UL Lafayette: English Department: Bayou Bijou

				The Bayou Bijou Film Series

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				The Bayou Bijou Film Series is dedicated to bringing a provocative, adventurous, and exciting set of films from throughout the world—none previously screened in Lafayette—to our community. Bayou Bijou is located in the University of Louisiana at Lafayette Student Union at 600 McKinley Street. Showtimes are on Mondays at 4 PM and 7 PM. The series can be enjoyed for the season ticket price of $20.00, which can be used at either showing. Tickets purchased at the door are $3.00 per feature ($2.00 for all UL Lafayette students with school ID). Refreshments are available at every show. For more information call 482-6940 or 482-5478.



				The Bayou Bijou Film Series is supported by funds from the Student Government and by ticket sales. Bayou Bijou Film Committee: Allison Bohl, Charlotte Clark, Jim McDonald, Jerry McGuire, Jo Lynn Pack, David Webber, and Suzanne Wiltz.



				Spring 2012 Schedule



				February 6 The Hedgehog (Le hérisson, 2009) Dir. Mona Achache, France, 100 min. Not Rated. Paloma is witty, smart, delightful, and bored, and has decided to commit suicide on her twelfth birthday. She tools around her apartment house videotaping her family and neighbors, striking up relations with two in particular: Renée, the surly janitor, and the elegant Mr. Ozu. Based on The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, this is one of the finest character studies of childhood we’ve seen, with brilliant performances throughout and a remarkable fluidity of camera movement tracing Paloma’s vision of life.

				February 13 The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975 (2011) Dir. Göran Olsson, Sweden, 100 min. Not Rated. Comprised of newly discovered footage from Swedish television and narrated by an amazing cast of black intellectuals, artists, and activists, The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975 offers never-before-seen and candid glimpses into the Civil Rights movement’s most significant figures—Stokely Carmichael, Dr. King, Angela Davis, Eldridge Cleaver, and others. The film follows the rise of the Black Power movement and its slow decline through the mid-1970s—a period of black life rarely investigated. With its up-close focus on the leaders of the Black Power movement, this film will enrich your understanding of a pivotal moment in twentieth-century American life.

				February 16 Trimpin: The Sound of Invention (2009) Dir. Peter Esmonde, USA, 128 min. Rated R. See our insert for this special film, showing Thursday night in Fletcher Hall Auditorium (rm. 134).

				February 27 Attack the Block (2011) Dir. Joe Cornish, United Kingdom, 88 min. Rated R. David Edelstein calls this Brit monster flick “wall-to-wall sci-fi pop-culture bric-a-brac,” NPR says it’s “irreverently funny,” Jennie Punter says it’s “a mash-up of Gremlins, E.T., a stoner comedy and a monster B-movie,” while Lou Lumenik says it’s “a hilarious, slam-bang series of chases and battles that cross Gremlins with Assault on Precinct 13.” It comes from the guys who did Shaun of the Dead, so that explains its humor. What’s amazing is the respect it’s garnered among serious critics as well. Come for the laughs, and stay for . . . well, stay for the laughs, if nothing else.

				March 5 Incendies (2010) Dir. Denis Villeneuve, Canada/France, 130 min. Rated R. When young adult twins Jeanne and Simon hear the reading of their mother’s will, they are set on a path of discovery of their own roots—the history of their mysterious mother, father, and brother. Telling the story of the twins’ search in parallel with their mother’s story, the film builds to remarkable tensions and an uncanny sense of political turbulence and crisis. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, the film has won many international awards for Best Film, Direction, Cinematography, Screenplay, and Art Direction.

				March 12 13 Assassins (Jûsan-nin no shikaku, 2010) Dir. Takashi Miike, Japan, 141 min. Rated R. It’s been a while since Bayou Bijou treated itself to a real samurai film, and along comes the great Miike to deliver a smart, gorgeous, bloody, hyperkinetic, elegant homage to a hundred films that have gone before, not only the fine original Jûsan-nin no shikaku by Eiichi Kudo, but also Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Yojimbo—altogether a dashing and distinguished legacy. And Miike, who is sometimes casual in his production values, has spared no effort here. The film looks and feels stunning, and the acting is first-rate throughout.

				March 19 The Sleeping Beauty (La belle endormie, 2010) Dir. Catherine Breillat, France, 82 min. Not Rated, but contains some nudity and sexual behavior. Breillat has gone from her earlier “hard-core aesthetic” films to a series of films concerned with the ways in which girls and women are managed, steered, manipulated, and placed in the social world. Following her Asia Argento-centered costume drama, The Last Mistress, her most recent films have treated the erotic dynamics of two fairy tales—first Bluebeard and now Sleeping Beauty. But this is the furthest thing from a Disney celebration of conventional fantasy. There are witches and ogres and dwarves, to be sure, but the center of the story is a sequence of dreams during the girl’s hundred-year sleep, in which she doggedly pursues a very different sort of awakening —one that doesn’t depend on a handsome prince.

				March 26 Kings of Pastry (2009) Dir. Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker, Netherlands, UK, USA, France, 87 min. Not Rated. Two sublime documentarians collaborate on this unlikely subject: the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France (“MOF”) pastry competition. Don’t be surprised if the action (which takes place, amazingly, with the filmmakers sharing the kitchen with the chefs as they prepare confections that, for us humans, agonizing over our pie crusts and birthday cakes, can barely imagine. The film moves on amazing tides of tension and suspense, but is worth watching just to see an otherworldly display of desserts we’ll never taste.

				April 2 Le Quattro Volte (2010) Dir. Michelangelo Frammartino, Italy, 88 min. Not Rated. The title translates as “The Four Times,” but that doesn’t do justice to the remarkable conceit of this thought-provoking, nearly silent film: it follows, in accordance with Pythagoras’s theory of the transmigration of the soul, the movement of vital essence from human to animal to vegetable to mineral. If this sounds dull and morbid, it’s anything but. As A. O. Scott puts it, the film is “so full of surprises—nearly every shot contains a revelation, sneaky or overt, cosmic or mundane—that even to describe it is to risk giving something away.” It also has one of our favorite dog performances of this decade (or any decade).


				April 16 Another Earth (2010) Dir. Mike Cahill, USA, 92 min. Rated PG-13. Often discussed as a low-budget independent sci-fi, Another Earth is much more like a dream---—utterly driven by emotional desperation and desire at a level that, while sometimes focused on love and sex, seems to move beyond the erotic to a core of human hurt and need. Critics have split over it, and not casually. Some dismiss it as careless sci-fi while others fall in love with its palpable yearning for survival and redemption. We thought we’d give the Bayou Bijou audience an opportunity to decide which side they’re on, and offer a friendly heads-up: watch for the elegant (seriously!) musical saw solo (“Another Earth,” by Natalia Paruz) at the film’s center, and prepare to reflect on a shot of Garboesque enigma at its closure.

				April 23 City of Life and Death (Nanking! Nanking! 2009) Dir. Chuan Lu, China/Hong Kong, 132 min. Rated R. The magisterial Zhang Yimou has just released his Flowers of War with Christian Bale and a China-sized budget. But his version of the 1937 “Rape of Nanking,” star-studded and in elegant color, can’t match the emotional power of this dream-like, hypnotic black-and-white fable of bravery, nobility, and horrendous cruelty. The performances—by “soldiers” and “civilians” alike—are excruciatingly believable, and the violence of the military’s assault on unarmed civilians feels less like anything one has encountered in a movie and much more like walking into the middle of some common, everyday scene in which people are suddenly shot to death before your eyes.

Document last revised Tuesday, January 10, 2012 11:46 AM