Open-air cinema at Congress Square 2017
The Open-air Cinema Congress Square, modelled on the grand open-air cinemas adorning the town squares of Bologna and Locarno, was presented for the first time on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of city cinema Kinodvor in 2014. Continuing this celebration of cinema and cinemas, the capital each year offers its citizens and visitors free screenings of timeless film classics, marking significant anniversaries and events in cinema history and the city of Ljubljana.
In 2017, the Open-air Cinema Congress Square opened with the digital restoration of Wings of Desire, the hypnotic city symphony which earned Wim Wenders Best Director honours at Cannes in 1987.
Akira Kurosawa’s seminal classic Rashomon, which won the Golden Lion at Venice and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1951, was part of the project Japan in Our Midst – JAPOM / The Spirit of the Samurai, and screened in tribute to the great Japanese actor Toshirô Mifune (1920–1997). In celebration of the Plečnik Year, the screening was accompanied by the short film debut of the great Slovenian director Matjaž Klopčič, On the Sunny Side of the Street.
The new digital restoration of The Graduate, one of the wittiest Generation Gap films ever made, which launched the career of actor Dustin Hoffman and earned Mike Nichols an Academy Award for Best Director, was screened in celebration of the film’s 50th anniversary.
Wings of Desire Der Himmel über Berlin
Wim Wenders / Germany / 1987 / 128 min / Hebrew, Japanese, German, Spanish, Turkish, English, French
Wim Wenders’s hypnotic city symphony is a melancholic elegy to a still divided Berlin, and marked the director’s homecoming as his first German film following eight years in America.
Rashomon Rashômon
Akira Kurosawa / Japan / 1950 / 88 min / Japanese
A woman is raped in a forest by a bandit, and her samurai husband murdered. In court the dead warrior, communicating through a medium, his wife, the bandit (Toshirô Mifune) and a spying woodcutter provide contradicting accounts of the crimes that were committed. But whose version can be believed?
The Graduate The Graduate
Mike Nichols / USA / 1967 / 106 min / English
A disillusioned college graduate Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) returns to his wealthy parents’ suburban home with no idea what to do with his life. He is seduced by the provocative Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft), the wife of his father’s business partner, and the affair deepens his confusion when he meets the girl of his dreams: Mrs Robinson’s daughter.