Masters
Fresh from Cannes, Berlin, and other prestigious international film festivals, these are premieres and rediscoveries of works by the world’s best directors.
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AN
Naomi Kawase / Masters / France, Germany, Japan / 2015 / drama, food / 113 mins
The neighborhood pastry chef gets an unusual applicant to be his assistant: a 76-year-old woman with a surprising knowledge of how to improve the red-bean sweetness of his pancake confections. But with the secret recipe comes secrets about the woman’s background, and the chef is brought to rethink his inspiration.AN
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Tuesday, November 10, 2015 6:15 pmAN
UltraStar Mission Valley
Thursday, November 12, 2015 5:30 pm
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THE ASSASSIN
Hou Hsiao-hsien / Masters / China, Hong Kong, Taiwan / 2015 / drama, experimental, martial arts / 104 mins
The great Hou Hsiao-hsien’s long-awaited martial arts adaptation is a masterpiece of the wuxia spirit. An assassin is ordered to kill her cousin but then scales away from a life of violence. Intricately ordered and immaculately detailed, but always profoundly naturalistic, Hou stuns with a treatise on beauty and justice that is beyond words.THE ASSASSIN
UCSD Calit2 Atkinson Hall Auditorium
Sunday, November 8, 2015 4:15 pm Buy TicketsTHE ASSASSIN
UltraStar Mission Valley
Wednesday, November 11, 2015 8:35 pm Buy Tickets
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THE CASE OF HANA & ALICE
Shunji Iwai / Masters / Japan / 2015 / animation, drama / 100 mins
In this animated prequel to Shunji Iwai’s 2004 hit, we find out that the titular high schoolers first met when they whimsically started looking into the famed murder surrounding a classmate. Their amateur sleuthing becomes a teenage dance of friendship, illuminated by the gentle hues of youth.THE CASE OF HANA & ALICE
UltraStar Mission Valley
Sunday, November 8, 2015 4:30 pm
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CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR
Apichatpong Weerasethakul / Masters / Thailand / 2015 / experimental / 122 mins
Apichatpong Weerasethakul casts another spell on his characters and audience, this time watching over a hospital full of soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness. Past worlds – a school, ancient ruins – animate strange states of longing and dreams held in suspension.CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR
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Friday, November 6, 2015 5:35 pmCEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR
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Saturday, November 7, 2015 5:55 pm
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COUP D’ETAT
Kiju Yoshida / Masters / Japan / 1973 / 110 mins
Kiju Yoshida depicts the 1936 attempted coup against the Japanese government by Ikki Kita, played by the late Rentaro Mikuni. Equal parts political and sensual, the film ties the past to modern Japan in haunting ways.COUP D’ETAT
Museum of Photographic Arts
Thursday, November 12, 2015 6:30 pm
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EROS + MASSACRE
Kiju Yoshida / Masters / Japan / 1969 / 202 mins
Kiju Yoshida's legendary biopic of anarchist Sakae Osugi and his sensually-complicated relationships with three women. Epic in size and ambition, Yoshida tells the story of a man who is the image of modern Japan.EROS + MASSACRE
Museum of Photographic Arts
Wednesday, November 11, 2015 6:30 pm
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FLOWERS OF TAIPEI: TAIWAN NEW CINEMA
Hsieh Chinlin / Masters / Taiwan / 2014 / documentary / 109 mins
Some of the world’s most famous directors and curators debate, reminisce, and celebrate “Taiwan New Cinema,” the film movement that reshaped cultural dialogue in 1980s Taiwan and introduced groundbreaking new talents like Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang.FLOWERS OF TAIPEI: TAIWAN NEW CINEMA
UCSD Calit2 Atkinson Hall Auditorium
Sunday, November 8, 2015 2:10 pm
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LA LA LA AT ROCK BOTTOM
Yamashita Nobuhiro / Masters / Japan / 2015 / drama, musical / 103 mins
An amnesiac awakens knowing nothing about himself except that he can sing! His process of self-discovery, enabled by an ambitious teen at a recording studio, brings him face-to-face with buried demons and a talent that can lift him to redemption. From the director of Linda Linda Linda.LA LA LA AT ROCK BOTTOM
UltraStar Mission Valley
Saturday, November 7, 2015 8:50 pmLA LA LA AT ROCK BOTTOM
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Monday, November 9, 2015 8:50 pm
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LOVE & PEACE
Sion Sono / Masters / Japan / 2015 / comedy, musical / 117 mins
From the warped mind of Sion Sono comes one of his most entertaining films to date. An office nerd has glam-rock dreams but only his pet turtle gives him any encouragement. Things blow up (literally) when a magic spell turns the sewers and the city into a musical fantasy-world.LOVE & PEACE
UltraStar Mission Valley
Monday, November 9, 2015 6:00 pmLOVE & PEACE
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Wednesday, November 11, 2015 5:50 pmLOVE & PEACE
UltraStar Mission Valley
Thursday, November 12, 2015 9:50 pm
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MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART
Jia Zhang-ke / Masters / China, France, Japan / 2015 / drama / 131 mins
A poignant epic spanning decades and continents, Jia Zhang-ke’s latest masterpiece follows a love triangle from its dance-infused beginnings to its jet-set millennial melancholy. Jia explores China’s past, present, and future as only he can: with a canto-pop heart and a bleeding love for ordinary people strewn apart.MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART
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Friday, November 6, 2015 8:55 pmMOUNTAINS MAY DEPART
UltraStar Mission Valley
Monday, November 9, 2015 5:30 pm
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NO NO SLEEP
Tsai Ming-liang / Masters / China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan / 2015 / experimental / 35 mins
Tsai Ming-liang’s walker drifts from the Tokyo streets into the lush quiet of a bath house. No one truly sleeps alone under Tsai’s somnambulistic spells.
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NO NO SLEEP + THE PALACE ON THE SEA + CURTAINS
Masters / 53 mins
Three shorts by outsiders (a Malay Chinese in Taiwan, a Taiwanese in America, and a Burmese Chinese in Taiwan) peer with active eyes into lives and settings unseen.In This Program: CURTAINS, THE PALACE ON THE SEA, NO NO SLEEP
NO NO SLEEP
UCSD Calit2 Atkinson Hall Auditorium
Sunday, November 8, 2015 1:00 pm
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OFFICE
Johnnie To / Masters / China, Hong Kong / 2015 / musical / 117 mins
Megastars Chow Yun-fat and Sylvia Chang engage in power-plays, sideline deals, and other dubious games of high finance. In any other hands, this would be a routine takedown of corruption. In Johnnie To’s, it’s a high-flying musical with pop stars and living legends spinning corporate intrigue to dizzying heights.OFFICE
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Sunday, November 8, 2015 8:50 pmOFFICE
UltraStar Mission Valley
Tuesday, November 10, 2015 5:45 pm
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TAXI
Jafar Panahi / Masters / Iran / 2015 / experimental, hybrid documentary / 82 mins
Jafar Panahi’s third film while banned from filmmaking is a shocker of unwavering mastery. With an almost cheeky love of the camera, Panahi mounts several camcorders in a taxi he drives around town, interacting with passengers and brazenly putting to the test the ethics of cinema in urban Iran.TAXI
UltraStar Mission Valley
Thursday, November 12, 2015 6:45 pm
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THANATOS, DRUNK
Chang Tso-chi / Masters / Taiwan / 2015 / drama, LGBT / 107 mins
The aptly-named Rat crawls through a subcultural, emotionally subterranean world left to him by an alcoholic mother and shared with a brother who has just returned from the United States. Chang Tso-chi’s despairing, shockingly-felt drama plays like a woozy dream interrupted by bouts of emotional acuity.THANATOS, DRUNK
UCSD Calit2 Atkinson Hall Auditorium
Saturday, November 7, 2015 5:10 pmTHANATOS, DRUNK
UltraStar Mission Valley
Monday, November 9, 2015 8:30 pm
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THE WHISPERING STAR
Sion Sono / Masters / Japan / 2015 / science fiction / 100 mins
A delivery-robot travels from planet to planet dropping off packages for human clients. Perched behind her intergalactic console, she starts to wonder about the worlds of humans, so far apart in space, so far away in each other’s memories.THE WHISPERING STAR
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Friday, November 6, 2015 7:10 pmTHE WHISPERING STAR
UltraStar Mission Valley
Saturday, November 7, 2015 5:15 pm
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