May I put in a bid for a French movie:L'Accompagnatrice ('The Accompanist')? 1992; director: Claude Miller, actors: Richard Bohringer, Elena Safonova, Romane Bohringer
It was shown once on British TV, but then disappeared, which is a pity, because this is one of the most memorable films I have ever seen. An insignificant girl comes out of the grey starvation of occupied Paris to become accompanist to a Russian-born soprano, whose beauty and sheer wonderfulness hypnotise and paralyse her. But too much beauty and success, under a Nazi administration, combine to make the life of the singer unbearable. There are many very powerful political and social themes in this film - but it is the glorious music that I can never forget.
I do hope you will be repeating 'Life is Beautiful', a really lovely film. I saw about a third of it this evening, but my wife had invited people to watch Carmen on DVD, so I was ejected from the room.
Many thanks for your post. The Banker is not yet available for broadcast as it is still doing the festival circuit. If we can acquire internet rights for shorts then they are streamed on the website. We have requested a viewing tape of The Open Doors, so it's quite possible that these two shorts will be shown on FilmFour Channel at some time in the future. We will keep you updated with any further developments.
Any plans to show ANY of these films (by these great filmmakers) in the next twelve months?
Werner Herzog
Even Dwarfs Started Small Land of Silence and Darkness Fata Morgana The Enigma of Kasper Hauser Where the Green Ants Dream Invincible
Lars von Trier
Epidemic Medea Europa (this time in it's proper 2:35.1 aspect ratio please) The Kingdom 1 The Kingdom 2
Krzysztof Kieslowski
Camera Buff Blind Chance No End A Short Film About Killing A Short Film About Love
Neil Jordan
Angel High Spirits The Miracle Michael Collins The Butcher Boy
Peter Greenaway
Drowning By Numbers Prospero's Books The Baby of Macon 8 and ½ Women
Michael Winterbottom
I Want You Wonderland The Claim 9 Songs
Roger Michell
The Mother Enduring Love
Mike Leigh
Bleak Moments Abigail's Party Nuts in May Hard Labour Grown Ups
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Whity The Merchant of Four Seasons Wild Game The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant Effie Briest Fox and His Friends The Stationmaster's Wife Despair In a Year of 13 Moons Veronika Voss The Third Generation Querelle
(I know you had a Fassbinder season a short while ago, but the films were often shown at 2 or 3 in the morning. How about putting them on at a realistic time, like 10 or 11 pm?).
Thank you for your requests. That's a great list of films!
We've played the brilliant L'eau froide before on FilmFour, and sadly we don't have any plans for further screenings in the future. Sadly, the same goes for Damnation. However, Assayas's Irma Vep and Tarr's The Werckmeister Harmonies will both be playing on FilmFour in September. Also, look out for Robert Bresson's The Devil, Probably on Monday 29th August. The film is one of Assayas's favourites and a major influence on L'Eau froide.
We have done major seasons of Ozu and Tarkovsky in the past and their films may return at a future date. Sadly we have no immediate plans though.
We haven't done a lot of Alain Resnais over the years and Providence is certainly a Filmfour favourite. Although we can't say for sure that we'll be able to show it, it's certainly a film that we'll look into.
Just to continue the run of bad news, there are no immediate plans for the Leos Carax films either. It would be nice if he made a new film though!
But! We are showing Wild Strawberries in September, on the 20th and 29th. We'll also be showing further Bergman titles The Magician, Eva (written by Bergman) and Port of Call during the same month.
A few screenings you may be interested in are The Conformist on 14th July (a new transfer that makes the film look more beautiful than it's ever looked before on the small-screen), Fellini's Satyricon on 16th July. And on the 13th August we're showing two legendary films by Peter Watkins - The War Game and Culloden.
Hope these go some way towards mitigating the disappointments above. We hope to have an updated Coming Soon list on a new thread later in the summer, so hopefully you'll find further titles to get excited about there.
Please do get in touch with further requests, as we really do appreciate hearing what films are viewers are interested in.
Hello FilmFour. I did enjoy L'eau froide when it was shown a while back - any chance of any more Assayas (other than Irma Vep)? Can I also second Divine Comedy's request for The Kingdom - I'm not even sure that the second series was ever shown in this country so it would be great to see it.
And, somewhat optimistically seeing as none of my requests in the past have ever led to an even remotely positive response (and usually don't get any response at all), can I add a few more films to the request list? First of all, how about The Night of San Lorenzo (aka The Night of the Shooting Stars by the Taviani brothers)? And given that the glorious 3-Iron came out this week, how about a Kim Ki-Duk season? Any of the ones that aren't available on DVD or didn't get UK cinema distribution would be especially welcome. And finally, can I repeat a request for Tom Tykwer's Wintersleepers? Oh go on, you know you want to really...
We're really sorry that none of your past requests have received positive responses. Surely we must have satisfied some of your needs and desires over the last few years though, even if you didn't express them on the site.
All of which is perhaps just a way to let you down gently...once again! We don't have any immediate plans for more Assayas, the Tavianis film, a Kim Ki-Duk season or Wintersleepers. But you shouldn't think that your posts fall on deaf ears - it's always good to have this sort of input and just because we can't answer positively now doesn't mean that the situation won't change in the near-future.
In the meantime, we'll be starting a new Coming soon thread soon and we look forward to your opinions on what's on it and what's not.
Thanks for the response. But gah!! Have you no taste...?!?
Obviously I don't actually expect FilmFour to start chasing the rights to screen something just because I've asked for it. And yes, FilmFour has satisfied some of my needs and desires over the last few years, but now that I think about it, we are talking about a period of a few years. Once again I'm not so certain that the channel satisfies me on a month-by-month basis. Don't get me wrong: there's some good stuff on FilmFour. It's just that it's mostly stuff that I've seen before.
Oh well. I look forward to the new Coming Soon thread. Here's hoping for lots of great films we don't know. Cheers.
Many thanks for your post and we are very glad you have been enjoying the July documentary season. Unfortunately, we do not currently own the rights to the 2 docs you mention. However, if you are interested in music documentaries in general, we will be showing Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, and Dig! in the near future - we will keep you updated when we have a more definite time and date.
I don’t know if this has been mentioned before. I was wondering if Film Four has considered broadcasting the “Masters Of Horror” series, due to air on American TV in late October.
For those who don’t know, Masters of Horror will consist of totally brand new 13 One Hour long episodes, each one written and directed by THE BEST HORROR FILM MAKERS IN THE WORLD. The directors:
Dario Argento John Landis Tobe Hooper John Carpenter Joe Dante Don Coscarelli George Romero Takashi Miike Stuart Gordon Mick Garris Larry Cohen Lucky McKee William Malone
Being a huge fan of horror, I would love to see this series as soon as is possible. These are fantastic directors that are involved and I’m sure the quality will be high. Anybody else want to see this?
The website is mastersofhorror.net for those who are interested in more info.
