Screen Notes:
Return to the City

Rediscover the excitement of the metropolis - this new cinema season explores cities across the world.

A still from Long Day's Journey into Night (2019)

A still from Long Day's Journey into Night (2019)

After so many months of worldwide lockdown, leaving normally bustling city streets deserted and denying us the opportunities to socialise in these vital and exciting spaces, Return to the City re-discovers Paris, Cairo, Lima, New York, Las Vegas and Kaili City, with a diversity of storytellers as our guide. Some celebrate the majesty and excitement of the metropolis while others consider the prejudices faced by marginalised communities within the city.

Nationalité immigré (1976) by Mauritanian filmmaker Sidney Sokhona explores the racism faced by immigrants in 1970s Paris, while Youssef Chahine’s Cairo Station is a gripping study of passion set amongst the city’s street vendors. As Nina Menkes offers a glimpse of Las Vegas away from the glitz and glamour, seen through the eyes of a casino croupier, Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey into Night explores the city in glorious 3D.

Lima Screams is a modern-day city symphony dedicated to Peru’s capital city, as we dive through the urban streets to the accompaniment of experimental electronica, contrasting Manfred Kirchheimer’s delightful Free Time (2020), in which 1950 New York comes alive through restored archive film.

All films will be shown in Cinema 1 in June. Lima Screams, Long Day’s Journey Into Night and Queen of Diamonds will be available to watch on Cinema on Demand throughout July.

Free Time

Dir Manfred Kirchheim, 1960/2020

United States

black and white photo of some kids

Still from Free Time (1960/2020)

Still from Free Time (1960/2020)

1950s footage of New York comes alive in this beautifully restored city symphony from celebrated filmmaker Manfred Kirchheimer.

In his latest work, Manfred Kirchheimer has meticulously restored and constructed 16mm black- and-white footage that he and Walter Hess shot in New York between 1958 and 1960. Free Time captures the in-between moments—kids playing stickball, window washers, Manhattanites reading newspapers on their stoops—and the architectural beauty of urban spaces, set to the stirring sounds of Ravel, Bach and Count Basie.

The footage was shot in several distinct New York neighbourhoods, including Washington Heights, the Upper West Side, and Hell’s Kitchen, and features evocative stops throughout the city, making time for an auto junkyard in Inwood and a cemetery in Queens.

Lima Screams

Dir Dana Bonilla, Ximena Valdivia, 2018

Peru

A topless man with black sunglasses plays the cello in a dirty bathroom, the photo has a deep red hue

Still from Lima Screams (2018)

Still from Lima Screams (2018)

A pulsing and immersive city symphony dedicated to Peru’s capital city, pumping with the sounds of punk, psychedelia and experimental electronica.

A still from Lima Screams (2019)

A still from Lima Screams (2019)

Directors Ximena Valdivia and Dana Bonilla take us on an exciting dive through the streets and music venues of Lima, showing the eclectic and diverse musical talents of the city’s artists against a collage of moments and sensations.

Lima Screams is an ecstatic and visually thrilling journey through the city’s spaces, as marginalised communities make beautiful music and political protests are backed by fierce electronic sounds. As the city screams, you have no choice but to be carried along with it…

Long Day's Journey into Night

Dir Bi Gan, 2018

China/France

Still from Long Day's Journey into Nights, 2018

Still from Long Day's Journey into Nights, 2018

A search for a lost love animates this sensuous, dream-like drama set in the city of Kaili in south-east China.

After many years away, a solitary man, Luo Hongwu, returns to his hometown for his father’s funeral. There, he is assailed by memories of a former lover, Wan Quiwen, triggering an obsessive need to find her again. Luo’s present-day quest and his memories of their romance intertwine; both play out against a backdrop of marginal, semi-derelict urban spaces – concrete tunnels, dilapidated housing blocks, railway tracks – with a weird, near-hallucinatory quality.

Still from Long Day's Journey into Night (2018)

Still from Long Day's Journey into Night (2018)

The film’s dazzling second act opens when Luo wanders into a dingy cinema and puts on a pair of 3D glasses, whereupon he re-emerges on-screen in a film-within-a-film that begins in a tunnel, then proceeds (via a zipwire) to a pool hall and an open-air karaoke bar. His journey through this labyrinthine cityscape is captured in single, hour-long, gravity-defying take – a must-see on the big screen in 3D.

Nationalité: Immigré

Dir Sidney Sokhona, 1975

France

black and white photo of two people looking at the arc de triomphe in paris

Still from Nationalité : Immigré (1975)

Still from Nationalité : Immigré (1975)

Mauritanian filmmaker Sidney Sokhona blends fiction with documentary in a staggering and radical account of African migrants at the margins of Parisian society in the 1970s.

Nationalité: Immigré dramatises the real-life housing strikes undertaken by Sokhona and his fellow migrant neighbours in a Parisian working-class slum dwelling. Centring identity, socio-economic injustices, and the bureaucratic exploitations of migrants, we are offered a depiction that positions community organising as crucial to simply exist.

Still from Nationalité: Immigré (1975)

Still from Nationalité: Immigré (1975)

With Western capitalism, anti-blackness, and migration at its fore, the film’s politics is more than ever relevant to current public debates on inequalities. Its expressions of resistance and resilience invite us to reflect and inquire, what does life and survival look like on the periphery?

Queen of Diamonds

Dir Nina Menkes, 1991

United States

photo of a woman and man sitting at dusk on a bench in the city

A still from Queen of Diamonds (1991)

A still from Queen of Diamonds (1991)

An alienated blackjack dealer is at the centre of this slantwise portrait of Las Vegas.

The many cinematic depictions of Las Vegas typically glory in the glittering casino lights and the drama of the gambling table: the thrill of risk, the joy of winning, the devastation of loss. Not so this film, which shows the flipside of the city from the point-of-view of one of its worker-residents, a casino croupier, for whom each wager, each hand, carries no excitement, but is part of one long round of drudgery.

Still from Queen of Diamonds (1991)

Still from Queen of Diamonds (1991)

Our heroine drifts through a series of encounters. But events are beside the point, the appeal of this film are its images – sad, gorgeous, strange. This is Las Vegas as seen from the margins, a place of garish, windowless interiors, but also huge blue skies and desolate desertscapes dotted with burned-out mobile homes, cheaply-furnished apartments, and dried-up lakes.

Cairo Station

Dir Youssef Chahine, 1958

Egypt

a black and white photo of a woman and man staring into the distance

Still from Cairo Station (1958)

Still from Cairo Station (1958)

A disabled newspaper vendor falls obsessively in love with an engaged drinks seller in Youssef Chahine’s thrilling study of passion, sexuality and violence.

Director Youssef Chahine plays the lead role of Qinawi, a shy, disabled newspaper vendor working in Cairo’s train station, who becomes passionately obsessed with Hannuma, a free-spirited drinks seller. When he faces rejection, Qinawi’s infatuation becomes dangerous as he falls into a state of insanity.

Cairo’s bustling central station is an effective microcosm of Egypt’s capital, as the socioeconomic divides appear at their starkest, and wealthy businessmen rush past the city’s poor, marginalised communities. Chahine blends melodrama, neorealism and thriller conventions to tell an unforgettable, disturbing story of love and madness. It’s one of Chahine’s most accessible films, and the performances are uniformly excellent.

About

Featuring films from the China, France, Egypt, Peru and the United States, this film season explores the excitement of the metropolis.

Some celebrate the majesty of the metropolis while others consider the prejudices faced by marginalised communities within the city.

8— 27 Jun 2021

Browse season

a woman with a dark green dress sits on a bed