The Studio

“FUR - An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus”
by Steven Shainberg with Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr

Come and join us for a casual film night on
Wed, 13th of Feb, 8pm
entrance free

“Fur” could have just as easily been called “Arbus in Wonderland”. As Diane Arbus, the influential photographer who changed how the art world viewed photography’s role in modern expression, Nicole Kidman steps through a looking glass of sorts. Diane is a New York housewife trying to fit into her uptight uniform. She comes from a wealthy family of furriers, and her husband runs a successful photography studio. Yet, Diane has strange thoughts she struggles to keep inside. When her new upstairs neighbor, Lionel (Robert Downey Jr.) moves in late at night, under cover of darkness and wearing an elaborate mask that covers his head and face, he and Diane lock eyes through her apartment window–one of many voyeuristic moments in the movie, of looking where one shouldn’t and being caught, sometimes willfully so. They are instantly intrigued by one another, and before anyone realizes what is happening, Diane has taken her camera up to Lionel’s apartment to take his portrait.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (International: English title), Scaphandre et le papillon,Le(France) by: Julian Schnabel’s

Come and join us for a casual film night on
Wed, 20th of Feb, 8pm
entrance free

Celebrated painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel’s third feature finds him reaching new artistic heights with this audacious and personal biopic, based on the best-selling memoir of the same name. The film tells the remarkable tale of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), the world-renowned editor of French ELLE magazine, who suffered a stroke and was paralyzed by the inexplicable “locked in” syndrome at the age of 43. Bauby’s only way of communicating with the outside world was by blinking with one eye, and after several dedicated helpers–a string of impossibly beautiful women (Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze, Olatz Lopez Garamendia, Anne Consigny)–helped him to speak through this seemingly irrelevant gesture, he began to produce the words that would form his memoir. Along the way, as he swam in and out of consciousness, memories from his past swelled into the present, resulting in a cinematic experience that is at once heartbreaking and hopeful. Schnabel somehow manages to convey Bauby’s internal life with remarkable clarity, employing first-person perspective, striking cinematography (by the always great Janusz Kaminski), and Amalric’s pained, life-affirming monologues. The result is a wholly original experience, a painful and tender portrait of a life that is made all the more exhilarating because of its close proximity to death.

Wednesday 7th November 8pm

Free entry and 10 RMB drinks