changes", "Space Oddity", "All the Young Dudes" and covers of the Stones' "Let's Spend the Night Together" and the Velvet Underground's "White Light, White Heat"...BUY TICKETS

VELVET GOLDMINE
Sat Aug 1, Sun Aug 2
Sat: 7:30 pm, Sun: 1:00 & 3:00 pm

Dir:  Todd Haynes // USA 1998 // 124 min // 35mm // Cast: Christian Bale, Jonathan Rhys Myers, Toni Collette, Ewan McGregor

Haynes goes glam in this appropriately OTT tribute to Bowie. Structured after Citizen Kane, with Bale's newspaper journalist digging back into the disappearing act of glam rock icon Brian Slade (Meyers)...BUY TICKETS

APPARITION OF THE ETERNAL CHURCH
Sun Aug 2 & Sun Aug 9 // 7:00 pm

Dir: Paul Festa // USA 2006 // 54 min // DVD

How do we understand music – and how can we articulate that response? In Festa's inspired approach to Olivier Messiaen's ten-minute organ work, 31 authors, musicians, filmmakers and dancers (including Albert Fuller, Harold Bloom, Daniel Handler and John Cameron Mitchell) simply listen and react...BUY TICKETS

32 SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD
Sun Aug 2 & 9 // 8:00 pm

Dir: Francois Girard // Canada 1993 // 98 min // 35mm

Thirty two angles on the virtuoso pianist (played by Colm Feore). One of the most highly acclaimed Canadian films of the last quarter century...BUY TICKETS

ONCE
Mon Aug 3 //12:30 & 5:00 pm

Dir: John Carney // Ireland 2006 // 85 min // 35mm

In outline a straightforward guy-gets-girl musical, Once is about as far from the Broadway tradition as it could get. Glen Hansard, from the Irish rock band the Frames, plays a Dublin busker/vacuum repairman who is befriended by an insistent Eastern European immigrant (Marketa Irglova)...BUY TICKETS

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE
Mon Aug 3 // 2:15 pm

Dir: Julie Taymor // USA 2007 // 133 min // 35mm

"This much is inarguable: In the more than two flamboyant hours of Across the Universe Julie Taymor doesn't cheat us for a single second... Taymor paints the screen with such panache, such joyful verve, that even when it's bad it's still awfully good...BUY TICKETS

THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG
Aug 5 & 7 // 6.30 pm, Aug 6 & 8 // 8.30 pm

Dir: Jacques Demy // France 1963 // 91 min // 35mm

With his third feature film, Jacques Demy realized his dream of an all-sung musical. Lusciously scored by Michel Legrand, and embracing an effervescent pastel palette...BUY TICKETS

LEONARD COHEN: I'M YOUR MAN
Sun Aug 9 // 2:00 pm

Dir: Lian Lunson // USA 2005 // 98 min // 35mm

Legendary music producer Hal Wilner put together the line-up for a rich and wondrous 70 th birthday tribute to Canada's beloved troubadour at the Sydney Opera House in 2005...BUY TICKETS

BE HERE TO LOVE ME: TOWNES VAN ZANDT
Sun Aug 9 // 3:45 pm

Named one of the best ever rock music documentaries by Time Out magazine, Brown's portrait of the ruinous cult singer-songwriter is a great way to familiarize yourself with the man Steve Earle calls "the greatest songwriter in the world...BUY TICKETS

TRUE STORIES
Mon Aug 10 & Wed 12 // 6.30 pm

The small town of Virgil, Texas, is celebrating its 150th anniversary with a parade and a concert, "a celebration of specialness"...BUY TICKETS

STOP MAKING SENSE
Mon Aug 10 & Wed Aug 12 // 8:15 pm

Over the course of three nights at Hollywood's Pantages Theater in December 1983, filmmaker Jonathan Demme joined creative forces with cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth and Talking Heads...BUY TICKETS

NEIL YOUNG: HEART OF GOLD
Tue Aug 11 // 8:30 pm

Diagnosed with a potentially fatal brain aneurysm in the spring of 2005, shortly after the death of his father, Young flew down to Nashville and wrote and recorded the songs for Prairie Wind in the four days before his surgery...BUY TICKETS

CSNY DÉJÀ VU
Tues Aug 11 // 6:30 pm & Sat Aug 15 // 9:00 pm

"The idea is not to make fans feel fuzzy and warm at the end of the concert. The idea is to make them feel," says Neil Young, on the road again with his oldest cohorts, Crosby, Stills and Nash, as they protest the Iraq War in their 2006 "Freedom of Speech" tour...BUY TICKETS

SHINE A LIGHT
Thur Aug 13 & Mon Aug 17 // 6:30 pm

Dir: Martin Scorsese // USA 2008 // 122 min // 35mm

"In the fall of 2006, Scorsese filmed the Stones in a pair of concerts at a relatively small New York theater, and the result, Shine a Light, is an altogether astounding testimony to the band's longevity, vitality and verve...BUY TICKETS

GIMME SHELTER
Thur Aug 13 & Mon Aug 17 // 9:00 pm

A rock film like no other, this intense, infamous, harrowing documentary follows the Stones' 'Let It Bleed' tour of 1969 and inadvertently captures the end of the Summer of Love as it imploded in the mayhem and murder at the Altamont Speedway...BUY TICKETS

WOODSTOCK
Fri Aug 14, Sun Aug 16 & Tue Aug 18 // 7:00 pm
Sat Aug 15 // 2:00 pm

The most famous concert of them all: 40 years ago this summer. Janis, Jimi, The Who, Joe Cocker, Canned Heat… Everybody was there – or they like to say they were. The music lives up to the legend, but in large part the mystique of this festival is preserved by this remarkable epic documentary...more info + tickets

MY GENERATION
Sat Aug 15 // 7:00 pm& Sun Aug 16 // 5:00 pm

Whatever happended to Woodstock? Kopple followed the 1994 and 1999 Woodstock concerts to gauge how much has changed, and to record Aerosmith, Sheryl Crowe, Peter Gabriel, and not a few of the old-timers...BUY TICKETS

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