New Film Club in Cluj
21/04/2010 05:07 PM

Béla Lugosi Film Club

To pick Béla Lugosi as the figurehead for a film club is a risky but also a self-aware choice. Risky, because now everyone will believe we only screen old Universal horror flicks - but no. Self-aware, because he's a great iconic figure: there are very few names in the world which are in the same time Transylvanian, Hungarian and Film, too. (Face it, Michael Curtiz film club would sound just plain dumb in these circumstances.) And Lugosi's most famous performance, count Dracula, was of a Transylvanian, too, and - it's a shame that so few know this fact, albeit Bram Stoker put it down plain enough - a Szekely.
Well, this film club sets out to dig up some old treasures buried deep by the plateau movements of film history; works that too few people know in contrast to how many people are supposed to. Films that we can now compare to the canonized film history taught in school, films that forebode something, films that we can exclaim in surprise to: "look, this is where Tarantino stole from!", films that were lost, but now are found, or they were always here, but somehow nobody ever pinned up their sleeve. Cult movies, rarities, obscure vintages.
Followed by the compulsory optional debate and discussion.
Here are only a few of the authors' names: Tod Browning, Alex Cox, Fernando Arrabal, Marco Ferreri, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jan Nemec, Julie Taymor, Mario Bava, Bertrand Tavernier; but we will screen rare stuff from some more well-known names as Lindsay Anderson, Werner Herzog, Robert Altman, Luis Buñuel, Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Every feature comes with a short, be it a full movie shoved in twenty minutes or a joyful five-minute exercise/experiment from Kenneth Anger, Alain Resnais, Jacques Tati, D. A. Pennebaker or good old Dusan Makavejev. And the list goes on...

Every Wednesday from seven o'clock at the Spritz café (David Ferenc street 15. behind Sora in the center). Soon also open-air, dusk-till-dawn and other surprise projections.

More information about the programme of the film club on the Béla Lugosi Film Club Facebook page.