The Mystery of Rampo makes its Ithaca premiere this week at Cornell Cinema.
Two critically acclaimed films will have their Ithaca premieres this weekend at Cornell Cinema.
The Silences of the Palace, directed by Tunisian filmmaker Moufida Tlatli, confronts complex issues of women's liberation, colonialism and classism in a feminist coming-of-age story about the life of a kitchen servant and her daughter in 1950s Tunisia.
The Silences of the Palace will be shown Sept. 19 at 7:20 p.m., Sept. 21 at 7:15 p.m. and Sept. 24 at 7:15 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre. Tickets are $4.50; $4 for students, seniors and children 12 and under.
The story is told through memories of a young woman, Alia, a professional singer who grew up in the palace of the Tunisian royalty where she had spent the first 16 years of her life. Her mother is a servant to one of the princes, and life in the royal house is about submitting to the will, sexual and otherwise, of the monarch. Over the course of the film, Alia confronts her personal history in order to more accurately assess how much she has escaped the world of domination in which her mother lived.
Time magazine selected the film as one of the 10 best movies of 1994, and in a review of its screening at the New York Film Festival, The New York Times heralded the film as "truly exceptional ... a fascinating and accomplished film."
This screening is co-sponsored by the Women's Studies Program.
Japan in the 1930s is depicted in its elegant grandeur in The Mystery of Rampo, a story of a mystery writer whose powerful imagination brings to life the characters and stories in his books.
The film will be shown Sept. 20 at 9:45 p.m. and Sept. 23 at 9:20 p.m. in Willard Straight Theatre. Tickets are $4.50; $4 for students, seniors and children 12 and under.
Adapted from a tale by Edogawa Rampo, director Kazuyoshi Okuyama uses every technique from animation to montage to tell what happens when a woman is accused of committing the murder described in Rampo's most recent novel. When the novelist falls in love with her, the line between fantasy and reality collapses, and he must stage a daring rescue to save her from the plot he himself has created.
In a 1995 review of the film, The New York Times called it an "Alfred Hitchcock film that has been stripped of its pulpy Freudian psychologizing and elevated into a meditation on the artistic imagination."
This screening is co-sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Students.