Zama
The Cinematheque, 200 - 1131 Howe Street, Vancouver LUCERECIA MARTEL!
OPENING NIGHT | FRIDAY, JUNE 1
RECEPTION, REFRESHMENTS & SPECIAL INTRODUCTION
6:00pm - Reception
7:00pm - Zama introduced by Dr. Christine Evans
One of the top four films of 2017
SIGHT & SOUND, CINEMA SCOPE
ZAMA at the Cinematheque
VANCOUVER PREMIERE! The almost unbearable wait for Lucrecia Martel’s follow-up to 2008’s The Headless Woman, one of this century’s standout masterworks, was finally ended with the arrival of Zama last year. Ambitious in scale, enigmatic in form, and altogether brilliant in its fever-dream adaptation of Antonio di Benedetto’s existential novel, Martel’s fourth feature is a throne-retaking triumph for the Argentine auteur. Set in the late-18th-century in the wilds of what is now Paraguay, it tracks the fate of a hubristic Spanish magistrate (Daniel Giménez Cacho) stationed at a far-flung colonial outpost, waiting in vain for a royal transfer that will reunite him with his family. As ever in Martel’s cinema, the elliptical, at times elusive story is subordinate to the film’s sensorial powers: its lush, oneiric cinematography (by The Ornithologist’s Rui Poças); its immersive, alien soundtrack. The result is among the best and boldest films of 2017!
Run Time: 115 Mins
Dr. Christine Evans is a Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on the intersections between film theory, continental philosophy, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and love. She is currently working on a book entitled Slavoj Žižek and Film: A Cinematic Ontology (I.B. Tauris, forthcoming 2018).
REVIEWS
“Beautiful, hypnotic, mysterious, and elliptical.”
New York Times
“Astonishing ... Zama may just be Martel’s left-field masterpiece; a picture that’s antic, sensual, and strange.”
The Guardian