The Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI present
Boefje
When
Wed 7 Sep 2022
46-year-old veteran stage actor Annie van Ees plays a 12-year-old delinquent who, with his best friend and partner in crime Pietje, dreams of ditching his hometown of Rotterdam for the idealised shores of America. Sirk’s last European production before he embarked upon a career in the US was a film he made in the Netherlands whilst in exile from pre-war Nazi Germany. A Dickensian critique of the Dutch class system, with shades of Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock, Sirk explores the societal and human struggles between punitive, cynical and redemptive sensibilities.
35mm print courtesy of Eye Filmmuseum.
Also screening on Wed 7 September
Program
"Life's parade at your fingertips": Douglas Sirk
All I Desire (1953) – Wed 24 Aug, 7pm
Imitation of Life (1959) – Wed 24 Aug, 8.45pm
All That Heaven Allows (1955) – Wed 31 Aug, 7pm
A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) – Wed 31 Aug, 8.40pm
Shockproof (1949) – Wed 7 Sept, 6.30pm
April, April! (1935) – Wed 7 Sept, 8pm
Boefje (1939) – Wed 7 Sept, 9.35pm
About the program
Best known as the director of a string of lavish Hollywood melodramas made for Universal Pictures in the 1950s, Douglas Sirk’s (1897–1987) feature-film career spanned almost 40 films between 1935 and 1959. He was a successful theatre director in Weimar Germany prior to transferring his passion and critical eye to the silver screen, moving from Nazi Germany to the United States in the late 1930s.
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About Melbourne Cinémathèque
Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.
Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven.
