It Happened One Night
Frank Capra
USA – 1934Cast: Clark Gable (Peter), Claudette Colbert (Ellie), Walter Connolly (Andrews), Roscoe Karns (Shapeley), Jameson Thomas (Westley)
Screenplay: Robert Riskin
Cinematography: Joseph Walker
Production: Columbia Pictures Corporation, Frank Capra Productions
Language: English
Duration: 105 min
Color: Black and White

Synopsis: Rich heiress Ellie Andrews has married against her father’s wishes and manages to get away from him by jumping off the family yacht in Florida. While her father annuls the marriage and hires a detective agency to track her down, she tries to make her way back to her lover, socialite aviator “King” Westley in New York City. Travelling by bus, she meets unemployed journalist Peter Warne—cynical, but charismatic. He’s quickly onto her real identity and it’s pretty obvious that she’s a spoiled brat. She has no money and he decides to help her get to New York thinking he’ll get a good story out of it. Nearing their destination, as their brief adventure comes to a close, they find that they are reluctantly in love with each-other and are afraid to admit it.

Johnny Got His Gun
Dalton Trumbo
USA – 1971Cast: Timothy Bottoms (Joe Bonham), Kathy Fields (Kareen), Marsha Hunt (Joe’s Mother), Jason Robards (Joe’s Father), Donald Sutherland (Christ)
Screenplay: Dalton Trumbo
Cinematography: Jules Brenner
Production: World Entertainment
Language: English
Duration: 112 min
Color: Black and White, Color

Synopsis: On the last day of the Great War (WWI), Joe Bonham is hit by a mortar shell. He wastes away in a hospital bed in a fate worse than death: a quadruple amputee who has lost his eyes, ears, mouth and nose, he feels nothing but pain, yet remains fully conscious. Reliving his life through strange reveries, unable to distinguish whether he is awake or dreaming, one day Joe discovers a unique way to communicate with his caregivers.

Night Train
Pociag
Jerzy Kawalerowicz
Poland – 1959Cast: Lucyna Winnicka (Marta), Leon Niemczyk (Jerzy), Teresa Szmigielówna (Lawyer’s wife), Zbigniew Cybulski (Staszek)
Screenplay: Jerzy Lutowski, Jerzy Kawalerowicz
Cinematography: Jan Laskowski
Production: Zespól Filmowy “Kadr”
Language: Polish
Duration: 99 min
Color: Black and White

Synopsis: Two strangers, Jerzy and Marta, accidentally end up holding tickets for the same sleeping compartment on an overnight train to the Baltic Sea coast. Also on board is Marta’s spurned lover, who will not leave her alone. When the police board the train in search of a murderer on the loose, rumors abound and everything seems to point toward one of the main characters as the culprit.

Sullivan’s Travels
Preston Sturges
USA – 1941Cast: Joel McCrea (John L. Sullivan), Veronica Lake (The Girl), Robert Warwick (Mr. LeBrand), William Demarest (Mr. Jones)
Screenplay: Preston Sturges
Cinematography: John F. Seitz
Production: Paramount Pictures
Language: English
Duration: 91 min
Color: Black and White

Synopsis: John Lloyd Sullivan is a spoiled but successful Hollywood director who, after years of specializing in fluffy comedies, decides to make a serious film with a social message. When the studio executives point out that he cannot possibly know anything about the plight of the downtrodden, he decides to experience adversity himself by adopting, temporarily of course, the life of a tramp. It is apparent to most that Sully does not belong on the street, and he fails to blend in after repeated attempts until, quite by chance, he meets a kind would-be actress who offers to help him navigate life among the poor classes. Sully’s luck takes a turn and his wishes to experience adversity are realized when he is arrested for driving his own car, robbed and dumped unconscious in a train, and sentenced to a labor camp. He finally begins to understand the encouraging role that comedy and escapism play in the miserable lives of the destitute.

The Swimmer
Frank Perry, Sydney Pollack
USA – 1968Cast: Burt Lancaster (Ned Merrill), Janet Landgard (Julie Hooper), Janice Rule (Shirley Abbott), Tony Bickley (Donald Westerhazy), Marge Champion (Peggy Forsburgh)
Screenplay: Eleanor Perry
Cinematography: David L. Quaid
Production: Columbia Pictures Corporation, Horizon Pictures, Dover Productions
Language: English
Duration: 95 min
Color: Color

Synopsis: One summer day in an upper class neighbourhood of suburban New York City, a middle aged Ned Merrill appears in the back yard of one of his acquaintances. A former stock broker who had suffered a mental breakdown, he remains wholly delusional about his current situation. As an eccentric feat of athletic performance, Ned is determined to swim every pool through the valley between here and his home, along several miles of what he calls Lucinda’s River, after his wife. At each pool, Ned stops and chats with his neighbors, and each stop reveals more of Ned’s past. While his body is fit and full of energy, his infirm mind has constructed a series of explanations for his bizarre obsession: he is not driving because he is on a swimming marathon; his wife and daughters are not with him because they are playing tennis. As he draws closer to his final destination, those who know him better begin to put him down: an alcoholic, a nutjob, a cheating husband and absentee father. When he finally reaches his dilapidated estate—sold months ago—the Swimmer begins to shiver from hypothermia as rain sets in.

The Time Machine
George Pal
USA – 1960Cast: Rod Taylor (H. George Wells), Alan Young (David Filby / James Filby), Yvette Mimieux (Weena), Sebastian Cabot (Dr. Philip Hillyer)
Screenplay: David Duncan
Cinematography: Paul Vogel
Production: George Pal Productions Galaxy Films Inc.
Language: English
Duration: 103 min
Color: Color

Synopsis: Arriving late and disheveled to his own dinner party, a scientist informs his friends of his recent tests involving the Time Machine, an invention of which they remain skeptical as they do not see any practical use for the device even if it works. His findings reveal that, although the machine may be stationary in space, changes to the location over time may affect travel. Neither pilot nor device are immune to the elements, or to the intentions of others. The scientist tells his friends that the Utopian society of the future that he longed to find does not exist. Instead, human civilization several thousand years into the future consists of the maleficent subterranean morlocks and the infantile surface dwelling eloi. At a first glance, the eloi lead a carefree life, but he soon finds out that there is a sinister design behind their welfare. However, the scientist also discovers that love is one element that can remain unchanged by time and can bloom over the spread of millennia.

Tongpan
Paijong Laisakul, Euthana Mukdasanit
Thailand – 1977Cast: Peter Bell (Hydro-electricity expert), Surachai Chantimatorn (Minstrel), Ong-art Ponethon (Tongpan), Khamsing Srinork (Academic)
Screenplay: Paijong Laisagoon, Mike Morrow, Khamsing Srinawk
Cinematography: Frank Green
Production: Isan Film Group
Language: Thai
Duration: 63 min
Color: Black and White

Synopsis: This docudrama recreates a seminar that took place in Northeast Thailand in 1975 to discuss the proposed Pa-Mong Dam on the Mekong. A West-funded hydroelectric company invites the villagers to attend a stakeholder meeting full of sophisticated diagrammatic visuals which aim to persuade them of the wonderful benefits of the dam. Interwoven are sequences depicting a poor farmer, Tongpan, who has already lost his land to a similar project some years prior, and now struggles to make ends meet on a rented patch of land. Tongpan is recruited by a student activist to attend the seminar and to speak for all those who have been dispossessed and left to fend for themselves in the name of progress. He attends the seminar, but the hardships back home weigh heavily on him, and when it comes time for him to speak, he is already gone.

Touki Bouki (The Journey of the Hyena)
Djibril Diop Mambéty
Senegal – 1973Cast: Magaye Niang (Mory), Mareme Niang (Anta), Aminata Fall (Aunt Oumy), Ousseynou Diop (Charlie)
Screenplay: Djibril Diop Mambéty
Cinematography: Georges Bracher
Production: Cinegrit Studio Kankourama
Language: Wolof, Arabic, French
Duration: 85 min
Color: Color

Synopsis: Mory is a cowherd who rides a motorcycle mounted with a bovine skull; Anta is a university student. They meet in the capital Dakar and decide that Senegal and Africa are no place for two adventurous and modern young people. Alienated and disaffected, they long to go to Paris, and set to carrying out various con schemes to get enough money for the trip. During one such exploit, Mory steals clothing and money from a wealthy gay man who has just picked him up, and together with Anta they book passage on a ship to France.

2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick
UK / USA – 1968Cast: Keir Dullea (Dr. Dave Bowman), Gary Lockwood (Dr. Frank Poole), William Sylvester (Dr. Heywood R. Floyd), Daniel Richter (Moon-Watcher)
Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke
Cinematography: Geoffrey Unsworth
Production: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Stanley Kubrick Productions
Language: English, Russian
Duration: 149 min
Color: Color

Synopsis: Is life on Earth the result of an accidental combination of carbon-fixing mechanisms, and do those mechanisms—organic matter—grow, survive, and evolve for some greater purpose than mere existence? When a large black monolith is found beneath the surface of the moon, the scientific community assumes that it has been intentionally buried, left as a guiding marker by a superior alien intelligence. An interplanetary expedition comprised of the brightest minds is mounted on a state-of-the-art spacecraft, the S.S. Discovery, to determine the point of origin of the mysterious artefact. It is assumed that the quest will bring the crew in contact with higher knowledge, perhaps to the next stage of evolution, but little do they know that on their very ship the self-adaptive Artificial Intelligence HAL 9000, a human-made supercomputer in charge of life support and navigation systems, is developing its own form of rudimentary self-awareness. For the synthetic entity HAL and captains Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, survival and evolution may not need advanced alien intervention, as they learn that for all of its techno-scientific hubris, the human species is still very much in its infancy.

27 Down
Awtar Krishna Kaul
India – 1974Cast: Om Shivpuri (Anna, Sanjay’s father), Rakhee Gulzar (Shalini), M.K. Raina (Sanjay), Rekha Sabnis (Sanjay’s wife), Sudhir Dalvi (Sanjay’s friend)
Screenplay: Awtar Krishna Kaul
Cinematography: Apurba Kishore Bir
Production: National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC)
Language: Hindi
Duration: 115 min
Color: Black and White

Synopsis: On 27 Down, the Bombay-Varanasi Express line, an older Sanjay is on a pilgrimage journey. He recalls episodes from his life as familiar landscapes emerge along the way. As a young boy, his father, Anna, had been severely crippled by a work-related accident at the railway. Having grown old enough to work, Sanjay gives up his dream of becoming an artist in order to support his family and, with Anna’s help, takes up a job as a ticket checker. He meets a Life Insurance Corporation employee, Shalini, on the suburban train, and after a few encounters they fall in love. Sanjay begins to see life in new ways, but when his traditionalist father finds out about the relationship, he quickly arranges a marriage with a girl from the village. Sanjay accepts the match, reluctantly, but is unable to get Shalini out of his mind and heart.