Film series: Badlands 11 January – 2 April 2023

By Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd, curator, film

The harder they come (film still), courtesy Justine Henzell — Still from *The harder they come*, courtesy Justine Henzell

Badlands tours cinema’s outlaw zones

Badlands tours cinema’s outlaw zones. We meet Marilyn Monroe in the Nevada Desert, Bruce Lee on a Hong Kong island fortress and Forest Whitaker restaging the codes of 16th-century Japan on the rooftops of New Jersey. These films celebrate unruly characters, boundary riders and rule breakers. From the bandit capital of Sardinia to Brazil’s arid backcountry, laws and conventions are renegotiated, power redistributed and competing forces struggle to reimpose order or blast apart in spectacular showdowns.

A spaghetti western remakes a Japanese classic; a Senegalese drama quotes Bonnie and Clyde. Overleaping genres and geographical borders, these films cite and rework each other. There are homages and telling subversions. Drawing together revisionist westerns, samurai films and wuxia (martial arts) cinema, via Blaxploitation and New Hollywood, Badlands assembles a wayward canon.

The series screened at the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 11 January to 2 April 2023 in association with the exhibition Outlaw.

Films

11 January – The searchers (director John Ford, US, 1953, 35mm)
15 January – Seven samurai (director Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1954, 35mm)
18 January – Yojimbo (director Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1961, 35mm)
22 January – A fistful of dollars (director Sergio Leone, US, 1964, 35mm)
25 January – The misfits (director John Huston, US 1961, 35mm)
1 February – Bandits of Orgosolo (director Vittorio De Seta, Italy, 1961, 35mm-to-digital)
5 February – Black god, white devil (director Glauber Rocha, Brazil, 1964, 16mm)
8 February – Bonnie and Clyde (director Arthur Penn, US, 1967, 35mm)
12 February – Touki bouki (director Djibril Diop Mambéty, Senegal, 1973, 35mm-to-digital)
15 February – Dragon Inn (director King Hu, Taiwan, 1967, 35mm-to-digital)
19 February – They call her … Cleopatra Wong (director Bobby A Suarez, Singapore and Philippines, 1978, 35mm-to-digital)
22 February – Wanda (director Barbara Loden, US, 1970, 16mm-to-digital)
1 March – Badlands (director Terrence Malick , US, 1973, 35mm)
8 March – The harder they come (director Perry Henzell, Jamaica, 1972, 35mm)
12 March – Thomasine and Bushrod (director Gordon Parks Jr, US, 1974, 35mm-to-digital)
15 March – The 36th chamber of Shaolin (director Lau Kar-leung, Hong Kong, 1978, 35mm)
22 March – Enter the dragon (director Robert Clouse, Hong Kong and US, 1973, 35mm-to-digital)
29 March – Ghost Dog: the way of the samurai (director Jim Jarmusch, US, 1999, 35mm)
2 April – Echo 8 (director Maria Tran, Australia, 2022, digital)