CELEBRATE HALLOWEEN with BLACK&WHITE!

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Premonitory dreams, a creepy holiday resort, a group of four good-looking twentyish boys and girls looking for fun, ghostly child friendship bonds, strange incidents and unmentionable presences!! BLACK&WHITE has saved this explosive mix of the classic elements in horror films by the hand of the Filipino movie Villa Estrella to celebrate a special Halloween edition with you!

Bring your popcorn or sweets and we promise a goose-pimply evening that will make you jump on your seat!!

VILLA ESTRELLA, by Rico Maria Ilarde (2009)

October 28, 4pm

Lille Auditorium (Room 234)

Danish School of Journalism

ABOUT VINICIUS de CARVALHO

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Dr. Vinicius de Carvalho was lieutenant of the Brazilian Army. He served for two years in the Mountain Infantry Brigade, doing technical services (teaching at the Military Academy, working with music and research on military subjects) beyond those inherent in military life. On two occassions he was on missions with troops and the Intelligence Service in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Nowadays, he is a Lector of Brazilian Studies at the University of Aarhus.

'ELITE SQUAD' (2007). SYNOPSIS, by Caroline d'Essen

One of the most notorious releases in the history of Brazilian cinema, Jose Padilha's Elite Squad exposes the rampant corruption plaguing Rio de Janeiro from a policeman's point of view. The only problem is that, in Rio, the police are as corrupt as the criminals themselves, creating a ferociously violent atmosphere. Even the BOPE squad, an elite police force called in when the regular units are out of their league, resort to tactics that border on fascist procedures.

Elite Squad follows the lives of a BOPE captain, Nascimento, and two potential BOPE officers and childhood friends, Neto Gouveia and André Matias, and their experiences revolving the visit of the Pope John Paul II to Rio de Janeiro. Based on the book Tropa de Elite by sociologist Luiz Eduardo Soares, André Batista, and co-screenwriter Rodrigo Pimentel, Padilha's controversial glimpse into Rio's nightmarish criminal world will challenge and disturb viewers. The film won the Golden Bear at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival.

NEW CYCLE 'CITIES' SETS OFF!!

BLACK&WHITE is proud to announce the titles of the films that will form its second cycle 'Cities'. This time we will be able to travel all around the world in a single-ticket trip, from the troubled favelas of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to a mysterious vacational villa in the Philippines, all the way up to a festive Dehli out of the Indian alternative movie scene and, to finish with, a desperate search through the 'bairros' of Lisbon in Portugal.

Everything in a whole new format: the starting time of the screenings will be 4pm instead of 5pm to make the access to the Danish School of Journalism easier for all (yay!) and allow a space for discussion after the screening, at request of many of you. This week session will include the inestimable contribution of Vinicius de Carvalho, a former member of the elite forces in Brazil, who will share his first hand experiences with us.

All told, 'Cities' calendar will look as follows:

TROPA DE ELITE, by José Padilha (2007)

October 21, 4pm

Lille Auditorium (Room 234)

Danish School of Journalism

VILLA ESTRELLA, by Rico Maria Ilarde (2009)

October 28, 4pm

Lille Auditorium (Room 234)

Danish School of Journalism

MONSOON WEDDING, by Mira Nair (2001)

ALICE, by Marco Martins (2005)

NOTICE: TIME CHANGE!!

The screening of the German film The Edukators has been rescheduled to 4.30pm instead of the original 5pm... Sorry for the inconvenience!!

DIE FETTEN JAHRE SIND VORBEI, by Hans Weingartner (2005)

October 14, 4.30pm

Lille Auditorium (Room 234)

Danish School of Journalism

GOOD BYE, 'INEQUALITY IN SOCIETY'!

BLACK&WHITE wants to bid farewell to its cycle 'Inequality in society' in style. That is why we are so glad the revolutionary (in its broader sense!) German film The Edukators came in the way with the gorgeous and forever engagé Daniel Brühl in it...

DIE FETTEN JAHRE SIND VORBEI, by Hans Weingartner (2005)

October 14, 4.30pm

Lille Auditorium (Room 234)

Danish School of Journalism

This is the end of one stage. But the next will be full of surprises and changes with your requests, suggestions and, of course, participation!! Drop us an e-mail at our new account (on the top right) and let us know your thoughts! The new cycle 'Cities' will be taking off next week NOT at the same time. Stay tuned, thanks and see you all at The Edukators!!

'THE EDUKATORS' – 'DIE FETTEN JAHRE SIND VORBEI' (2005). SYNOPSIS, by Rabea Ottenhues

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Young and full of antipathy to the system they live in, flatmates Jan and Peter have their own way of fighting social injustice.

At night, they break into mansions in Berlin's rich neighborhoods, not stealing or destroying things, but disarranging the furniture and leaving nothing but a mess and a note saying ‘You are too rich’ or ‘The years of plenty are gone’. Their aim: leaving the residents with a feeling of insecurity and giving them food for thought about their wealth.

After a car crash, Peter's girlfriend Jule has to pay off her debt to a wealthy manager, whose car she ran into. That exactly is where the very same manager and owner of a villa, Hardenberg, comes into play. While Peter is on holiday, Jule and Jan begin a romance and, in an unreasonable, carefree mood, decide to break into Hardenberg's mansion.

Moments later, you find the three of them, Peter, Jule and Jan, sitting at a table in an Alps hut, smoking a joint - with Hardenberg, who they kidnapped after being caught off guard in his house and who now reminisces about his time as a revolutionist, practicing free love and knowing people like the leader of the student revolt, Rudi Dutschke.

But this, for sure, is not the happy end of the story. Things get more and more complicated, with Hardenberg among the three of them.

In the end, The Edukators is more than a well-played movie (those of you who watched Inglorious Basterds will surely recognize Daniel Brühl) that is certainly deeply critical of society, but in a new, sometimes even funny way, that at least left me with the feeling of wanting to change the world.

'FRESA Y CHOCOLATE' (1994). SYNOPSIS, by Jennifer Roig

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Fresa y Chocolate is based on a short story by one of the most important Cuban screenwriters alive. The feature film tells the story of three ordinary people, Diego, David and Nancy. Despite their differences, they start a friendship that is going to demand sacrifices from all of them in the hard times of 'el quinquenio gris' ('the gray five years' period).

It is a story of friendship, loyalty, freedom, emigration and love.

Fresa y Chocolate is one of the most polemical Cuban films ever. Produced in 1994, in the hardest times of the economic crisis, it tells the story of a darker previous period in the history of Cuban Revolution. Since the late 60s, the impact of Soviet Union clashed with the different positions of many intellectuals, professionals and workers in the island. Most of those who disagree with the new status quo were sent to production camps in the countryside, and kept isolated from their families and friends. The nature of emigration changed. Those who were leaving Cuba were not looking for more properties or richness but for freedom of thought, expression and sexual identity.

The 90s were no easy times for Cubans either. The film was a hit but most of the people who went to the theaters thought it was about a current issue. The film brought to discussion homosexuality discrimination, a reality that was unexplainable in a country where everybody was supposed to be equal.

4TH SCREENING tomorrow: A TASTE OF CUBA!

BLACK&WHITE will be one month old tomorrow!! And to celebrate it, we invite you to a strawberry & chocolate ice-cream. Yes, it might be freezing outside, but we will keep it warm with Fresa y Chocolate, this week's Cuban film by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea & Juan Carlos Tabío.

It is a friendship story between a gay and a straight Communist in the 1970s. Among freedom and oppression, the right of being different and the right for artistic creation, the film stands as a clear-eyed critique of the revolution's treatment of gay Cubans. The tale's particular context adds freshness and political alertness, resulting in a charming piece of work with a quasi-hopeful message. Fresa y Chocolate (Strawberry & Chocolate) is as refreshing as its title suggests. Come have a taste of it! Do not miss this funny colourful film, but above all, a call for tolerance, deftly executed by a director for whom the personal and the political were indivisible.

The experience will be, in sum, a thoughtful, sensual pleasure.

FRESA Y CHOCOLATE, by Tomás Gutiérrez Alea & Juan Carlos Tabío (1993)

October 7, 5pm

Lille Auditorium (Room 234)

Danish School of Journalism

OLEKSANDR DOVZHENKO

A note about our Ukranian filmmaker in view of the second alternative screening...

Born in a peasant family as one of its 14 children, Dovzhenko however managed to get enough education to pursue his dream, a teacher’s career. Little is known about Dovzhenko’s life during perilous war and revolution times. We know, however, his vain and hectic attempts to obtain higher education, his participation in Ukrainian movement for which he was incarcerated in a concentration camp and faced several executions by firing squad, one done with blank-fire and several eventually cancelled, luckily. After Bolsheviks won the civil war, friends helped him to get a position in Soviet Ukrainian Embassies in Europe where he also got to know Western culture. He used his knowledge when back in Ukraine, as painter and cartoonist, but mainly as a one of the world’s first filmmakers. In late 20s he shot several films that became popular and respected abroad, especially his classical 'Ukraine trilogy' (Zvenyhora, Arsenal, Earth). They became the heights of Ukrainian Renaissance, subsequently called 'Executed Renaissance' (thousands artists shot; hundreds left art; the rest – dozens – became loyal to party and lost their artistic individuality), a modernist interbellum movement dominated by grotesque romanticism, obsessed by matters of life and death and formal experiments.

Dovzhenko was too well-known abroad to simply be shot. So he was the one who tried to be loyal and suffered from censorship. Several of his projects were suspended and never done. He himself had to move to Moscow; entering Ukraine was under the ban for him. However, he developed a kind of personal relationship with Stalin, having become a sort of confessor for the Soviet tyrant; he was often called in the night to the Kremlin when Stalin had insomnia. Homesickness and dreadful moral dubiousness of his position made Dovzhenko suffer, and that was mirrored in his brilliant and blood-chilling diary. This immensely gifted filmmaker lived in depression and made almost no films since the 1930s. He died relatively young a few years after Stalin, in the process of working on a new film.