Wednesday / 4.4.12
The Library Lover: The Films of Raúl Ruiz
7:00
(La colonia penal). Loosely adapting a Kafka story, Ruiz creates a satirical power allegory worthy of both Jonathan Swift and Eduardo Galeano. A small Latin American country, after “attempts to exploit its guano resources failed,” has nothing left to export except the only thing the First World expects from it: atrocity. A willing journalist is given a tour of the country’s torture mills, military repressions, and natural disasters, with a few traditional songs thrown in for good measure. (“I like you people because you’re so like children!” she chirps.) Absurd, hilarious, and unsparing of Third and First Worlds alike, The Penal Colony is also—unfortunately—timeless. Jason Sanders
Written by Ruiz, based on the story by Franz Kafka. Photographed by Hector Rios. With Monica Echeveria, Luis Alarcón, Anibal Reyna, Nelson Villagra. (67 mins, In Spanish with English subtitles, B&W, 16mm, From BFI Collections, permission Valeria Sarmiento)
Followed by:
A TV Dante: Cantos 9–14
Raúl Ruiz (U.K., 1991)
Raúl Ruiz has seen hell and come back to report on it. The filmmaker returns to Santiago, his home prior to Pinochet’s coup, and stages a selection of Dante’s cantos amidst the mundane goings-on of the city. Santiago as a metaphorical hell summons a bounty of past and present social inequities, foregrounding the allegorical aspects of the Inferno. But Ruiz is also the consummate visual stylist. His imagined city has an uncanny sense of the familiar made unrecognizable through grotesque imagery. A nightmarish state embraces the film, intimating the proximity of horror, of a near and waiting abyss. Steve Seid
Based on Dante’s Inferno, translated by Tom Phillips. With Fernando Bordeau, Francisco Reyes, and the voices of John Gielgud, Bob Peck. (66 mins, Color, 3/4” video, PFA Collection)
Total running time: 133 mins
(In conjunction with The Library Lover: The Films of Raúl Ruiz)
The Return of a Library Lover is the title of an autobiographical short by Chilean director Ra.l Ruiz, and looking over his remarkable filmography it’s easy to see why: adaptations of Dante, Kafka, Proust, Calderón, Pierre Klossowski, Camilo Castelo Branco, and Sadegh Hedayat dot his career, while a list of citations could include Borges, Lacan, Le Petit Prince, and nineteenth-century Catholic thought—often in the same film. Intensely cerebral, his films are also highly entertaining, often hilarious, and always surprising. “The world of his movies . . . is at once soothingly, elegantly familiar and booby-trapped with surprises,” wrote A. O. Scott. “There are sudden disappearances, long-buried secrets coming to light, supernatural happenings and bizarre coincidences. In his universe, improbability is the rule.”
Born in Chile in 1941, Ruiz studied law and theology before attending film school in Argentina. Returning to Chile, he completed only a handful of works before the 1973 military coup forced him into exile in France, where he began a nearly forty-year career spanning several continents. Early successes funded by European television led to bigger budgets—by the mid-1990s Ruiz was able to work with such international stars as John Malkovich (Time Regained), Catherine Deneuve (Geneologies of a Crime), and Marcello Mastroianni (Three Lives and Only One Death).
Ruiz passed away in August of 2011, having completed one last film in his native Chile after the international success of Mysteries of Lisbon. His films embrace a “logic governed by miracles,” as he wrote, a “poetics of cinema” that remains unmatched in its freedom.
Theater Admission Prices
Single Feature
$5.50 BAM/PFA Members, UC Berkeley Students
$9.50 Adults (18-64)
$6.50 UC Berkeley faculty, staff, and retirees
Non-UC Berkeley students
Senior citizens (65 & over)
Disabled persons
Youth (17 & under
Additional Feature $4.00 All Patrons
PFA General:
2575 Bancroft Way
Berkeley, CA 92027
(510) 642-1412
