Les Arenes de Chaillot: The Complete Programme Guide

If greg.org were a magazine, this would be the big sidebar. But you can call it what it is: whoring for traffic. Here, for the first time in the indexable media, are the programmes–complete with my poor translations of their film descriptions–of La Sesion Comoda and Urbex Movie, the 2003 and 2004 series, respectively, organized by La Mexicaine de Perforation.
Screenings began at midnight in Les Arenes de Chaillot, the group’s underground cinema adjacent to la Cinematheque Francaise.

lmdp_logo.jpg

Urbex Movie
26 June 2004
Ghost in the Shell(Mamoru Oshii, 1995)
In a futuristic Japan controlled by networks, a female cyborg is haunted by ontological interrogations. She begins to pursue a legendary hacker, “The Puppet Master,” in hopes of answering her own existential questions. [ie., the ur-Matrix. -g.o]
Dark City (Alex Proyas, 1998)
John Murdoch wakes with amnesia, to find he’s wanted for a series of ritual killings. He searches for his real identity across a strange city he cannot escape.
3 July 2004
Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983)
An old gang chief returns home to find his younger brother following in his footsteps, hoping to find meaning in his life. But he becomes disillusioned when the nostalgic world he imagined doesn’t measure up to his memories.
Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977)
Jack Spencer discovers he’s the father of a premature mutant. Abandoned by his lover, he is engulfed by a fantasmagorical world.
10 July 2004
Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
Sam, a loyal employee in a high-surveillance world, provokes…dude, I can’t translate this, and I can’t make enough sense of Brazil to explain it. Oy.
Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999)
The unidentified narrator lives and works alone. His life changes the day he meets Tyler Durden, an anarcho-gourou? who resists consumerism by creating the Fight Club, a place for clandestine recovery of his virility.
17 July 2004
Berlin, Symphony of a Big City (Walter Ruttmann, 1927)
24 hours in the life of Berlin, presented from dawn to dawn by the light of its incessant activity.
Man With A Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1928)
A day in the life of Odessa, filmed and shown in montage.
24 July 2004
Joint Security Area (Chan-wook Park, 2000)
Two Korean soldiers are assassinated on the front between North and South. A Swiss investigator finds two witnesses attempt to hide the truth.
Blind Shaft (Yang Li, 2003)
A miner is murdered, and his “brother” claims the family’s reparations. Soon the “brother” and his cohort find another potential victim of their ruthless con.
31 July 2004
Serie Noire (Alain Corneau, 1979)
Transferred the suburbs, Frank Poupart trails his mediocrity door-to-door. But as business turns sour, his boss threatens to reassign him. He decides instead to take over an old miser’s nest egg.
Buffet Froid (Bertrand Bier, 1979)
Alphonse Tram meets a stranger on the train, exchanges a few words, and then finds him dead on the street, with a knife in his back. Hilarity ensues.
7 Aug. 2004
Mister Freedom (William Klein, 1969)
Superman of justice and morality, Mr. Freedom is sent by the French Freedom Organization to liberate from the red menace and the yellow peril.
Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD (Michael Herz & Lloyd Kaufman, 1991)
Harry Griswald is a NY cop possessed by the spirit of a grand Kabuki Master. He uses his superpowers to combat evil.
La Sesion Comoda
23 Aug. 2003
La Jetee (dir. Chris Marker, 1968)
On the pier at Orly, a child is struck by the face of a woman who watches a man die. Later, after the Third World War has destroyed Paris, the survivors live underground at Chaillot, where technicians experiment with traveling through time.
Le Bunker de la Derniere Rafale (Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 1981)
A group of soldiers in a bunker of indeterminate vintage live in wait of “the potential enemy.” The discovery of a “noncomforming project” sets in motion a series of catastrophies.
Le Dernier Combat (Luc Besson, 1983)
In a destroyed Paris, an old doctor and his protege defend a crumbling clinic against the aggressions of a mastodon.
30 Aug 2003
Moebius (Gustavo Mosquera, 1996)
A train with more than 30 passengers disappears in the Buenos Aires subway. A young cartographer must find the original maps for the network in order to explain this strange occurrence.
Les Pirates du Metro/ The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Four armed men take over a New York subway, threatening to kill a passenger each minute if they do not receive millions of dollars ransom.
6 Sept. 2003
Jin-Roh (Hiroyuki Okiura, 1998, scr. Mamoru Oshii)
Fuse is a member of the Panzers, a Tokyo unit created to help the police combat terrorism. In the course of a mission, he finds himself unable to kill a young rebel.
The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949, scr. Graham Greene)
Arriving in post-war Vienna, an American writer discovers his friend is not helping alleviate suffering, but is in fact a racketeer.
13 Sept. 2003
Blood: The Last Vampire (Hiroyuki Kitakubo, 2000)
Two ferocious vampires take cover on the American military base at Yokota in 1966. Saya, a young girl, is sent on a secret mission to deal with them.
The Wisdom of Crocodiles (Leong Po-Chih, 1998)
Steven despairs he’ll never find his ideal woman. Then he meets Anne, who’s different than the others, but the police are on their trail.
20 Sept. 2003
Le Trou (Jacques Becker, 1960)
Four cellmates try to tunnel their way out the prison at La Sante. A fifth prisoner complicates their plan.
Le Tunnel (Roland Suso Richter, 2001)
An East German swimming star wants to escape to the west, but doesn’t want to leave his sister behind. He finally flees after promising to come back for her. With his best friend, he devises a plan to tunnel back under the Wall.