FREE Movies!

"The Beautiful Country": Playing for FREE tonight!

Now that LVHIFF is over, you'll have to find other ways of getting your arthouse fix. Luckily, the Doris Duke Theater at the Honolulu Academy of Arts has swooped in to fill that void by offering two FREE film series in November. The first series presents FREE films about the Vietnam War, and the second celebrates the work of Spanish director Helena Taberna with two of her films (for FREE). Most of the FREE films will be shown ON FILM. Oh, and did I say these films are FREE?

FILM SERIES 1: RE-VIEWING VIETNAM
Curated by the Honolulu Academy of Arts, UH Manoa's College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, and UH Manoa's Dept. of English, and supported by a grant from the Hawai'i Council for the Humanities.

Tues, 11/1, 7:30pm: THE BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY (Tonight!)
Dir: Hans Petter Moland, USA/Norway, 2004, 125m, R
Set in 1990, relates the odyssey of a young “bui doi” (Vietnamese child with an American father) as he escapes Vietnam, endures a refugee camp, and survives indentured servitude with a human trafficking ring. His quest for his long-lost American family leads him from Saigon to Malaysia to NYC and, finally, to a redemptive reunion in Texas. Stars Nick Nolte and Bai Ling.

Fri, 11/4, 4pm: THE GREEN BERETS
Dir: Ray Kellogg, USA, 1968, 141m, G
The first Hollywood film to depict the Vietnam War, "The Green Berets" was heavily critiqued as propagandistic. John Wayne stars in and co-directs this pro-war film.

Fri, 11/4, 7:30pm: GO TELL THE SPARTANS
Dir: Ted Post, USA, 1978, 114m, R
Americans and Vietnamese cohorts occupy an abandoned French outpost to block the Viet Cong. When the outpost is overtaken by the VC, the Americans fly out by helicopter and leave their Vietnamese compadres to fend for their own lives, but not before two Americans (one of them played by Burt Lancaster) try to save them.

Sat, 11/5, 1pm: COMING HOME
Dir: Hal Ashby, USA, 1978, 126m, R
"Coming Home" earned Oscars for Jane Fonda and Jon Voigt. A Marine wife comes to love both a paraplegic veteran-turned-antiwar protestor as well as her psychologically and physically wounded veteran husband.

Sat, 11/5, 4pm: APOCALYPSE NOW REDUX
Dir: Francis Coppola, USA, 1979/2001, 153m, R
Marlon Brando is a Green Beret gone crazy, and Navy captain Martin Sheen is charged with killing him in this Coppola classic based on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness."

Mon, 11/7, 7:30pm: THE DEER HUNTER
Dir: Michael Cimino, USA, 1978, 182m, R
The lives of three friends from a blue-collar Pennsylvania town are changed forever by the Vietnam War. Stars Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep.

Tues, 11/8, 4pm: RAMBO FIRST BLOOD PART I
Dir: Ted Kotcheff, USA, 1982, 97m, R
See Sylvester Stallone as the iconic John Rambo, a traumatized Vietnam veteran in search of the last surviving member of his Green Beret squad.

Tues, 11/8, 7:30pm: PLATOON
Dir: Oliver Stone, USA, 1986, 120m, R
Winner of 4 Oscars including Best Film, Platoon is Oliver Stone's classic depiction of the Vietnam War. Stars Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, and a very young Johnny Depp.

Wed, 11/9, 4pm: WHEN THE TENTH MONTH COMES (Bao gio cho den thang muoi)
Dir: Nhat Minh Dang, Vietnam, 1984, 95m, NR
A moving melodrama about a young mother’s efforts to come to terms with her husband’s death on the battlefield. Unable to break the news to her family, she enlists the local schoolteacher to forge letters from her dead husband. Complications arise and the secret is eventually revealed.

Wed, 11/9, 7:30pm: INDOCHINE
Dir: Regis Wargnier, France, 1992, 159m, PG
A sprawling melodrama that tells the story of Indochina in the waning years of French colonialism through the eyes of a wealthy plantation owner played by Catherine Deneuve.

Thurs, 11/10, 4pm: REGRET TO INFORM
Dir: Barbara Sonneborn, USA, 1998, 72m, NR
Nominated for a Best Doc Oscar, "Regret to Inform" highlights common issues shared by U.S. and Vietnamese women, but resists the temptation to suggest a sameness of experience between the wives of American servicemen and their Asian counterparts. The film weaves together American and Vietnamese stories to offer an intimate, powerful and alternate portrait of war.

Thurs, 11/10, 7:30pm: SAIGON, USA + MY JOURNEY HOME
>> SAIGON, USA: Dir: Lindsey Jang, USA, 2004, 57m, NR
Documentary about the political protests and intergenerational conflicts within the Vietnamese American community of Southern California that sprung from a shopkeeper's window display of a communist flag and Ho Chi Minh pictures.
>> MY JOURNEY HOME: Dir: Renee Tajima-Pena, USA, 2004, 40m, NR
This PBS-supported documentary follows three Americans as they journey back to their ancestral homelands.
>> A special guest will be in attendance! Nationally renowned Vietnamese American journalist and fiction writer Andrew Lam, who is also the subject of "Saigon, USA" and "My Journey Home," will talk about straddling two cultures.

FILM SERIES 2: GALA FILM SCREENINGS OF HELENA TABERNA
Curated by the Honolulu Academy of Arts and UH Manoa's Division of Spanish in the Department of Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas. These free screenings are part of the 2nd International Conference on Latin(o) American and Iberian Cinemas at UH. Taberna will be in attendance.

Wed, 11/2, 7:30pm: EXTRANJERAS
Dir: Helena Taberna, Spain, 2003, 75m, NR
"Extranjeras" helps us look at the world through the eyes of Asian, Latin American, African, and European women who have left their countries of birth and now call Spain home.

Thurs, 11/3, 7:30pm: YOYES
Dir. Helena Taberna, Spain, 2000, 104m, NR
Yoyes, the first woman to have held and subsequently renounced a position of responsibility within Basque separatist organization ETA, returns from exile in Mexico and tries to put her life back together amidst complicated circumstances.

>> November at the Doris Duke Theater

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