Editor’s note: After a rocking week of festival films, Kyiv is once again left short of English-language copies of the latest world releases. So it’s time to practice your Russian and Ukrainian in cinemas with this week’s selection of films.
SLEEPING BEAUTY
Drama
Australia 2011
Directed by Julia Leigh
Starring Emily Browning, Rachael Blake
Don’t take your children to this one – the film has no relation to the original sleeping beauty of the famous fable. Sexually intense, philosophical and grotesque, the drama revolves around young student Lucy who’s looking for work to subsidize her studies. She discovers a niche sex industry where she’s paid to serve dinners nearly naked to elderly gentlemen in tuxedos. Lucy does well and is offered a promotion in a form of a pill, which would sedate her every night and allow her old clients to do anything they want to her, except penetration. Obscure curiosity leads her to accept sometimes nauseating sex scenes with many old strangers. Will she ever wake up?
PINA
Musical documentary
Germany 2011
Directed by Wim Wenders
Starring Regina Advento, Malou Airaudo
Pina Bausch was a modern German choreographer, who created The Rite of Spring, Café Müller, Vollmond and Kontakthof dances of international renown. She died a year before this documentary was filmed so inevitably the work has an air of a tribute: Dancers mourn their spiritual mother and institutionalize her in their every pas de deux and solo pieces. The musical doesn’t really have a plot; it’s an amalgamation of precise movement rendered with the help of 3D and the celebration of Pina through music. Perfect for the devotees of dance, it may somewhat alienate a wider audience. Yet, “Pina” pioneers the genre of a musical documentary in 3D being rich on visual passion with very little dialogue.
MANHATTAN SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
In its 12th year, the festival presents 10 most impressive shorts from all over the world to the mood of regular viewers, not a professional jury. The films cover a wide range of subjects: from the Arab Spring uprisings and Holocaust to adultery and unwanted children being dropped off anonymously through a special service – a box in the wall. Along with viewers in 200 countries, you can choose your favorite work by casting a vote on a special card picked up before the showing. Results will be announced on Oct. 2 in Manhattan.
KYIV
19 Chervonoarmiyska St., 234-7381
SLEEPING BEAUTY
Sept. 23-28, 6 p.m., 9:55 p.m.
PINA
Sept. 23-28, 11:30 a.m., 3:10 p.m., 7:10 p.m.
MANHATTAN SHORT FILM FESTIVAL
Sept. 23-28, 2 p.m., 7:45 p.m.
