At Film Space on Saturdays at 7 pm
April is “The Month of Feel Out of Place” at Film Space. 
Film Space is to the right and in the back of the CMU Art Museum, in the Media Arts and Design building across from the ballet school. Showings are in a classroom on the second floor or on the roof, weather permitting. A contribution is requested in the donation box at the entrance – you should leave at least 20 baht. Well worth supporting.
At Film Space Saturday, April 10, 7 pm: The Wall (Pink Floyd) (1982) by Alan Parker – 95 mins – UK, Drama/ Music. The film tells the story of rock singer "Pink" who is sitting in his hotel room in Los Angeles, burnt out from the music business and only able to perform on stage with the help of drugs. Based on the 1979 double album "The Wall" by Pink Floyd, the film begins in Pink's youth where he is crushed by the love of his mother. Several years later he is punished by the teachers in school because he is starting to write poems. Slowly he begins to build a wall around himself to be protected from the world outside. The film shows all this in massive and epic pictures until the very end where he tears down the wall and breaks free. A visually evocative cult film based upon the music and visions of Pink Floyd. Relationships, drug abuse, sex, childhood, WWII, and fascism combine in a disturbing mix of episodic live action and lyrical animation. Generally favorable reviews: 65 out of 100.
According to the Internet Movie Database, director Alan Parker walked out on this project many times, probably due to an ego clash with Roger Waters, the bass player, co-lead vocalist, lyricist, and principal songwriter in the rock band Pink Floyd. Waters was annoyed at Parker, who wanted to make it a cult film.
Many of the extras in the "Run Like Hell" and "Waiting for the Worms" fascist concert sequences were actual Neo-Nazis cast for realism. They could have been Pink Floyd fans, but they were selected because of their white supremacy and not because they were fans. It seemed that things were getting frighteningly out of control when, on one day during filming, several of them showed up with the double-hammer insignia shaved into the sides of their heads. Later, a fascist group did spring up in the late-80s dubbed the 'Hammerskins' with this logo as their insignia, much to the dismay of the director and Roger Waters, whose intentions were to make the portrayal anti-fascist.
In general, the film was viewed as a disappointment by the band and the film's key crew members. Roger Waters feels that the film is too depressing, and does not let the audience sympathize with Pink. Director Alan Parker feels that the result was amateurish, calling it "the most expensive student film ever made."
Rotten Tomatoes: Synopsis: Loosely based on the life story of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's original front man (who was kicked out of the band for his bizarre and disturbing behavior only to go insane shortly thereafter), Pink Floyd: The Wall stars Bob Geldof as Pink, a mentally damaged man who has gone from a hopeful child artist to a burned-out rock star drifting away from reality. As Pink festers in his hotel room, elements of his abusive childhood come back to haunt him until he begins to descend into absolute madness. Director Alan Parker's intense and fully realized film interpretation of the English band's classic album The Wall melds whimsical fantasy with dark Shakespearean drama. The film makes innovative use of sets, costumes, and special effects to create a unique surrealistic strangeness worthy of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali's Un chien andalou. Both disturbing and bedazzling, Pink Floyd: The Wall is a must-see film for any music lover.
NYTimes, Janet Maslin: Mr. Parker has brought plenty of energy to this project, and he has done his resourceful best to make it an overpowering experience. However, not every viewer may care to be overpowered in quite this way. The Wall is a shameless all-out assault on the senses, rising to crescendos of grandiose fantasy. When Pink (Bob Geldof) thinks of battle (his father died in war), he imagines dozens of bleeding corpses and equates combat soldiers with fans charging into a concert. After he flies into a fit and wrecks his hotel room, he arranges the bits of records and drugs and smashed guitars in beautiful little patterns, as if this were a shrine. When he thinks of himself as the tender young Pink, it is with the greatest of reverence. When he envisions an all-powerful Pink, he sees himself as a Nazi-like dictator.
Whatever can be done with this, Mr. Parker has done and then some. His The Wall is a good-looking film, and it has no shortage of nerve. When he puts an entire schoolchildren's choir on a conveyor belt leading into a meat grinder as they sing, ''We don't need no education,'' he is being nothing if not bold.
Filmcritic.com, Christopher Null: a stylistic and deeply atmospheric drama, along with Tommy the only decent rock opera on film. Set to music by Pink Floyd's Roger Waters (and performed so memorably by the band--the soundtrack album rates as one of the greatest musical experiences available), the film also makes absolutely no sense without its songs -- try watching based on the spare subtitles alone and you'll be totally baffled. The blur of images, from extreme close-ups to far-out animations don't help your mind, but that's the point.
At Film Space Saturday, April 17, 7 pm: Red Desert / Il deserto rosso (1964) by Michelangelo Antonioni– 120 mins – Italy/ France, Drama. Starring: Monica Vitti, Richard Harris. Cold, rain, and fog surround a plant in Ravenna. Factory waste pollutes local lakes; hulking anonymous ships pass or dock and raise quarantine flags. Giuliana, a housewife married to the plant manager, Ugo, is mentally ill, hiding it from her husband as best she can. She meets Zeller, an engineer en route to Patagonia to set up a factory. He pursues her, they join friends for a dinner party of sexual play, then, while Ugo is away on business, she fears that her son has polio. When she discovers the boy is faking, she goes to Zeller, panicked that no one needs her. He takes advantage of her distress, and she is again alone and ill. Reviews: Universal acclaim: 84 out of 100.
Rotten Tomatoes: A post industrialist masterpiece from director Michelangelo Antonioni, his first film in color, stars Monica Vitti as Giuliana, the disturbed wife of a factory owner, Ugo (Carlo Chionetti). Antonioni creates a bleak environment of the Italian countryside, where the natural landscape surrounding Ugo's factory is clouded in fog and covered in black pollution. The low scratching and churning sound of the factory machines is a constant throughout the film, set off by the electronic beeps and strange female singing that Giuliana--who is losing her mind--hears in her head. Supposedly recovering from shock after a minor car accident, Giuliana's dementia isn't getting any better; new developments in technology, production, and industry, which fascinate Ugo and his business associate, Corrado (Richard Harris), are foreign and threatening to Giuliana. However, Ugo is gentle and loving to Giuliana, giving her the freedom to wander wherever her fragile psyche leads her. Corrado is inexplicably drawn to Giuliana, and he develops a desperate, awkward friendship with her that eventually leads to a small affair. In the end, the dank monotony of the port where they live only alienates Giuliana further, sending her deeper into her delirium. A cold and haunting film with grating sound effects and odd visuals that illustrate Giuliana's psychosis, Red Desert is an Antonioni standout that stays in the viewer's mind long after the movie ends.
Chiang Mai Mail, Mark Whitman: See Antonioni’s Red Desert. Made in 1964 this is the oldest film in the season and still one of the most intriguing and ‘modern’.
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