TUK salutes Oscar with films from Hollywood legend

As Hollywood gears up for the 76th Academy Awards on Feb. 29, Teater Utan Kayu (TUK) will present a weekend of Oscar-nominated and winning films from legendary screenwriter and director Billy Wilder.

Born Samuel Wilder into a Jewish family in Sucha in what is now Poland in 1906, Billy Wilder, whose career as a screenwriter began in Germany in 1927, fled the spreading tide of Nazism through France to the United States in 1993.

Wilder's 20 academy award nominations, his fame and popularity among American audiences stretching over several generations, all originated in his gift for taking a solid story line and spinning subtle details into unforgettable, larger-than-life depictions of the vagaries of human existence.

Sometimes dark and cynical, always thought provoking and often outrageously funny, Wilder's films are consistently entertaining even today.

Starting on Friday, Feb. 27, TUK, which is located at Jl. Utan Kayu 68H in East Jakarta, will be showing some of Wilder's best- loved and most provocative films.

Double Indemnity (1944), a dark tale of seduction, betrayal and murder, leads off this tribute to one of America's greatest filmmakers at 4:30 p.m. The Lost Weekend (1945), a disturbing depiction of the hellishness of addiction to alcohol, follows at 7 p.m.

On Feb. 28, the eerie and haunting Sunset Boulevard (1950) will fill TUK's screen with the precipitous descent into madness of an aging and forgotten Hollywood star at 2:30 p.m.

This will be followed at 4:30 p.m. by Wilder's witty and sophisticated twist on the well-known tale of Cinderella in 1954's bright and beautiful Sabrina, played delightfully and unforgettably by Audrey Hepburn. Witness for the Prosecution, (1957), a deftly devious big-screen rendition of a popular Agatha Christie play starring the screen legend Marlene Dietrich, will be shown at 7 p.m.

On Sunday, Feb. 29, the day of the Academy Awards in Hollywood, TUK will present Wilder's bitingly critical and cleverly humorous dissection of the sexual double standards of 1950s America with ..... at 2:30 p.m. Then, at 5 p.m., Paul Agusta, writer and film enthusiast, will lead a discussion of Billy Wilder's five decades of filmmaking.

This weekend of classic Hollywood entertainment will be brought to a close at 7 p.m. with one of Wilder's best loved farces, Some Like it Hot, featuring comedic genius Jack Lemmon, legendary heartthrob Tony Curtis and mythic blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe. -- JP