PULARUMVARE CINEMA

Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland (2011)

2012-02-09T16:27:00.001+05:30

Almanya - Willkommen in Deutschland (2011)

Director: Yasemin Samdereli
Country: Germany
Runtime: 101 min

On 10 September, 1964, Germany’s one-millionth ‘guest worker’ was welcomed. Spanning a period of no less than forty-five years, this film by sisters Yasemin Samdereli (director) and Nesrin Samdereli (screenplay) tells the story of guest worker number one-million-and-one – a man named Hüseyin Yilmaz and his family. ‘Who or what am I – German or Turk?’ asks six-year-old Cenk Yilmaz when neither his Turkish nor his German schoolmates pick him for their respective football teams. In an attempt to comfort Cenk, his 22-year-old cousin Canan tells him the story of their grandfather Hüseyin, who came to Germany at the end of the sixties as a ‘guest worker’ and who later brought his wife and children to ‘Almanya’. Germany had long since become the family’s home when without warning one night, Hüseyin surprises his loved ones with the news that he has bough a house in Turkey and now wants to return to the old country. Refusing to brook the slightest opposition, the entire family set off for Turkey. This marks the beginning of a journey full of memories, arguments and reconciliations – until, that is, the family trip takes an unexpected turn … The young filmmakers have plundered their own memories of childhood and youth for this, their cinematic debut. Yasemin Samdereli: “Even at an early age, we were always struck by the way people found it amusing whenever we told them stories about our childhood: that Nesrin for instance once played German carnival figure ‘Funkenmariechen’ and used to belt out Catholic hymns fervently during mass. Or that I used to play the flute in a marching band and wrote my name Jasmin – until my second grade teacher torpedoed my attempts to hoodwink her.” –Berlinale

Who Wasn't There (2010)

2012-02-09T14:08:00.001+05:30

Who Wasn't There (2010)

Director: Ramil Salakhutdinov
Country: Russia
Runtime: 1 hour, 47 minutes

A meeting of two characters happened in a deep forest, on the bank of a small pond, while it was raining heavily. This meeting is a node of the whole story. Once a gypsy predicted death to the main character. He believes her, for all her predictions have come true. The fear of death makes him look for solution and he dares to take part in an experiment which is fantastic in real life. He asks the doctor to help him in avoiding death. And finally the doctor agrees…

Gandu (2010)

2012-02-08T17:36:00.001+05:30

Gandu (2010)

Director: Kaushik Mukherjee
Country: India
Runtime: 85 min

Gandu hates his life. He hates his mother. Gandu raps out his hate, anger, dirt and filth of his existence. He and his rickshawpuller friend enter the world of smack, rap, porn and horror. Reality and fiction, surreal and bizarre come together. Can Gandu survive?

Captains of the Sands(2011)

2012-02-06T17:10:00.001+05:30

Captains of the Sands
Directors: Cecília Amado, Guy Gonçalves

Country: Brazil
Runtime:96 min

Captains of the Sands - Pedro Bala, Professor, Cat, Legless, and Dora Good Way - Jorge Amado are characters that once created to dwell forever in the memory of his readers. Abandoned by their families, they are forced to fight to survive the streets of Salvador. More now than ever, the story of immortal characters of world literature moves us and inspires deeply.

The Artist (2011)

2012-01-24T19:41:00.000+05:30

The Artist (2011)

Director: Michel Hazanavicius
Country: France | Belgium
Runtime: 1 hour 36 minutes

The Artist is an infinitely charming, and incredibly clever homage to the Golden Age of silent film: as authentic and believable as if it were made circa 1927, right from the opening credits which are so subtly unquestionable that you’re immediately gripped by the glamour and romance of the era, before we’ve even met a character. When we do, it’s Jean Dujardin’s George Valentin, an intoxicatingly charming mega-star of the silent period, who has the whole Hollywood world on their knees before him – the film subsequently charts his peek, before the advent of the talkies arrives, and he finds himself cast out overnight in favor of the new breed of speaking stars. Along the way he meets Berenice Bejo’s Peppy Miller, a wannabe who miraculously finds her way to stardom when she bumps into George during a photo shoot, and takes her fate in her own hands to ensure she makes a career of the brief fame that follows.

Travelling With Pets (2007)

2012-01-24T13:19:00.000+05:30

Travelling With Pets (2007)

Director: Vera Storozheva
Country: Russia
Runtime: 1 hour, 36 minutes

Hatalie was 16, living in a foster home, when she was bought by a rough and unstable man. They lived at a remote station, and their loveless marriage lasted 19 years, until he died. Now free, Natalie is discovering her first love when she meets Sergei.

Guilty Of Romance (2011)

2012-01-23T15:36:00.001+05:30

Guilty Of Romance (2011)

Director: Shion Sono
Country: Japan
Runtime:144 min

On a rainy day, a woman's dead boy is found in an apartment. Female detective Kazuko (Miki Mizuno) is in charge of the case. Although Kazuko has a happy life with her family, she can't disconnect her relationship with her lover. While trying to unravel the mysterious murder case, Kazuko finds out the secret of university assistant professor Mitsuko (Makoto Togashi) and Izumi (Megumi Kagurazaka) who is a devoted housewife. Her husband is a popular novelist.

Happy, Happy (2010)

2012-01-20T17:16:00.000+05:30

Happy, Happy (2010)

Director: Anne Sewitsky
Country: Norway
Runtime: 1 hour, 28 minutes

Family is the most important thing in the world to Kaja. She is an eternal optimist in spite of living with a man who would rather go hunting with the boys, and who refuses to have sex with her because she isn't particularly attractive anymore. Whatever. That's life. But when the perfect couple moves in next door, Kaja struggles to keep her emotions in check. Not only do these successful, beautiful, exciting people sing in a choir; they have also adopted a child - from Ethiopia. These new neighbors open a new world to Kaja, with consequences for everyone involved. And when Christmas comes around, it becomes evident that nothing will ever be like before - even if Kaja tries her very best.

Anarchy in Zirmunai (2010)

2012-01-20T09:31:00.002+05:30

Anarchy in Zirmunai (2010)

Director: Saulius Drunga
Country: Lithuania
Runtime: 1 hour 28 minutes

A young provincial girl, Vile, moves to the city with great expectations about a higher education. She rents an apartment in which she notices a hand-made sticker with anarchy symbols on it, and she meets her landlord, Sandra, a boyish looking girl always wearing a t-shirt with anarchy symbols. The two girls get along so well that since her very first day in the city vile finds a perfect guide in the strong and optimistic Sandra. Under Sandras anarchist philosophy and way of life, vile gets rid of her provincial shyness and fears until she incidentally meets a member of the citys punk community who will change her mind and make her realize that Sandras anarchy has nothing to do with alternative underground culture or politics.

Las Acacias (2011)

2012-01-17T11:34:00.001+05:30

Las Acacias (2011)

Director: Pablo Giorgelli
Country: Argentina
Runtime:82min

Rubén is a lonely truck driver who has been covering for years the motorway from Asunción del Paraguay to Buenos Aires, carrying wood. However, today's journey will be different. This morning, in a motorway stop near Asunción, Jacinta shows up an hour later to begin a journey by track which is going to take her to Buenos Aires. Wath's more, Rubén finds out at that very moment that little Anahí, who's 8 months old, will travel with them- It is not the best beginning. As kilometres go by, th relationship between Rubén and Jacinta will grow. they will slowly meet and sip into each other's soul. None of them talks much about their lives. None asks much either. It's a few word journey but it is not a silent one.

Adventurers (2008)

2012-01-14T16:52:00.001+05:30

Adventurers (2008)

Director: Béla Paczolay
Country: Hungary
Runtime: 1 hour 49 minutes

Kalandorok is about 3 men, a Transylvanian ex-teacher grandpa, his loser musician son and his even more loser grandson. The grandpa asks for help as her wife has gone mad, so his son & grandson leave for Transylvania with all their unspoken difficulties and lies. Through the road movie you can catch a glimpse of Transylvania (which is beautiful), its people and see good actors in good roles in a well-constructed story.

If you ask an erudite film admirer about Hungarian cinema,a definite reply would surely concern its over the top,sad,grim films made during the harsh times of communism.This is not something which Hungarian people enjoyed as in the past even their comedy films had a trace of communism in them.Now the situation is different for Hungarian cinema as current times have changed enormously and Hungarian nation has chosen to embrace capitalism and free market economy.All these changes have had a very significant impact on Hungarian cinema and various positive results are being made evident in new films which are coming out of Hungary.It is in this sense that we can all hail Paczolay Bela's film "Kalandorok" as a true comedy film from East European nation of Hungary.This film is very much relevant to all of us in the current period of economic turmoil where each penny is spent wisely by people all over the world.Kalandorok shows the economic mess in which some ordinary Hungarians have put themselves.The film is a grim reminder of how this economic upheaval impacts their family ties. Kalandorok can also be defined in an alternative manner as a sensible road movie with comic undertones.It features some particularly nice musical tracks such as About A Girl Kurt Cobain and a Hungarian version of the famous French song "Le Vent Nous Portera" by Noir Désir.Kalandorok is a comic film different from traditional psychological films for which Hungary has always been famous.This must be kept in mind if somebody decides to rent or watch this film.

Love, Money, Love (2000)

2012-01-11T10:41:00.001+05:30

Love, Money, Love (2000)

Director: Philip Gröning
Country: Germany
Runtime: 2 hours, 7 minutes

L'amour, l'argent, l'amour: a discourse, you should think, on the economy of love. Which it is and is not. It narrates and relates economy and love, but very soon moves outside any established economical orders. The story seems, at first sight, deeply rooted in cliché. We have a whore with the name, of all names, Marie and we have David. a young man with a right arm in plaster and no job. She asks him if he wants to sleep with her, but he has no money. From which results love, in a way. She takes him home, we see them awake naked, together, but he didn't sleep with her. I will leave, he says, but he does not say where. Will you come, he asks, and she wouldn't know why. But they go, they leave Berlin, in her car, they go somewhere, they drift along, you see streets and trees, faces and landscapes, cityscapes and lights in superimposition and it's in these superimpositions (with the additional layer of music by The Velvet Underground and Calexico and other kinds of beautiful melancholy) that you realize that cliché is only to what you can, if you wish, reduce what you see. But then you have to ignore that you see so much more than cliché, or less. ~ Ekkehard Knörer

Gummo (1997)

2012-01-08T16:00:00.001+05:30

Gummo (1997)

Director: Harmony Korine
Country: USA
Runtime: 89 min

Constructing this film through random scenes, director Harmony Korine abruptly jettisoned any sort of narrative plot, so here we go: Solomon and Tummler are two bored teenage boys who live in Xenia, Ohio. A few years ago, a tornado swept through it, destroying more than half the town and killing the same amount, including Solomon's father. The film, from there, chronicles the anti-social adventures these two boys have. These include sniffing glue, killing cats, having sex, riding dirtbikes, listening to black metal, and meeting a cavalcade of quirky, bizarre, and scary people. These include a man who pimps his mentally ill wife to our anti-heroes, three sisters who play with their cat and practice becoming strippers, a black midget fending off the sexual advances of a troubled man (played by the director Harmony Korine), a 12-year-old gay transvestite who is also a cat killer, Solomon's mother who seems to be the only glimpse of sanity, two foul-mouthed six-year olds, and most importantly, a nymphlike skateboarder who walks around town wearing pink rabbit ears.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)

2012-01-07T20:37:00.002+05:30

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011)

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Country: Turkey | Bosnia and Herzegovina
Runtime: 150 minutes

A group of men including a police officer, a doctor, a district attorney, drivers, civil servants, grave diggers, gendarmerie forces and two homicide offender brothers drive through on rural Anatolian steppes in a single night at a town named Keskin in search of a body buried under an unknown location.The killer leads the police officer from one fountain to another because at the time of the crime he was intoxicated thus he can not recall specifically where he and his mentally challenged brother buried the body. Anatolian steppes' similarity and indistinguishable physical appearance does not help the killer nor the policeman in their quest because every fountain they arrive is pretty much same with the prior one.

The film received the Cannes Film Festival's second most prestigious award, the Grand Prix, in a shared win with the film The Kid with a Bike by the Dardenne brothers and has been selected as Turkey's official submission for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Eastern Drift (2010)

2012-01-04T14:28:00.001+05:30

Eastern Drift (2010)

Director: Sharunas Bartas
Country: Lithuania
Runtime: 1 hour 47 minutes

Gena is under no illusions about his situation. In the prologue of the film, he briefly sketches out his life in a monotone voiceover: growing up without parents, receiving an "education" from his criminal uncle, initial protection money rackets in the wake of privatizations in the crumbling Soviet Union, later international drug dealing. His enemies are numerous but not easy to recognize; "life is short, the greater part of it already over". Although there is only a small chance that Gena will be able to trade in his nomadic existence between Asia and Europe for a "normal life", he takes the plunge anyway. A frantic chase across Europe thus ensues. Heading west, presumably towards the sun.

El Cairo, 678 (2010)

2012-01-02T20:19:00.001+05:30

El Cairo, 678 (2010)

DIRECTOR :Mohamed Diab
Country: Egipt
Runtime: 100 min.

Cairo 678 shows a disturbing verisimilitude to uncover the story of three women from different social class are united in their quest for justice to the difficult situation that causes daily sexual harassment in Egypt.

"Fayza" (played by Bushra), a conservative mother of two, struggling to find real justice while at the other end of town "Seba" (played by Nelli Karim), a wealthy jewelry designer victim of a gang attack teaches other women to defend themselves from these acts. For its part, "Nelly" (played by Nahed El Seba'i) amateur monologist, is suffering the condemnation of the entire country by being the first Egyptian to file a sexual harassment suit.

One of them decides to take matters into and emerges as a hero ghostly bullies stabbed in the groin. Later she will join the other two women who become their idol to realize that such violence can change things. "Essam", an apathetic investigator will take the case of the stabbings, which has caused a stir in Cairo and this trio will finally just.

Women engage in a discussion of which there is a striking clash of views on sexual harassment, which reveals the underlying class resentment. Nelly is pressured by her family to withdraw the complaint and is in a dead end to having to choose between her fiancé and justice. Meanwhile, the unexpected birth of first child Essam causes a change in his attitude toward women and toward the case.

Cairo 678 The film offers a thorough analysis of cause and effect of this epidemic that shows the fatal consequences of silence and acceptance of denial as a solution, while revealing an intriguing dark side of Egypt that the world has barely seen.

Viudas (2011)

2012-01-02T17:43:00.002+05:30

Viudas (2011)

Director: Marcos Carnevale
Country: Argentina
Runtime: 100 min

Widows will tell the story that begins when a woman (Borges) receives a call that tells about the terrible accident suffered by her husband. In desperation, the lady comes to the scene and found her husband dying in the arms of a much younger woman. You will discover the double life of his partner and enter into a relationship with her lover captive in the context of a black comedy.

Stuck on Christmas (2010)

2012-01-01T15:39:00.001+05:30

Stuck on Christmas (2010)

Director: Iulia Rugina
Country: Romania
Runtime: 37 minutes

It's Christmas Eve in a small mountain train station and no train is coming since all the tracks are blocked with snow. Four people are waiting for a train that doesn't show up. They don't know each other, how long it's going to take or if they will ever reach their destinations. But as the hours pass, Madalina, Cristi, Ozana, Alex share the absurd, the despair and the hope. Because they are accidentally stuck here. Because no one knows when it will end. And because it's Christmas.

Seawards Journey (2003)

2011-12-27T15:00:00.002+05:30

Seawards Journey (2003)

Director: Guillermo Casanova
Country: Uruguay-Argentina
Runtime:73min

It's a Sunday morning 1963 in a bar in a town of Minas. Rataplan, the sweeper, Quintana, the undertaker, Seven and Three Ten, the seller of lottery Aquino and her dog, waiting for Rodriguez, who's going to take you to see the sea for the first time.The Basque, his foreman, reluctantly accompanies them. Fresh from the capital, an elegant Unknown joins the entourage at the last minute. Along the journey, the sun, in the ramshackle truck Rodriguez, the six characters will reveal his particular way of living and feeling surrounded by green landscapes of the mountains to the coast and the unknown sea ...
The trip to the Sea is based on the story of the same name of the author Juan José Morosoli Minuano, first published in 1952. Uruguayan director Guillermo Casanova (with the collaboration of Julio Cesar Castro "Juceca" in the dialogues) made this kind of "road movie" Creole on six characters starting from a small town in the interior to meet the sea.
For the filming, the team consisting of about 50 people, including technicians and actors, he moved to the city of Minas, the capital of the Department of Lavalleja to 122 km from Montevideo on Route 8.In the first four weeks were filmed scenes involving landscapes Lavalleja saws and locations in the cities of Mines and Aiguá Maldonado, 153 km from Montevideo with reconstruction of the Route 13 era (the film is set in 1963) . In the last week were shot in Atlantis Mdeo 45 km. Route Interbalnearia, Costa Azul and Parque del Plata, the scenes of the resort and the beach.
The journey to the sea was one of the awards in 1999 FONA also support Ibermedia Program in 2001. It is the first feature film by Guillermo Casanova, and it has won the top prize at the 29th Latin American Film Festival of Huelva and a special prize of the Official College of Architects of Huelva.

The First Grader (2010)

2011-12-25T19:55:00.002+05:30

The First Grader (2010)

Director: Justin Chadwick
Country: Kenya
Runtime: 103 min

In a small, remote, mountaintop primary school in the Kenyan bush, hundreds of children are jostling for a chance for the free education newly promised by the Kenyan government. One applicant causes astonishment when he knocks on the door of the school. He is Maruge (Oliver Litondo), an old Mau Mau veteran in his 80s, who is desperate to learn to read at this late stage of his life. He fought for the liberation of his country and now feels he must have the chance at the education so long denied—even if it means sitting in a classroom alongside six-year-old children.
Moved by his passionate plea, head teacher Jane Obinchu (Naomie Harris) supports his struggle to gain admission, and together they face fierce opposition from parents and officials who don't want to waste a precious school place on such an old man.
Full of vitality and humor, the film explores the remarkable relationships Maruge builds with classmates some 80 years his junior. Through Maruge's journey, we are taken back to the shocking untold story of British colonial rule 50 years earlier, when Maruge fought for the freedom of his country and eventually ended up in the extreme and harsh conditions of the British detention camps.
The First Grader is a heartwarming and inspiring true story of one man's fight for what he believes is his right in order to overcome the burdens of his past. It is a triumphant testimony to the transforming force of education.

Pumzi (2009)

2011-12-25T12:57:00.002+05:30

Pumzi (2009)
Director:Wanuri Kahiu
Country: South Africa | Kenya
Runtime:21 min

Pumzi, Kenya’s first science fiction film, imagines a dystopian future 35 years after water wars have torn the world apart. East African survivors of the ecological devastation remain locked away in contained communities, but a young woman in possession of a germinating seed struggles against the governing council to bring the plant to Earth’s ruined surface.

Filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu takes her sci-fi short Pumzi to Sundance this year.
Photo: Chris King

The short film, which will ~~compete in~~ screen at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “started off as a small script about what kind of world we would have to be if we had to buy fresh air,” writer/director Wanuri Kahiu told Wired.com in a Skype interview.
Like recent standouts District 9 and Sleep Dealer, the short film taps into Third World realities and spins them forward for dramatic effect. But to produce Pumzi, Kahiu looked to the past, as well as the future.
She researched classic 1950s films to create her movie’s futuristic sets, comparing the processes of matte painting and rear-screen projection with indigenous African artwork.
“We already have a tradition of tapestries and functional art and things like that, that loan a backdrop for films,” Kahiu said.
Made with grant money from Focus Features’ Africa First short film program, the Goethe Institut and the Changamoto arts fund, Pumzi will share the screen with two other films as part of Sundance’s New African Cinema program.
Mentors from Focus Features introduced Kahiu to South African producers, including Simon Hansen, who worked with Neill Blomkamp on Alive in Joburg, the predecessor to last year’s sci-fi smash District 9. Kahiu said she hopes Blomkamp’s blockbuster will attract attention to other African films.

Kenya, frequently used for location shooting, boasts experienced crews but little funding. “You just hustle,” Kahiu said. “There is no set funding option. You borrow against banks, you do anything that you can to make your film.”
Distribution is another difficulty. While Kahiu hopes to offer Pumzi online, the Kenyan infrastructure is too underdeveloped to effectively distribute the film in her country. Meanwhile, directors in the country have been watching the prolific film community in neighboring Nigeria for inspiration.
“Nollywood has its own distribution network and Kenya is slowly copying and picking up that very grass-roots distribution route,” Kahiu said.
Focus Features granted Kahiu complete control of her film. After producing commissions for African networks and retaining no rights, she helped create Dada Productions. Her first feature-length movie, From a Whisper, a dramatization built around the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam, garnered five African Academy Movie Awards.
Kahiu’s future plans include expanding Pumzi to feature length as well as nurturing her local film community.
“I would like to work and build an industry, so that everyone walks away well-paid, with great hours,” Kahiu said. “Just a humane society, of sorts.”

Blood in the Mobile

2011-12-24T18:19:00.001+05:30

Blood in the Mobile

Director: Frank Piasechi Poulsen
country: Denmark
runtime: 82 minutes

A dramatic document about an impossible mission of the Danish documentary filmmaker, Frank Piasecki Poulsen, and his search for the carefully hidden dark secrets of the highly civilized Western society. A dynamic documentary style turns this film into a suspenseful thriller whose main character is the author himself.Extremely bravely, exposing himself to drastic risks and dangers, and with a surprising persistence, Frank Piasecki Poulsen follows the roads of the blood minerals that are the essential material for cell phone components. Unmasking hypocrisy of the leading European multinational companies, the author discovers a shocking mechanism of the contemporary society. Commercials, as representations of the ideal beauty, incessantly try to convince us that the modern hi-tech merchandise has been created in completely controlled processes that guarantee both environmental and our own safety. Aiming to awake our conscience and critical thinking, this film directly discovers that the situation is often drastically different. A magnificent example of complete devotion and commitment, this documentary takes us from one part of the world to another, from the most dangerous dark depths of Africa, to the highest pinnacles of the developed Europe.

Selector's word: I think about it every time I take my cell phone. It is a terrible thought. Provoked by this film that is such an achievement by the director. Courageous it is from the side of the director, to be admired, it is far beyond normal investigative journalism, it is made with a heart and a true indignation. Sometimes interviews, sometimes visually and emotionally stunning sequences when he goes down into hell.

Frank Piasecki Poulsen

Graduated at The National Film School of Denmark in 2001. Before entering the Film School he worked at a local TV network in Copenhagen. After graduation, he have been working as director, photographer and scriptwriter, primarily for DR TV. The themes of his work include youth, politics and third world issues. Therefore he has travelled all around the world – especially to Africa. Works on establishing a departmant for international documentary production in the production company “Koncern Film og TV A/S”.

SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY

DISOBEDIENCE.DK (Ulydighed.dk), 2002
EUROPE AT STAKE, 2003
GUERILLA GIRL, 2005
SEDUCER'S FALL (Forforerens Fald), 2008
BLOOD IN THE MOBILE (Blod i Mobilen), 2010

Late Bloomers (2011)

2011-12-24T13:30:00.003+05:30

Late Bloomers (2011)

Director: Julie Gavras
Country: France | Belgium
Runtime:88 minutes

This is the story of Adam and Mary, a man and a woman who are deeply in love whilst everything conspires to drive them apart. In spite of their feelings for one another, they are compelled to separate so that they can later come back together and form a harmonious couple. Contrary to what you might think, Adam and Mary are not your usual twenty or thirty somethings. They are pushing sixty and yet still have something to learn about life and love...

He Who Must Die (1957)

2011-12-23T11:41:00.002+05:30

He Who Must Die (1957)

Dir: Jules Dassin
Country: France
Runtime: 122 min

Synopsis

In the 1920s, with Greece is under Turkish occupation, the inhabitants of a small townare making preparations for the annual Passion play. Manolios, a shepherd with acrippling stammer is cast as Jesus, whilst a prostitute is given the role of Mary Magdalene. The town is visited by a convoy of refugees from a neighbouring village which was sackedby the Turks. Fearing that any show of kindness towards these refugees will upsetthe delicate peace with the Turks, the town’s patriarch has them driven away. Theidealistic Manolios manages to convince some of the townspeople to have pity on the refugees,and one man, Michelis, allows them to stay on land inherited from his father. Furious,the patriarch persuades his Turkish masters to deal with Manolios and his misguided followers…

Celui qui doit mourir was the second film thatdirector Jules Dassin made in France – after the influential noir masterpiece Du rififi chez les homes (1955). Atthe time, Dassin was effectively forced into exile in Europe to escape anti-Communistpersecution that was rampant across the United States in the 1950s. Despite beingone of his lesser known films, Celui qui doit mourir stands as one of Dassin’s most ambitious and humanist works – a powerful, intenselyironic retelling of the Gospel in 1920s Greece, based on novel “Christ Recrucified” byNikos Kazantzakis.

The film features some notable actors of the period, including Jean Servais, MauriceRonet and Gert Fröbe, as well as Dassin’s wife-to-be, Melina Mercouri. However,it is Pierre Vaneck who is most memorable, as the sympathetic hero destined for the (metaphorical)crucifix. Dassin combines his own natural film noir style with some shades of neo-realism,making this a pretty hard-edged, unsentimental morality drama (with a few suggestionsof black comedy along the way). The moral of the film is that human beingsnever learn and are destined to repeat the errors of the past, but there is also morethan a hint of anti-Church mockery. The film’s central irony – which Dassin drawsout so well – is that it is those who are most familiar with the teachings of Christ whoend up rejecting and then executing a second Christ.

The Monk (2011) Le moine

2011-12-19T18:07:00.004+05:30

The Monk (2011) Le moine

Director: Dominik Moll
Country: Spain | France
Runtime: 1 hour, 36 minutes

A well respected monk, Capucino Ambrosio compromises himself with his carnal lust for a pupil, a woman disguised as a monk, she tempts the monk to transgress and he is soon found desiring another, the innocent Antonia. Matilda uses magic spells to help the monk in his pursuit of Antonia, whom he later rapes and kills. It later emerges that Matilda is an instrument of Satan in female form. Focus also is also shone on Antonia's previous relationship with Lorenzo, whose sister is tortured by hyprocritical nuns for her own relationship. Returning to Ambrosio, he is delivered to the Inquisition; escaping only by selling his soul to the devil. The devil prevents Ambrosio's final repentance, and informs Ambrosio that Antonia is the monk's sister.

Black Butterflies (2011)

2011-12-19T13:44:00.000+05:30

Black Butterflies (2011)

Director: Paula van der Oest
Country: Germany | Netherlands | South Africa
Runtime: 1 hour, 35 minutes

Ingrid Jonker lived an impossible contradiction, writing heart-rending poetry about being a woman of privilege living under apartheid rule, all the while dealing with pressure from the head of the censorship board, a man who also happened to be her father. “Black Butterflies” is the story of how Jonker, a woman with unending sexual cravings and a noted mental imbalance, managed to cope with this dichotomy. In the opening, the least poetic of a number of unconvincing metaphors writ large, Jonker is saved from drowning by handsome publisher Jack Cope, an older gentleman who immediately falls for the leggy writer. What he doesn’t know is that her self-abuse, due to living under the rule of her oppressive, emotionally-abusive father, has fractured her personality. She is not the creator she becomes when she puts pen to paper, but rather a little girl seeking stimulation (which she chases in a number of unavailable men) and hoping for the approval of her father (an impossibility).

Life, Above All (2010)

2011-12-18T11:30:00.003+05:30

Life, Above All

Director: Oliver Schmitz
Country: South Africa
Runtime: 100 min

"Life, Above All" is a emotional and universal drama about a young girl (stunningly performed by first-time-actress Khomotso Manyaka) who fights the fear and shame that have poisoned her community. The film captures the enduring strength of loyalty and a courage powered by the heart. Directed by South African filmmaker Oliver Schmitz ("Mapantsula", "Paris, je t'aime"), it is based on the international award winning novel "Chanda's Secrets" by Allan Stratton.Written by Bavaria International

The Day I Was Not Born (2010)

2011-12-09T18:50:00.001+05:30

The Day I Was Not Born (2010)

Director:Florian Micoud Cossen
Country: Germany | Argentina
Runtime: 94 min

During a stopover in Buenos Aires on her way to Chile, 31-year-old Maria recognizes a nursery rhyme. Maria doesn't speak a work of Spanish, but without understanding what she is singing, she remembers the Spanish lyrics. Disturbed and thrown off course, she decides to interrupt her journey and wander through the unfamiliar city. On the phone to Germany, she tells her father, Anton, about her experience and the peculiar fascination the unfamiliar city has had for her. Two days later, Anton suddenly turns up at Maria's hotel with something to confess: Maria spent the first three years of her life in Buenos Aires during the military dictatorship at the end of the 1970s. The people she had always thought were her parents had adopted her and brought her to Germany. Father and daughter begin a journey in search of Maria's biological parents. Anton does everything he can not to lose his daughter.

The Skin I Live In (2011)

2011-12-07T21:42:00.001+05:30

The Skin I Live In (2011)

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Country: Spain
Runtime: 1 hour, 55 minutes

Pedro Almodóvar's macabre suspense thriller is about an obsession that, though not exactly magnificent, has a fanatical intensity. Antonio Banderas plays a Madrid plastic surgeon, wealthy, cultured and respected; he gives brilliant lectures and research papers on advances in face-transplant surgery. Daringly, heretically, he advocates transgenic treatments from animals to toughen the skin. In his palatial home, he has a private operating theatre where he carries out experimental work on Vera, a beautiful woman he keeps prisoner, who is dressed only in a clinging gauzy, flesh-toned material and whose skin has an unnaturally smooth, flawless look. She appears to submit ecstatically to her imprisonment, but this is finally to be the cause of madness and violence. ~ Guardian

As in many of his films, family secrets are revealed through lengthy flashbacks – something forbidden to contemporary Hollywood screenwriters. There is the doppelganger motif, and the younger guy who likes partying and drugs; there are staircase scenes and scenes in which a middle-aged man watches the object of his desire, enraptured, on a large screen. And perhaps most startling, and most characteristic of all, there is Almodóvar's great theme of transsexual identity, which speaks of passion, fantasy and escape. The director himself, in various masks and guises, is present in all of this. ~ Guardian

Viva Riva! (2010)

2011-12-07T16:46:00.001+05:30

Viva Riva! (2010)

Director: Djo Munga
Country:Democratic Republic of the Congo
Runtime: 98 min

Riva is an operator, a man with charm and ambition in equal measure. Kinshasa is an inviting place. With petrol in short supply in DRC's capital, he and his sidekick pursue a plot to get hold of a secret cache - barrels of fuel they can sell for a huge profit. Of course they're not the only ones who want the stuff. Cesar is a ruthless, sharply dressed foreigner thriving in Kinshasa's lawless streets. A female military officer joins the fray. Even the church will betray its tenets for a piece of the action. But Riva's main nemesis is Azor, a crime boss in the classic style: big, decadent and brutal. He's not a man to mess with, but his girlfriend, Nora, may just be the most seductive woman in all of DRC. Riva catches sight of her dancing at a nightclub and it's not long before Nora matches the fuel cache as a coveted object of his lust. IMDB

Violeta (2011)

2011-12-07T14:35:00.001+05:30

Violeta (2011)

Director: Andrés Wood
Country: Chile
Runtime:110 min

From the tent up in Regina, Violeta Parra is visited by dreams, experiences and dreams. It is alive, but perhaps she is dead, that opens up a great expectation in which we will gradually Informing their secrets, fears, frustrations and joys. Not only is this his various works, but, their lovers, their memories, their hopes, their achievements are suspended in a passionate journey through the life of Violeta Parra, with the characters that made her mourn, laugh and dream.

The Salt of Life (2011)

2011-12-07T11:26:00.001+05:30

The Salt of Life (2011)

Director: Gianni Di Gregorio
Country:Italy
Runtime:90 min

Gianni is sixty. He is retired but has not become lazy for all that. In fact he is a helpful fellow who gives a hand to all those who need one: shopping for his wife, walking the pretty neighbor's dog, and so on. Everybody likes Gianni, but is it for the right reasons? Doesn't his wife profit by the situation (she still works so it is only logical that Gianni do all the chores)? Isn't he subject to the excruciating whims of his rich mother?... Sure, everybody LIKES Gianni, but who LOVES him? Agreed, being kind to them, he is the ladies pet, but he does not attract them anymore. That is why, when his macho lawyer friend Alfonso blames him for not having young mistresses "like every other senior Italian male", Gianni, who is beginning to ask himself questions about what it is like to become old, starts chasing dames...Written by Guy Bellinger

Joanna (2010)

2011-12-01T17:27:00.001+05:30

Joanna (2010)

Director: Feliks Falk
Country: Poland
Runtime: 1 hour, 48 minutes

Feliks Falk’s latest movie “Joanna” is a story set in the time of World War II. The main heroine’s husband had been sent to an Oflag. One day Joanna encounters a little Jewish girl in a church. Despite the risk, she decides to take care of her.

"Joanna" is an example of a true story as it reflects the behavior of thousands of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Feliks movie has enchanted the audience of 35. Polish Film Festival in Gdynia. Tadeusz Sobolewski, a film critic, gave the movie a very positive review. That is what he wrote for Gazeta Wyborcza:

Falks “Joanna” distinguishes itself with a classic structure of the plot, the main idea of which is a trap set for the main character by the fate. This movie, which takes place in Cracow, brings an uncommon element into the Polish cinema — it shows a “make-believe” life during the occupation, a life which is outwardly normal. All the positions in the General Government are filled with Poles. The main character Joanna (Urszula Grabowska), waiting in vain for a letter from her husband who is in an Oflag, gives a shelter to a little Jewish girl whose mother was caught during a round-up. Thus she becomes burdened with a secret she cannot reveal to anyone, even to her relatives. Forced by necessity, she has to cooperate with her enemies, becoming a traitor in the eyes of “her people” — just like the heroine of Has’s memorable movie “How to Be Loved”. The final, symbolic image is suggestive — in a tearful and religious manner — of the fact that sheltering little Róża was Joanna’s personal torture referring to Golgotha. However, the deeper meaning of that story is perverse and bitter: hiding the child was even more dangerous because of Joanna’s “own people”, mutually controlling the patriotic decency.

The Mill and the Cross (2011)

2011-11-27T12:00:00.001+05:30

The Mill and the Cross (2011)

Director: Lech Majewski
Country: Sweden | Poland
Runtime: 1 hour, 31 minutes

"Mill and the Cross" that is, a revolution in the cinema!The long-awaited movie theaters Lech Majewski, who is the film "adaptation" sixteenth-century painting by Peter Bruegel "The Road to Calvary".Mill and the Cross "is a unique option for cinema lovers. Probably nothing like it in the near future will not see - said it plays in the film Charlotte Rampling.
"Mill and the Cross" by Lech Majewski is a film which is set in 1564, when Bruegel painted his masterpiece. The painter shows in the last journey of Christ, but places it is not in Jerusalem, but in modern Flanders him (this is a historical region in present borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and France). Therefore, the topic of Christ's suffering artist wove the martyrdom of his countrymen persecuted for political reasons by the ruling religious and then the Spanish Inquisition there. In this way, Majewski's film is a continuation of the idea of Bruegel, who in the sixteenth century - with his work - appealed for respect for others and tolerance for different views.
The film shown is the fate of several characters from the image including miller, bread carrier, a group of mothers with small children, as well as a young man who was sentenced to a cruel death by attaching it to the wheel on a pole to him zadziobały ravens. In one scene we see the cruelty of the Spanish soldiers zakopujących young woman alive. Sixteenth-century heroes' Way to Calvary "come alive in front of spectators, and the camera reveals their individual parts of the picture that appeared in the final of the whole work of Bruegel hanging on one wall of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
- This is an extremely successful experiment in art, which can be compared to re-invent the wheel - said with a smile playing in the movie Rutger Hauer (best remembered for her role in the movie "Blade Runner" dir. Ridley Scott). - In the movie it was, after all here is to play more than four hundred years before to connect with contemporary art film - said the actor, who as Bruegel in one of the most important scenes in the film discusses the secrets of his paintings and demonstrates his accompanying art collector (played by Michael York), that the artist is able - through pictures - stop time and the world....

American-French art critic Michael Francis Gibson, whose essay is titled "Mill and the Cross" was inspired by Polish film director and became the basis for the screenplay for the film explains that the idea Majewski to present the image of Bruegel as a feature film, not a documentary, as he wanted at the beginning, was a surprise for him. - It seemed to me then that it is not difficult to present an image of matter, but most of all the ideas contained in the work of Bruegel - he noted.

Detective eye Lech MajewskiDirector, screenwriter and film producer, poet, novelist and painter, as well as theater and opera director. Lech Majewski betrays the greatest secrets of his artistic activities.Guest Anne Fuksiewicz in the next release, "Season of Twos" told such about his work, how to read meanings in the paintings of the old painters, and also about his inspirations art. There were also memories of working in the United States.
Extremely rare for artists to artistic activity was confined to so many areas of life, as is the case with Lech Majewski. The question here is Anna Fuksiewicz which of the areas of artistic activity is the closest to him, Lech Majewski clearly pointed to the painting and poetry. - First, I see things, then write them. Poetry, in turn, leads to the rejection of the logic of my cause - effect relationship. Often broadcast logical sense to the world ends in tragedy. The twentieth century was characterized by just building a utopian bliss of human - guy says "Season of Twos."
Mainly inspired by Lech Majewski "old masters". He explains that showed a great skill. - Reading the ancient symbols and meanings in art is a bit detective, but also a fascinating work - Lech Majewski says.
Soon the Polish cinema screens will be the last film by Lech Majewski, entitled "The Mill and the Cross". The film is based on the book published under the same title, written by Michael Gibson. Picture, set in 1564 - the same, in which Bruegel painted his masterpiece - intertwines with the suffering of Christ's Passion Flanders politically and religiously oppressed by the Spaniards.
Lech Majewski says work on the film as extremely difficult. - Two years ago we finished a picture, and still continues postproduction. This is due to tedious, painstaking work that accompanies the preparation of each frame. They are built as Bruegel paintings - Lech Majewski says.

Between Two Fires (2010)

2011-11-25T16:16:00.001+05:30

Between Two Fires (2010)

Director:Agnieszka Lukasiak
Country: Poland | Sweden
Runtime;135min

Young woman and her daughter runs away from Belarus and sent to a refugee camp in northern Sweden. Fighting for survival for herself and her daughter is becoming easy prey around it, an alien world. Soon will be confronted with extreme life choices.

explication of directorial
"Dodgeball" is a very personal film. I came to Sweden as a little girl. This is the reality in which time ceases to exist, the days are passing on the fear of the future and the past is too dreadful to think of it. The only way to survive is the existence of "here" and "now" as in a kind of purgatory, where there is neither alive nor dead. I wanted to show the reality in which people are completely defenseless, and the ignorance of the new rules makes it become easy victims of the reality that surrounds them.
It is a story about just such a life, where time and reality are abstract concepts, and the hopes and fears of these people are permanently etched in their minds and on their faces. I wanted to show the reality in which to survive you have to choose between himself and the person you love. Where do you become a commodity for sale at the price of survival.
While I was writing this script I lived in this camp, to better understand what is in the memories of childhood seems to me as a nightmare. The characters described in the scenario and emerging situations in it are based on real events and people that I met while living there. I wanted to shoot a film in which the statistics will become a reality. The film, which transforms the number and the cases about which we read in real people, in which the notice replaces understanding.
Agnieszka Łukasiak

Elena (2011)

2011-11-25T12:25:00.001+05:30

Elena (2011)

Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev
Country: Russia
Runtime: 1 hour 29 minutes

Elena and Vladimir are an older couple, they come from different backgrounds. Vladimir is a wealthy and cold man, Elena comes from a modest milieu and is a docile wife. They have met late in life and each one has children from previous marriages. Elena's son is unemployed, unable to support his own family and he is constantly asking Elena for money. Vladimir's daughter is a careless young woman who has a distant relationship with her father. A heart attack puts Vladimir in hospital, where he realizes that his remaining time is limited. A brief but somehow tender reunion with his daughter leads him to make an important decision: she will be the only heiress of his wealth. Back home he announces it to Elena. Her hopes to financially help her son suddenly vanish. The shy and submissive housewife then comes up with a plan to give her son and grandchildren a real chance in life.

Nostalgia for the Light (2010)

2011-11-24T11:11:00.001+05:30

Nostalgia for the Light (2010)

Directed by: Patricio Guzman
Country: France | Germany | Chile
Runtime:90 min

For his new film master director Patricio Guzmán, famed for his political documentaries (THE BATTLE OF CHILE, SALVADOR ALLENDE), travels 10,000 feet above sea level to the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert, where atop the mountains astronomers from all over the world gather to observe the stars. The sky is so translucent that it allows them to see right to the boundaries of the universe.
The Atacama is also a place where the harsh heat of the sun keeps human remains intact: those of Pre-Columbian mummies; 19th century explorers and miners; and the remains of political prisoners, “disappeared” by the Chilean army after the military coup of September, 1973.

So while astronomers examine the most distant and oldest galaxies, at the foot of the mountains, women, surviving relatives of the disappeared whose bodies were dumped here, search, even after twenty-five years, for the remains of their loved ones, to reclaim their families’ histories.
Melding the celestial quest of the astronomers and the earthly one of the women, NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT is a gorgeous, moving, and deeply personal odyssey.
"NOSTALGIA FOR THE LIGHT is not only Guzmán’s masterpiece; it is one of the most beautiful cinematographic efforts we have seen for a long time. Its complex canvas is woven with the greatest simplicity. For forty years, Patricio Guzman has had to struggle every inch of the way, with a vivid memory and intimate suffering to reach this work of cosmic serenity, of luminous intelligence, with a sensitivity that could melt stone. At such a level, the film becomes more than a film. An insane accolade to mankind, a stellar song for the dead, a life lesson. Silence and respect." —Juan Mandelbaum, Le Monde

In Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers peer deep into the cosmos in search for answers concerning the origins of life. Nearby, a group of women sift through the sand searching for body parts of loved ones, dumped unceremoniously by Pinochet's regime.

Patagonia (2010)

2011-11-23T17:35:00.001+05:30

Patagonia (2010)

Director: Marc Evans
Country: Argentina | UK
Runtime: 119 min

One of the lesser-known dark chapters of British history was the exodus of a small number of poor, struggling Welsh workers who left their shores to set up a new life in a golden, green land called Patagonia in 1865. Amazingly they survived and carried on their culture, which remains in the form of the huge number of Welsh place names there.

This forms the backbone of Marc Evans’ story, which tells parallel stories set in the present day. A Welsh couple, Gwen and Rhys (Roberts and Gravelle), are suffering because they cannot conceive. When Rhys is offered a job photographing remote chapels in Patagonia he jumps at the chance, seeing it as the perfect chance to repair their fragile relationship. However, when they arrive they are met by handsome Mateo (Rhys), to whom Gwen is clearly attracted – forcing Rhys more into his shell. As Mateo takes the couple further and further into the desert their relationship becomes more strained.

Meanwhile, at the same time, an elderly Patagonian lady, Cerys (Lubos), tells her family she is going into hospital for an eye operation, and needs a young guide. Her very young neighbour, Alejandro, joins her and quickly discovers she has other ideas – Cerys wants to visit the Welsh farm she was born in and barely remembers. He chaperones her all the way to Cardiff, only to discover there are three farms with the same name in Wales, all miles apart from each other. So they, too, have to travel deep into the countryside, taking on broken down cars, bizarre train timetables and incessant rain to find Cerys’ birthplace. Not that the shy Alejandro minds though, especially when he meets the waitress of a camping site in North Wales, Sissy (Duffy).

If this sounds like a gentle, meandering, slow, slightly dreamy fable, well, it is…Evans is in no hurry to tell his story, quite happy instead to indulge in the glorious countryside in both places. Patagonia is a harsh, Spartan land with stunning deserts and mountains, and Wales looks like it’s sponsored by the Welsh tourist board. Nothing wrong with that, the problem sets in during the last half hour when all of the goodwill Evans has built up wears pretty thin. It’s obvious where the story is going, but he insists on dragging it out to an almost tiresome degree, and suddenly throws in various minor characters, none of whom add much to the tale.

The performances are fine, with one big exception - Roberts and Gravelle make a believable couple, Rhys is a convincing stud – he’s even good on a horse – and the young boy and old lady are a charming, funny couple. The one jarring note is pop star Duffy’s cameo as a singing waitress, a performance which should be added to the long, long list of rock stars who come a cropper in the movies. She’s really out of her depth.
Reviewer: Mike Martin

Belvedere (2010)

2011-11-23T15:49:00.001+05:30

Belvedere (2010)

Directors: Ahmed Imamovic
Country: Bosnia and Herzegovina
Runtime: 1 hour 29 minutes

Bosnian's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 84th Academy Awards 2012.

The film deals with the tragedy of the women survivors of the Srebrenica genocide, or rather, the consequences of the horrors they experienced - it is about women whose sole purpose in life is to locate the bones of their loved ones and give them a decent burial. Fifteen years later, they still want just one simple thing - the truth. As a contrast, the film deals with trivialities of modern living, obsessed with different reality shows...

Finisterrae(2010)

2011-11-22T10:07:00.001+05:30

Finisterrae

Director: Sergio Caballero
Country: Spain
Run time: ~80 min

Two ghosts walk along the Camino of Santiago.
Finisterrae tells the story of two ghosts who, tired of wandering through limbo, decide to take the Way of Saint James, to the end of the world (Finisterra) so that once there, they may begin a fleeting, earthly journey through the land of the living. An introspective journey through uninhabited lands in which they are to find themselves with strange beings, wild animals and characters never before heard of. They must confront unexpected situations, battle with their own fears and struggle with the obstacles of their own phantasmagoric condition.

Rabbit a la berlin(2009)

2011-11-21T19:45:00.001+05:30

Rabbit a la berlin

Director: Bartosz Konopka
Country:Germany | Poland
Run time: ~51 min
Documentary

The untold story about wild rabbits which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safest home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were closed but happy. When their population grew up to thousands, guards started to remove them. But rabbits survived and stayed there. Unfortunately one day the wall fell down. Rabbits had to abandon comfortable system. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then. They are still learning how to live in the free world, same as we - the citizens of Eastern Europe.Written by Bartek Konopka & Piotr Rosolowski

Sunduq al-dunyâ (2002) aka Sacrifices

2011-11-21T17:54:00.001+05:30

Sunduq al-dunyâ (2002) aka Sacrifices

Director: Usama Muhammad
Country: Syria
Runtime: 109

Four families live together in an isolated house in the mountains, where conflicts erupt between the generations.

A tree, a house, emptiness, isolation. The head of the family, an old man, is at the point of death. He would like to give his name to one of his newborn grandsons but he does not acknowledge any of them before he dies. Three cousins without a name live in this primitive world. They seek pleasure and salvation. The first one in restraint and submission, the second in love, the third in power, violence and cruelty. The father of the second, back from war, gives the third the keys to a stronger and immense power. The tree looking upon since 1000 years contemplates what will happen in 2000 years.

A surreal depiction of life in a village out of a strikingly beautiful Syrian landscape. Oussama Mohammad's immensely visual representation of love, hate, violence and family relationships is no less than a masterpiece... and I am using this word here without any reservations! While I usually feel more at home with popular cinema, this particular film is among the very few films, and maybe even the only film within the surrealist tradition that made me feel as enthralled as I did when I first saw Bunuel's 1933 masterpiece 'Land without Bread'.

Every single shot in the film is an equivalent to an elaborate canvas which brings forwards the harsh yet captivating detailed textures of life and culture in a timeless small Arab peasant village, all set to the background of the Syrian mountain region facing the Mediterranean. If it wasn't for traditional anti-Arab bias in Film Festival circles, this film would have been appreciated as one of the most important cinematic events at least over the last ten years.

Shown at:
Cannes Film Festival, London Film Festival, Alexandria International Film Festival, Calgary Film Festival, Rabat International Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and Carthage Film Festival, among others.

Winner of:
Grand Prize, Figueira da Foz International Film Festival(2002)
Don Quijote Award, Figueira da Foz International Film Festival(2002)
Special Prize of the Jury, Paris Biennal of Arab Cinema (2002)

Pure Coolness / Boz salkyn (2007)

2011-11-21T15:31:00.001+05:30

Pure Coolness / Boz salkyn (2007)

Director: Ernest Abdyjaparov
Country: Kyrgyzstan
Runtime:95min

Melodrama with fairytale elements about an urban beauty in Kyrgyzia who is kidnapped during a visit to the countryside and then has to marry a shepherd according to local tradition.

In his feature film «Saratan» director Ernest Abdyjaparov showed in a slightly humorous way the effect of socio-economic changes in the rural Kyrgyzstan on the life of a local policeman and the local rural customs. With Pure Coolness he returns to the countryside to point out the old Kyrgyzstani tradition of kidnapping a bride and how it all can unexpectedly end up

Portrait in a Drop of Water (1997)

2011-11-18T13:01:00.001+05:30

Portrait in a Drop of Water (1997)
Director: Kazimierz Karabasz
Country:Poland
Runtime;22min Documentary

Synopsis: Over still photographys Karabasz is asking ordinary people about theis lives, hopes and fears.
Kazimierz Karabasz is a key figure in the history of polish documentary film. He is to polish cinematography what Robert Flaherty, John Grierson and Dziga Vertov were to american, british ans russian documentary film. Karabasz has been making documentaries for half a century, probing around relentessly to find better ways of bringing home the reality of day-to-day existance.

Poongsan.2011

2011-11-15T16:03:00.001+05:30

Poongsan.2011

Directed by: Jun Jae-Hong
Writer: Ki-duk Kim
Country: Korea
Duration: 2h 1mn

A mysterious man nicnknamed "Poongsan" (Yoon Kye-Sang) crosses between the South and North Korean border as a courier for hire. There's no way for people to contact him, but instead, Poongsan picks out potential clients from banners at a make shift memorial along the DMZ. Poongsan's next target is a man who wishes to bring a North Korean woman into South Korea.

Meanwhile, a man (Kim Jong-Soo) is pushed by the section chief (Han Ki-Joong) at the NIS to write a report on North Korea. That man was a high ranking official in North Korea prior to defecting to South Korea. He's protected by NIS agents, but still paranoid that North Korean assassins will kill him. He asks the section chief at the NIS to bring his lover In-Ok (Kim Gyu-Ri) to him from North Korea. Agents from the NIS learn of a man able to smuggle people across the border. They place a banner along a makeshift memorial at the DMZ border.

During the middle of the night, two NIS agents meet Poongsan who arrives on a motorcycle. When an NIS agent asks how long it will take to bring In-Ok into South Korea, Poongsan points to his watch to show 3 hours. The agent gives an incredulous laugh, but gets back into his car and waits for Poongsan. Poongsan runs off into the night towards the DMZ border.

Poongsan heads out to Pyeongyang to retrieve In-Ok. While they are crossing the border back into South Korea, In-Ok feels an attachment to this mysterious man who doesn't speak ...

The Poll Diaries (2010) Poll

2011-11-13T19:45:00.001+05:30

The Poll Diaries (2010) Poll

Director: Chris Kraus
Country: Germany | Austria | Estonia
Runtime: 2 hours, 8 minutes

In the summer of 1914, thirteen-year-old Oda Schaefer leaves Berlin to join her family and an assortment of German and Russian aristocrats on an estate in Estonia. The Schaefer family home is a character in its own right, a hulking, neoclassical manor that hovers on stilts above the sea. Oda arrives there bearing her mother’s coffin and a gift requested by her surgeon father: a jarred, two-headed fetus to add to his laboratory of gruesome curiosities. Ebbo Schaefer sees himself in his daughter when she calmly and expertly learns to suture the corpse of a cat. What he fails to recognize – and what Oda luckily understands – is that their interest in science is their only similarity. His dedication to experimentation is linked to an appalling obsession with power and destruction, while Oda is genuinely curious about life. Her quick, quiet intelligence complements her humanity and her lucid understanding of right and wrong. When she strays from a family picnic and discovers a badly wounded Estonian anarchist, she helps him without a second thought, smuggling him into her father’s lab and putting her new surgical skills to good use. As their illicit friendship deepens, family turmoil escalates and war closes in. The safe haven of the community collapses, forcing Oda’s family to make impossible choices.

Africa United (2010)

2011-11-11T18:41:00.001+05:30

Africa United (2010)

Director:Debs Paterson
Country:UK | South Africa | Rwanda
Runtime:88 min

The extraordinary story of three Rwandan kids who walk 3000 miles to the Soccer World Cup in South Africa. Using a sack load of ingenuity and sass (and a World Cup wall chart for a map), our pint-sized protagonists set off through the endless horizons of Africa in pursuit of an unlikely dream. And as they walk they gather a tribe - a ragamuffin team - of broken and brilliant characters who help them negotiate a way through a series of glorious, dangerous, hilarious and often bizarre situations. Through these kids, we will encounter an Africa few people ever get to see; experience the hard reality of an epic walk through seven countries; as well as the joy, laughter and hope - 'the ubuntu' - that comes from making an incredible journey together.Written by Rhidian Brook

Bullhead (2011) aka Rundskop

2011-11-10T19:31:00.001+05:30

Bullhead (2011)

Director: Michael R. Roskam
Country: Belgium

Jacky Vanmarsenille didn't really get a chance in life. As he tells us at the beginning of the film, over some beautiful Flemish landscape, life is fucked. The man works in meat: beef farming is in the family. His livelihood is fed with hormones to make faster business, and his body and soul are nourished by them too. We learn to love this ghastly character as the director takes us back into a tragic incident in his childhood on the Flemish-French border and to the present, where he is caught up in unscrupulous meat business and a local murder.

Gise Memuru (2010) aka Toll Booth

2011-11-10T12:47:00.004+05:30

Gise Memuru (2010) aka Toll Booth

Director: Tolga Karacelik
Country: Turkey
Runtime: 96

Quiet and introverted toll booth clerk Kenan's life, a humdrum routine between the Tavsancik toll booth plaza and his home, will change the day the new operations chief comes to inspect Tavsancik. IMDB

The first feature film written and directed by Tolga Karaçelik, better known for his award-winning short films such as Rapunzel, Toll Booth tells a story of miscommunication, isolation and desperate alienation via a conflict between a father and his son. Confined to his own world of dreams, introvert, and reticent, Kenan is a toll booth attendant, who lives with his ailing father. Kenan’s drab life stuck in routines between his toll booth and home will change the day a new manager comes for supervision. (~iksv.org)

The Mosquito Net (2010)

2011-10-31T16:48:00.004+05:30

The Mosquito Net (2010)

Director: Agustí Vila
Country: Spain
Runtime: 1 hour, 35 minutes

A wildly dysfunctional family begins to drown in their multiple neuroses in this offbeat drama from Spanish filmmaker Agusti Vila. Luis (Marcos Franz) is the teenage son of Miguel and Alicia, a couple whose marriage is on its last legs. Luis obsessively brings home stray dogs and cats, who show him the attention and affection he doesn't get from his parents. Miguel and Alicia aren't getting much love from one another, either, and once their marriage finally collapses, he takes up with their maid while Alicia has an affair with one of Luis's friends from school. Meanwhile, Miguel's father and mother are both slipping into senility and think suicide might be the answer to their problems, and Luis's aunt Rachel believes in the old adage "Spare the rod and spoil the child" - so much so that it's putting her daughter in danger. ~ Mark Deming, Allrovi

Tehilim (2007)

2011-10-28T21:34:00.001+05:30

Tehilim (2007)

Director: Raphaël Nadjari
Country: France | Israel
Runtime; 96min

In contemporary Jerusalem, a small Jewish family leads an ordinary life until following a car accident, the father mysteriously disappears. They all deal with his absence and the difficulties of everyday life as best they can. While the adults take refuge in silence or traditions, the two children, Menachem and David, seek their own way to find their father...Written by NMH

So Much for Justice!(2010)

2011-10-27T21:48:00.001+05:30

So Much for Justice!

Director: Miklós Jancsó
Country: Hungary
Runtime: 86

Managed to get onto the second party of the Mátyás [*Matthias] era, the peak of his power for a king's reign, and through this for Hungary's hey-day short one and a half of his decades concentrates. In the centre Mátyás [*Matthias] king (László Gálffi) his marriage, the troubles of the succession, the life of the Renaissance yard and the relations of inside are at a standstill, i mean mostly the happenings of the privacy, which manage national significance and political weight in a ruler's case however,.
------------
In Miklós Jancsó's film the three separable eras of Mátyás [*Matthias] king's life come up: youthful Mátyás king's fights for the throne; aged Mátyás king and the succession to the throne; and the fate of the royal crown and the royal heir after Mátyás king's death.

Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die (1981)

2011-10-27T14:42:00.001+05:30

Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die (1981)

Directors: Philo Bregstein
Country: Netherlands
Runtime: 58 minutes

Philo Bregstein tells us this film looks at Pasolini's life and art to explain why he died. The film traces Pasolini's life chronologically - family roots, hiding during World War II, teaching, moving to Rome, being arrested and acquitted many times, publishing poems, getting into film, being provocative, and being murdered. Interviews with Alberto Moravia, Laura Betti, Maria Antonietta Macciocch, and Bernard Bertolucci are inter-cut with readings of Pasolini's poems and with clips from four films - primarily the Gospel According to St. Matthew - to illustrate his changing ideas and points of view. Bregstein makes a case for Pasolini's being lynched.

imbd review by Michael_Elliott (Louisville, KY)
Strange documentary from the Netherlands, which talks of the life,poetry and films of the controversial Pier Paolo Pasolini who wasbrutally murdered in 1975. The official cause of death is that thedirector took a 17-year-old boy for a walk, made sexual advancestowards him and then the boy killed him. The conspiracy theory ondisplay here is that the government and Christians had something to dowith the murder due to the director's Salo and some poems he wrotetowards the end of his life. For the most part this documentary is acomplete bore that really doesn't come to life until the final tenminutes when the murder is looked at. The best piece of evidence givenare the photos of Pasolini's body, which was beaten to a pulp and thendriven over by a car. This is the evidence, which claims the boy didn'tdo the killings even though those being interviewed admit that Pasoliniwas the sexually aggressive type. The documentary never talks to anyoneon the opposite side so we never really get any clear answers to whatreally happened. The stuff discussing his poems and films isn't verywell done and doesn't really shine a light on anything because all thefilm really does is remind us that he was a homosexual every tenminutes.

Young Goethe in Love (2010)

2011-10-26T17:21:00.001+05:30

Young Goethe in Love (2010)

Director: Philipp Stölzl
Country: Germany
Runtime: 1 hour, 40 minutes

In 1772, we find the young German poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe flunking out of law school and getting drunk with his friends. He's a free spirit trapped in a stringent world where class is everything. All Goethe wants to do is write poems and get them published. But his stern father sends him away to a small town where he is accepted to work at a provincial law firm. There he befriends fellow law student Wilhelm Jerusalem. Goethe also meets, and falls in love with, the beautiful Lotte Buff. She in turn falls for the hopelessly romantic Goethe but, unbeknownst to him, is promised to marry Albert Kestner, Goethe's superior at the law firm. It all adds up to anguished love, as his friend Jerusalem also suffers a failed love affair with a married woman. Goethe transforms their travails into a grand masterpiece, the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Of Love and Other Demons (2009)

2011-10-26T11:30:00.000+05:30

Of Love and Other Demons (2009)

Director: Hilda Hidalgo
Country: Costa Rica | Colombia
Runtime: 95 min

Based on Gabriel García Márquez's novel, this is the unsettling story of 13-year-old noble Sierva and the dog bite that changes her life forever. Abandoned, displaced, in the midst of a sexual awakening and finally exorcised, Sierva finds an unlikely ally in a young priest and together they discover passion. Written by Pusan International Film Festival

Punk's Not Dead (2011)

2011-10-25T14:21:00.002+05:30

Punk's Not Dead (2011)
Directors: Vladimir Blazevski
Country: Republic of Macedonia

Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes

Macedonia's official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of the 84th Academy Awards 2012.

Punk's not dead is a remarkable black-comedy by Vladimir Blazevski. It is about a reunion of old punk band. Mirsa is a punk who is trying to put up with the struggles of everyday life in Skopje. One day he was offered to play for some multicultural-happening in Debar. Actually, all he ever wants is to play again with his punk band, so he accepts the offer. The next step is to find all former members of the band and make them play again... His ex-girlfriend is coming back to him and she is helping him to find the former members of the band. Punk's not dead gives good message - we should keep on trying to make our dreams come true.

White White World (2010)

2011-10-24T22:20:00.002+05:30

White White World (2010)

Directors: Oleg Novkovic
Country: Serbia
Runtime: 1 hour 55 minutes

In the Serbian drama “White White World: The Miner’s Opera” (“Beli Beli Svet”), the characters sing, but never dance. Formulated as a modern day Greek tragedy set in the decrepit southeastern mining town Bor, the movie follows a close group of alienated locals through misguided love affairs and other brash misdeeds. But the songs feature no choreography or other stylish methods of breaking the harsh, downtrodden tableaux. It’s a surprisingly effective strategy. With his sophomore effort, director Oleg Novkovic uses musical expression to frame inner monologues that would never work in spoken form. As a result, a story exclusively populated by damaged people engaged in morally ambiguous, often depraved behavior manages to evoke sympathy for all of them.
At its center is King, a retired boxer now running the neighborhood bar. Years earlier, he had an affair with erstwhile seductress Ruzica, an act that led her to kill her husband and wind up behind bars. The movie begins shortly before Ruzica’s release from jail, when the still-swinging King engages in a similarly ill-fated liaison with Ruzica’s rebellious 18-year-old daughter, Rosa. After a few drinks, two engage in fast, passionless sex, and King rushes out the door without a word…

The Fourth Portrait (2010)

2011-10-22T14:26:00.001+05:30

The Fourth Portrait (2010)

Directed by: Mong-Hong Chung
Country: Taiwan
Runtime: 105 min

Ten year-old Xiang faces a lonely future after his father dies. Just when he thinks he's going to spend his life in the orphanage, his estranged mother shows up. And his life changes forever... A loveless mother, a hateful stepfather, a chilly home. Where's Xiang heading to* He finds comfort in drawing and his work reveals his longing for care and affection. Life is full of hope again when he meets the old school janitor who doesn't show his kindness easily and a portly man who has crazy ideas and is haunted with nightmares of his brother. A scary truth is about to be unmasked. Will Xiang be able to depict his own image in the fourth portrait?

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

2011-10-20T19:34:00.002+05:30

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

Director: Werner Herzog
Country: Canada | USA | France
Runtime: 90 min

Werner Herzog gains exclusive access to film inside the Chauvet caves of Southern France, capturing the oldest known pictorial creations of humankind in their astonishing natural setting.

In 1994, a group of scientists discovered a cave in Southern France perfectly preserved for over 20,000 years and containing the earliest known human paintings. Knowing the cultural significance that the Chauvet Cave holds, the French government immediately cut-off all access to it, save a few archaeologists and paleontologists. But documentary filmmaker, Werner Herzog, has been given limited access, and now we get to go inside examining beautiful artwork created by our ancient ancestors around 32,000 years ago. He asks questions to various historians and scientists about what these humans would have been like and trying to build a bridge from the past to the present.

Midnight in Paris(2011)

2011-10-20T14:10:00.002+05:30

                                                                       Midnight in Paris
                                                                Directed by: Woody Allen
                                                                    Country: Spain, USA
                                                                          Runtime: 94 min

Gil and Inez travel to Paris as a tag-along vacation on her parents' business trip. Gil is a successful Hollywood writer but is struggling on his first novel. He falls in love with the city and thinks they should move there after they get married, but Inez does not share his romantic notions of the city or the idea that the 1920s was the golden age. When Inez goes off dancing with her friends, Gil takes a walk at midnight and discovers what could be the ultimate source of inspiration for writing. Gil's daily walks at midnight in Paris could take him closer to the heart of the city but further from the woman he's about to marry.

Woody Allen's love affair with France, which goes back decades, finds its finality with "Midnight in Paris," the latest of Allen's Parisian brochures, which recently opened at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday. The good news is that Allen seems to be paying attention in a way he hasn't always done in recent films, and has found a way to channel his often-caustic misanthropy, half-comic fear of death and anti-American bitterness into agreeable comic whimsy. The nominal point of "Midnight in Paris" is that we've all got to make the best of life in our own time while longing for a past that probably never existed. If anything, Allen seems to be rebuking himself, ever so mildly, for his compulsive romanticism, his obsession with the past and his disconnection from contemporary American life. Allen has baked us a sweet, airy Parisian dessert with just a sense of sentimental substance in the finish. One of his better films in his latter years.
IMDB Review

Dreileben:Trilogy

2011-10-18T16:57:00.001+05:30

In the summer of 2006, film directors Dominik Graf, Christian Petzold and Christoph Hochhäusler began corresponding with each other on the subjects of film aesthetics, the Berlin School, Germany and the film genre (their correspondence was published in German film magazine Revolver). Two years later they decided to continue this theoretical discussion with a joint film project: three individual stories revolving around the same “fait divers”: the escape of a convicted criminal from police custody. Graf’s DON’T FOLLOW ME AROUND tells the story of a police psychologist who meets old acquaintances while investigating a case. In Petzold’s BEATS BEING DEAD a young man doing alternative national service experiences a love story without a future. And in Christoph Hochhäusler’s ONE MINUTES OF DARKNESS an indefatigable policeman hunting the escaped prisoner begins to doubt false certainties. Three films, three styles, three exciting approaches, variations, analyses.
Dreileben 1:Beats Being Dead
Directors: Christian Petzold
Country: Germany
Runtime: 1 hour 26 minutes

''Beats Being Dead'' is the first part of the DREILEBEN trilogy.

A big hospital on the outskirts of a small city in the middle of the Thuringian Forest. Here Johannes carries out his alternative national service. The head physician, a family friend, has recruited him. Johannes gets to know Ana. During the night of their first embrace, a sex offender escapes from the hospital. His flight and the police’s hectic search accompany the story of Johannes and Ana – a love story transcending boundaries, without a future.

Dreileben 2: Don't Follow Me Around
Directors: Dominik Graf
Country: Germany
Runtime: 1 hour 28 minutes

In the trilogy’s second chapter, Jo, a big-city police psychologist, arrives in Dreileben to aid in the ongoing investigation, whereupon she finds herself greeted cooly by the local authorities but welcomed with open arms by Vera, a college friend who lives nearby with her husband, a pretentious author. As the girlfriends reminisce about bygone days and discover they were both once in love with the same man, director Dominik Graf deftly juxtaposes their personal drama against the search for a killer, a police corruption scandal, and a possible case of interspecies transmutation—all underlining the trilogy’s recurring themes of false appearances and deeply hidden truths.

Dreileben 3: One Minute of Darkness
Directors: Christoph Hochhäusler
Country: Germany
Runtime: 1 hour 29 minutes

The Dreileben trilogy comes to a nail-biting close with director Christoph Hochhäusler’s expert thriller, which also brings escaped felon Molosch—a peripheral character in the first two parts—into sharp focus. Hot on the killer’s trail, grizzled police inspector Marcus tries to put himself inside the mind of the criminal, even as he begins to wonder if the condemned man really is guilty as charged. Meanwhile, as Molosch flees deeper into Dreileben’s possibly enchanted forest, he has an unexpectedly tender encounter with a young runaway girl—scenes that echo the Frankenstein story and transform One Minute of Darkness into a dark, memorably strange fairy tale.

The Other Bank(2009)

2011-10-17T16:19:00.001+05:30

The Other Bank

Directors: George Ovashvili
Country: Georgia | Kazakhstan
Runtime: 1 hour 29 minutes

A young refugee and his mother flee ethnic cleansing in the Georgian region of Abkhazia, leaving his father behind. After arriving in the Georgina capital of Tbilisi, the young boy encounters difficulties with his mother, and begins a lonely journey back to Abkahzia to find his father.

Reviews

A 12-year-old Georgian boy embarks on a dangerous mission to find his father behind enemy lines in the breakaway Republic of Abkhazia in Georgian helmer George Ovashvili's moving feature debut, "The Other Bank." Showcasing impressive perfs from nonpro thesps, especially young Tedo Bekhauri as the lead, "Bank" wisely invests in unobtrusive naturalism and powerful but unsentimental storytelling that should ensure further fest play. That said, the pic doesn't quite pack an emotive enough punch to woo (or wow) auds much beyond Georgian and Russian arthouses.
Variety
*
"Gripping and visually impaling in the land of lost". Stranded in a war-torn-worn-down Tsibili in the aftermath of the conflicts between Abkhazia and Georgia in the early 90′s, 12-year-old Tedo and a slightly reluctant mother find themselves living as refugees, trying to make ends meet. As Tedo’s glue sniffing friends are arrested for petty crimes and the mother favor scummy lovers over her son, the young boy embarks on a journey back to Abkhazia to find the father left behind.
The Other Bank much reminisces of Greek director Angelopoulos film Landscape in the Mist where the children also leaves what they call home on a quest to find a missing father. They both encounter various kinds of people who treat them in various ways, some times quite unexpected. What makes The Other Bank interesting in particular is that it is set in such a remote location, showcasing a reality characterized by poverty, uncertainty and everything else that war brings with. The boy moves through desolate landscapes and cross borders where passing may rob you of your life.
Politics strongly pervades pic, but philosophical aspects which goes hand in hand with a few visually impaling scenes and a grand acting by the [amateur] lead performer turns this into a certain winner. A must see.
Mubi.com
*
Stranded in a war-torn-worn-down Tsibili in the aftermath of the conflicts between Abkhazia and Georgia in the early 90′s, 12-year-old Tedo and a slightly reluctant mother find themselves living as refugees, trying to make ends meet. As Tedo's glue sniffing friends are arrested for petty crimes and the mother prefer scummy lovers over him, the young boy embarks on a journey back to Abkhazia to find the father left behind.
The Other Bank much reminisces of Greek director Angelopoulos film Landscape in the Mist, where the children also leave what they call home on a quest to find a missing father. They both encounter various kinds of people who treat them in various ways, some times quite unexpected. What makes The Other Bank interesting in particular is that it is set in such a remote location, showcasing a reality (and the scenes it takes place in) characterized by poverty, uncertainty and everything else that war brings with. The boy moves through desolate landscapes and cross borders where passing may rob you of your life.
Politics strongly pervades pic, but philosophical aspects hand in hand with a few visually impaling scenes and a grand acting by the lead performer turns it into a definite winner.

Memory of Love (2009)

2011-10-09T12:23:00.000+05:30

Memory of Love (2009)

Director: Chao Wang
Country: China
Runtime: 92 min

A woman, He Sizhu, and her lover, Chen Mo, are in a car accident. When she wakes up at the hospital where her husband is a surgeon, she has forgotten everything. Her lover has become a stranger, but he wants her back.

Brothers (2011)

2011-10-08T22:01:00.003+05:30

Brothers (2011)

Director: Mika Kaurismäki
Country: Finland
Runtime: 1 hour 25 minutes

Two brothers take decidedly different paths when they attempt to seek their fortune. One is a responsible married man who opens up a print shop, working arduously to make a living. The other brother is a hippie who has a young girlfriend. When he stays with his brother, he has an affair with his sister-in-law while his brother sleeps with his girlfriend. The two brother attempt to patch things up after the hippie moves out.

The Turin Horse (2011)

2011-10-07T17:02:00.001+05:30

The Turin Horse

Directors:Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky
Country: Hungary
Runtime:146 min

1889. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse while traveling in Turin, Italy. He tossed his arms around the horse's neck to protect it then collapsed to the ground. In less than one month, Nietzsche would be diagnosed with a serious mental illness that would make him bed-ridden and speechless for the next eleven years until his death. But whatever did happen to the horse? This film, which is Tarr's last, follows up this question in a fictionalized story of what occurred. The man who whipped the horse is a rural farmer who makes his living taking on carting jobs into the city with his horse-drawn cart. The horse is old and in very poor health, but does its best to obey its master's commands. The farmer and his daughter must come to the understanding that it will be unable to go on sustaining their livelihoods. The dying of the horse is the foundation of this tragic tale. Written by Anonymous

Tomboy (2011)

2011-10-06T18:53:00.001+05:30

Director: Céline Sciamma

Country: France

Runtime: 84 min

There is definitely something boyish about ten-year-old Laure. She has recently moved to a new area with her parents and her little sister, Jeanne. It’s summertime and all the other neighbourhood children are playing outside – only Laure is alone, for she knows nobody of her own age. But then, one day, she meets Lisa, a girl who is exactly the same age. Laure allows her new acquaintance to believe that she is a boy. Laure becomes Mikaël, and, no sooner has she brought about this ‘transformation’ than she begins playing with all the other neighbourhood children. As time passes, Laure’s relationship to Lisa becomes increasingly close, making the ambiguity of her situation ever more complicated.
Céline Sciamma is a proponent of a new generation of filmmakers in France. In an interview with “Cineuropa” in August 2007 she comments: “I became a cinephile as a result of young French cinema of the 90s: Desplechin, Lvovsky, Rochant. But I like Gus Van Sant and Larry Clark a lot too for their work on adolescence, not to forget David Lynch.”

Familiar Ground (2011)

2011-10-05T11:47:00.001+05:30

En terrains connus Director: Stéphane Lafleur

Country: Canada
Runtime: 90 min

Maryse and her husband are desperate to sell a backhoe sitting abandoned in their suburban yard. Her brother, Benoit, is trapped in endless adolescence, sharing their childhood home with their invalid father. Benoit is enamoured with a single mom named Nathalie, and he's hoping to finally grow up by living with her... but Nathalie's son does not approve. A serious accident at the factory where Maryse works, a strange series of coincidences, and the arrival of a Man claiming to come from the future launch Maryse and Benoit on a life-changing road trip. Following up his acclaimed feature film Continental, a film without guns, filmmaker Stephane Lafleur once again brings us an ensemble of compelling characters, in a story where the ordinary and the fantastic collide. Written by Anonymous from imdb

MELANCHOLIA (2011)

2011-10-04T13:18:00.000+05:30

MELANCHOLIA

Director: Lars von Trier
Country: Denmark
Runtime:136 min

The film begins with an intro sequence, with a number of semi-abstract images of the main characters as well as images from space, showing the end of the world. Melancholia is divided into two parts, the first being a family drama about the girl Justine (Kirsten Dunst), who is alienated from her family at her own wedding.
Part two is an apocalyptic drama about Justine and her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who has to deal with the possible end of the world, as a previously unknown Counter-Earth planet, called Melancholia, is on collision course with Earth.
In part one, the young couple Justine and Michael (Alexander Skarsgård) are getting married at a castle, but the party is far from successful, as Justine’s divorced parents (John Hurt and Charlotte Rampling) are openly fighting at the dinner. Justine herself is both alienated from her sister, her new husband, her boss (Stellan Skarsgård) and her parents.
She drifts away from the party, and becomes increasingly depressed and desperate during the night. At several occasions, she looks at a specific star, which seems to shine brighter than normal. Claire’s husband John (Kiefer Sutherland) says it is the star Antares, and later in the movie the star disappears. At the end of the party, Michael leaves Justine, implying that their marriage is called off.
In part two, Justine has become severely depressed, and visits Claire and John, who lives in the same castle with their son Leo (Cameron Spurr). To begin with, Justine is unable to do normal everyday things like taking a bath or eat, but becomes more self confident over time.
It has been revealed that the reason for Antares’ disappearance was due to the planet Melancholia, which had previously been hidden behind the sun, had moved in front of the star and blocked it from view.
At the same time, Melancholia has become visible in the sky. John, being very keen on astronomy, is excited about the planet, and looks forward to the so-called fly-by, as Earth and Melancholia are supposed to pass by each other.
Claire is very fearful about the planet, and believes it is the end of the world. On the night of the fly-by, it seems that John was right, as Melancholia passes by Earth, and nothing happens. In the following days, however, it turns out that Melancholia is coming back around. As John finds out, he commits suicide by taking pills.
His dead body is found by Claire, who decides to keep it a secret. She then talks to Justine, who is extremely cynical about the impending doom. However, she tries to comfort Leo by building a crude shelter out of wooden sticks. The film ends with Justine, Claire and Leo sitting inside the shelter, as Melancholia collides with Earth.

DIRECTORS STATEMENT

It was like waking from a dream: my producer showed me a suggestion for a poster. “What is that?” I ask. ”It’s a film you’ve made!” she replies. ”I hope not,” I stammer. Trailers are shown ... stills ... it looks like shit. I’m shaken.
Don’t get me wrong ... I’ve worked on the film for two years. With great pleasure. But perhaps I’ve deceived myself. Let myself be tempted. Not that anyone has done anything wrong ... on the contrary, everybody has worked loyally and with talent toward the goal defined by me alone. But when my producer presents me with the cold facts, a shiver runs down my spine.
This is cream on cream. A woman’s film! I feel ready to reject the film like a wrongly transplanted organ.
But what was it I wanted? With a state of mind as my starting point, I desired to dive headlong into the abyss of German romanticism. Wagner in spades. That much I know. But is that not just another way of expressing defeat? Defeat to the lowest of cinematic common denominators? Romance is abused in all sorts of endlessly dull ways in mainstream products.
And then, I must admit, I have had happy love relationships with romantic cinema ... to name the obvious: Visconti!
German romance that leaves you breathless. But in Visconti, there was always something to elevate matters beyond the trivial ... elevate it to masterpieces!
I am confused now and feel guilty. What have I done?
Is it ’exit Trier?’ I cling to the hope that there may be a bone splinter amid all the cream that may, after all, crack a fragile tooth ... I close my eyes and hope!

Lars von Trier, Copenhagen, April 13, 2011.

The Cat Vanishes (2011)

2011-10-03T19:49:00.001+05:30

The Cat Vanishes (2011)

Director: Carlos Sorin
Country:Argentina
Runtime: 90 min

Luis Romero is a history professor who suffers a psychotic break and assaulted a colleague. Beatrice, his wife, as a neuropsychiatric internal. Later Luis returns home, supposedly cured, but Beatriz doubt his sanity. Especially after the disappearance of Donatello, the cat.

Drive (2011)

2011-10-03T13:54:00.003+05:30

Drive (2011)

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn
Country: USA
Runtime: 100 min

A Hollywood stunt performer who moonlights as a wheelman discovers that a contract has been put on him after a heist gone wrong.

No tengas miedo (2011)

2011-09-27T16:09:00.001+05:30

No tengas miedo

Director: Montxo Armendáriz
Country: Spain
89mins

In "Fear not," Silvia is a young marked by a dark childhood. At just 25 years decides to rebuild her life and deal with people, feelings and emotions that keep you tied to the past. And in their struggle against adversity, against itself, you will learn to control their fears and become an adult woman, mistress of her actions.

The Jewel (2011)

2011-09-25T21:13:00.000+05:30

The Jewel

Director: Andrea Molaioli
Country: Italy
Runtime: 110 min

The dramatic reconstruction of a financial scandal involving a major food processing company (inspired by the actual case of the dairy giant Parmalat) run by prominent entrepreneur Rastelli and his trusted accountant Botta.

Pina (2011)

2011-09-23T19:54:00.001+05:30

Pina (2011)

Directed by: Wim Wenders
Country: Germany, France, UK
Runtime: 106 min

Pina is an essay on the life and work of renowned choreographer Pina Bausch. Pina appears in some archival footage, and several members of her dance troupe testify to her ingenuity and artistic inspiration. The spirit of Pina, however, lives on in her dances: the film offers four of Bausch’s famed dances in their entirety, but dispersed and intercut throughout the film. The opening dance, The Rite of Spring, is a mesmerizing and penetrating ballet through a field of earth. The film’s hindrance may be that the first number is the strongest, but all four dances are sharp and provocative, and they alternate between soundstages and exterior settings.
Aside from moving the dances outdoors, Wenders transcends the theatrical boundaries of Pina’s stage and offers a wholly cinematic rendering of her dances by shooting them in marvelous 3D.

Habemus Papam (2011)

2011-09-21T10:30:00.000+05:30

Habemus Papam (2011)

Director: Nanni Moretti
Country: Italy | France
Runtime:102 min

After the death of the Pope, the conclave met to elect his successor. Many votes are needed before the white smoke rises.Finally he chose a cardinal! But the faithful who have gathered in St. Peter's Square waiting in vain for the appearance on the balcony of the new pontiff. The latter does not seem prepared to support the weight of this responsibility. Is it anxiety? Depression? Fear of not living up? The whole world will soon be prey to anxiety, while at the Vatican, seeking solutions to overcome the crisis ...

The Tree Of Life (2011)

2011-09-20T20:45:00.002+05:30

The Tree Of Life (2011)

Director: Terrence Malick
Country: USA
Runtime: 139min

The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.

An IMDb Review: Haunting
Unlike a novel the stories in this movie do not unfold, revelation following revelation, culminating in a definable message or theme. There is no moral, no hero, no emotional epiphanies. What it presents is an extraordinarily haunting vision of childhood, how the things we love the most are as fragile as morning dew yet immensely powerful. The things that connect us, separate us, and bewilder us - again and again and again throughout our lives. The saddest, most insightful, most poignant portrayal of a family I have ever seen. Genius. How can this film achieve commercial success? it seems impossible. How did a film so ambitious get made when everything that makes money today is everything this film isn't? Bravo to the producers, bravo to the early critics who are stepping up and speaking out for this deeply moving masterpiece.

The Kid with a Bike (2011)

2011-09-18T10:43:00.003+05:30

The Kid with a Bike (2011)

Directed by: Jean-Pierre Dardenne,Luc Dardenne
Writers: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Genre: Drama
Country: Belgium, France, Italy
Language: French
Plot Outline: Abandoned by his father, a young boy is left in the hands of an unqualified childcare provider.
Runtime: 87 min .

Cyril, almost 12, has only one plan: to find the father who left him temporarily in a children's home.
By chance he meets Samantha, who runs a hairdressing salon and agrees to let him stay with her at weekends.
Cyril doesn't recognize the love Samantha feels for him, a love he desperately needs to calm his rage.

A Separation (2011)

2011-09-17T09:25:00.001+05:30

A Separation

Director:Asghar Farhadi

Country:Iran

Runtime:120min

The film is about to divorce, child custody, but tells the story of a couple falling in the dilemma ...

Simin, wants to leave Iran with her husband, Nader and his daughter Termeh'le. Nader refuses to quit over the divorce case of Alzheimer's disease, which his father, Simin, the case goes to the house of his parents rejected the request.

Termeh the father decided to stay. Nader and his father to look after her daughter keeps a pregnant young woman, but this situation will lead to more problems ...

The Indian Woman: A Historical Sketch (1975)

2011-09-15T18:16:00.001+05:30

The Indian Woman: A Historical Sketch (1975)

Director.........: Mani Kaul
Country..........: India

Mani Kaul's superior documentary on the plight of Indian women made at the height of the emergency in 1975. Kaul refused to sign the film after Indira Gandhi asked him to make some changes.

The Reconstruction / Hashikhzur (1994)

2011-09-15T14:33:00.001+05:30

The Reconstruction / Hashikhzur (1994)

Director.........: Avi Mograbi
Country..........: Israel

On December 8, 1983 a fifteen year old Jewish boy from the city of Haifa was kidnapped, murdered and sexually abused after his death. Five Arabs who worked in in the neighborhood’s supermarket were convicted and imprisoned for life and 27 years. The conviction was based only on the defendants’ confessions and reconstructions. Seventeen years after their conviction, the five defendants still claim they are innocent.THE RECONSTRUCTION follows the police investigation and juridical process step by step. The heart of the film is the original videotaped reconstructions of the murder performed by the defendants in which they admit their guilt. Presented also is a secretly recorded audio tape made by the police during the investigation in which one of the defendants begs his alibi witness to withdraw his favorable testimony. Introducing a surprising new evidence by former Head of Investigations in The Israeli Security Service as to the defendants’ state during the investigation and a pathological analysis of the original death certificate in relation to the defendants’ reconstructions - the film raises doubts as to whether the five have at all taken part in the murder and as to the ability to ever learn the truth, concerning a specific event and in general.

Oxen (1991) aka The Ox

2011-09-13T17:00:00.003+05:30

Oxen

Director: Sven Nykvist
Country: Sweden
Runtime: 92 min

Based on a true story during a famine in nineteenth century Sweden, this deeply moral story is played by the royalty of Scandinavian film and theater (Max von Sydow, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson). Helge (Stellan Skarsgard) and his wife Elfrida (Ewa Froling) live on the farmland of their master Svenning (Lennart Hjulstrom). They have no food for the winter. Helge decides to kill one of his employer's two oxen to save his wife and infant daughter from starvation. Should Helge be caught, he'll suffer severe punishment. With the help of appalled wife, Helge carves up the meat and hides it.

"Ox" shows the excruciating consequences Helge, his wife and their baby daughter will have to undergo.

Director Sven Nykvist, best known as Ingmar Bergman's cinematographer, has no problem conveying the surface grimness of the situation.

Son of Babylon (2009)

2011-09-13T13:30:00.000+05:30

Son of Babylon (2009)

Director:Mohamed Al Daradji
Country: Iraq
Runtime: 182 min.

A willful young boy follows his just as obstinate grandmother in a journey across Iraq, determined to discover the fate of her missing son, Ahmed's father, who never returned from war.

A Pestering Journey(2010)

2011-09-04T16:40:00.001+05:30

A Pestering Journey
Directed By: K R Manoj
Written byRanjini Krishnan
K.R. Manoj
CinematographyShehnad Jalal
Running time66 minutes
Country:India

A voyage through two pesticide tragedies in post Independent India,
A Pestering Journey is an attempt to interrogate the legitimate forms and technologies of killing available in a culture. Taking a pestering turn, the journey blurs the boundaries of nature and culture, of self and other, of life and death and many other comfortable binaries we inhabit. It tries to ask how much regard for life a culture should have to ponder over the question, what a pest is.

Pestering Journey unravels the many interwoven layers of culture and agriculture and foregrounds the logic of green revolution. In an atypical move it challenges and changes the idioms of pesticide and genocide and reveals the claims over knowledge and expertise which pushes a pesticide like Endosulfan to a dubious position between poison and medicine.

Farewell to the Ark(1984)

2011-09-02T11:30:00.002+05:30

Farewell to the Ark(1984)
Director: Shuji Terayama
Writers:Gabriel García Márquez (novel)
Country: Japan
Runtime: 127 min

There is a legend that the married couple who also are cousins have a tailed child at this village. Sutekichi and Sue are cousins, and they marry against the kinsfolk. But Sue wears the chasity band, so they can't making love. One day, Sutekichi kills Daisaku who is a relative at a cockpit. After then, Daisaku's ghost appears and Sutekichi is losing 'the words' of everything.

In a tale that is visually stunning in certain segments, director Shuji Terayama (who died before this movie was released) has woven a spell of magic and social reprobation around the forbidden love of two cousins. Su-e (Mayumi Ogawa) and her cousin Sutekichi (Tsutomu Yamazaki), a descendant of one of the village clans, live together but have been forbidden by her father to have sexual contact. Like other villagers, he believes that if cousins have children together, the children will suffer serious birth defects. His remedy is to make Su-e wear a large, ugly chastity belt. Unable to take the ridicule of his fellow villagers, Sutekichi stabs the head of the clan to death and then runs away with Su-e. After some time elapses, the two make their way back to the village, but by then Sutekichi is suffering the effects of his actions.

Korkoro aka Freedom (2009)

2011-08-29T18:36:00.002+05:30

Korkoro
Director: Tony Gatlif
Country: France
Runtime: 106 min

A Gypsy family travels the French roads during the Second World War, followed by Little Claude, a young boy seeking a new family after his parents "left and never returned". Upon reaching a town where they traditionally stop for a few months and work in vineyards, they learn that a new law forbids them from being nomadic. Theodore, the town's mayor, and Miss Lundi, the schoolteacher, protect and help the Gypsies. Despite this, They are arrested and placed in an internment camp. Theodore manages to rescue them and gives them a piece of property where they must settle. But the Gypsies' deeply ingrained thirst for freedom makes this sedentary lifestyle difficult to bear. After Theodore and Miss Lundi are arrested for resistance, the Gypsies decide they must get back on the move in order to remain free.

The Mother and the Whore (1973)

2011-08-28T12:27:00.002+05:30

The Mother and the Whore

Director:Jean Eustache

Country:France
Runtime:217min

One of the most important French films of the 1970s, Jean Eustache's marathon drama focuses on three twentysomething Parisians in a bizarre love triangle: Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) is a seemingly unemployed narcissist involved with both a live-in girlfriend (Bernadette Lafont) and a Polish nurse (Franoise Lebrun) whom he picked up at a café and with whom he begins a desultory affair. Clocking in at over 3 1/2 hours, the movie focuses less on plot than on the confused and ambivalent interrelations of these three lost souls. As such, it becomes a searing document of the aftermath of Paris's social and sexual revolutions of the Sixties, particularly the uprisings of May 1968. These characters know that they are supposed to be free and liberated, but they don't quite know how to go about it, or how to make it work in practice, and their efforts don't seem to make them any happier. In the guise of a plotless style seemingly borrowed from cinéma vérité documentaries, Eustache unfolds a critique of both the illusory liberations of his social moment and the dead-end heritage of his cinematic moment. By casting Jean-Pierre Léaud, an icon of the French New Wave who first made his name as the star of Franois Truffaut's pioneering The 400 Blows (1959), Eustache sets out to rewrite the conventions of a French New Wave that had changed from a revolutionary film movement into a formulaic mainstream style. Despite its deceptively rambling manner, the film effortlessly intertwines its characters' psychological dilemmas with a portrait of its cultural moment with a revision of a wide swath of film history from Truffaut's Jules and Jim to Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game to Ernst Lubitsch's Design for Living. This experimental classic is not for all viewers, but it's an unforgettable, and historically indispensable, experience for those who can stick with it.

Ballad of Narayama(1958)

2011-08-24T18:01:00.003+05:30

Ballad of Narayama
Director:Keisuke Kinoshita
Country: Japan
Runtime: 1:38

Based on the novel by Shichiro Fukuzawa, Narayama Bushiko is a haunting and deeply affecting portrait of love and humanity struggling against the rigidity of tradition, obedience, and sense of duty. Using jarring, anachronistic imagery and unusually stylized artificial lighting, Keisuke Kinoshita presents a relevant examination of the pervasive national ideology of wartime Japan that underscores the dichotomous, and often self-destructive conflict between personal conscience and social conformity: the idiosyncratic fusion of traditional (kabuki) and modern (film) dramatic media; the perversion of cultural and moral norms within the primitive society (disrespect for elders, disposability of life, regression of human logic into base instincts for survival); and the incongruous, final shot that juxtaposes ancient and contemporary images to evoke timelessness, passage, and transience. Inevitably, Narayama Bushiko becomes a haunting allegory on the perils of blind allegiance, martyrdom, and repression - a humanist reflection of the profound introspection, cultural erosion, and ideological ambivalence of postwar Japan.

ARIRANG(2011)

2011-08-21T12:08:00.002+05:30

ARIRANG
Directed by Kim Ki-duk
Country:South Korea
Runtime:100min

Arirang is
about Kim Ki-duk
playing 3 roles in 1.
Through Arirang I climb over one hill in life.
Through Arirang I understand human beings, thank the nature, and accept my life as it is now.

We are now...
in the terrestrial world lurking with desires,
in the ghostly world lurking with sorrow
in the imaginary world lurking with dreams,
with no beginning nor end,
slowly going crazy.

What is affection that it still remains all around me decaying?
It’s still stuck to the crown of my head, testing my emotions.
It’s still hiding deep within my heart, testing my sense of compassion.
If I didn’t give my heart, they would be bad people erased from memories but if I gave my heart, I couldn’t let them go till the day that I die as despicable people.
Ah...
Arirang
Alright
Let’s mercilessly kill each other in our hearts till we die.

Even today
I hold back as I get angry
I laugh as I get jealous
I love as I despise
And forgive as I quiver with the urge to kill.
Wait
I will kill
Myself, who remembers you.

South Korea, winter 2010-11. Film-maker Kim Ki-duk is shown living in a skeletal hillside home in the country, with just a cat for company. He chops his own wood, eats plain, simple food, sleeps in a tent inside the house and, claiming to be unable to make films any longer, interviews himself in a confessional-cum-obituary. Occasionally, he sings the melancholic Korean folk song Arirang. Finally, he drives into Seoul to take vengeance against those who "betrayed" him.

The Mahabharata (1989)

2011-08-19T17:20:00.001+05:30

The Mahabharata (1989)
Director:Peter Brook
Country: UK/France/USA and others
Runtime: 325min

The story is based on a two-thousand-year-old Indian epic poem that runs to 100,000 verses, making it four times longer than the Bible and seven times longer than the Odyssey and the Iliad combined. Boiled down, it can be seen as a simple tale of rivalry between warring members of the same family, the Pandavas and the Kauravas, but it's so much more than that, taking in religion, philosophy, spiritualism, war, love, life and death. Brook and long-time writing collaborator Jean-Claude Carriere originally produced a nine-hour stage production of the epic in the early Eighties, before "re-imagining" it as a five-hour TV drama.
The epic tells the tale of two sets of cousins, the Pandavas, the five sons of Pandu, the king of Hastinapura, and the Kauravas, the one hundred sons of Pandu's brother, Dhritarashtra. The eldest brother of each set of cousins claims the throne of Hastinapura for himself and a struggle arises between them. At first the kingdom is divided, but, as a result of a gambling match, the eldest of the Pandavas, Yuddhishtira, loses his half, and he and his brothers are forced into exile for thirteen years. They are to be given back their kingdom upon their return from exile, but when the eldest of the Kauravas, Duryodhana, refuses to do so the two sets of cousins gather their armies and go to war.
There are 16 main characters, each with their own story, and the non-linear narrative is weighed down by a labyrinth of subplots, digressions and a bewildering array of voices and perspectives. This can be confusing, but it also frees the film from the normal constraints of 90-minute filmmaking. Vyasa, the narrator, not only retells the story but also appears in it himself, often going back in time to emerge as an old man in his own family's story. There are also some nice touches of the surreal and the fantastic. Vyasa narrates his story to a young boy in the company of the demi-god Ganesha, a half-man, half-elephant deity who quietly transcribes the story like a dutiful secretary. As with other epics, such as the Odyssey and the Iliad, the gods and goddesses play a central role in events - one woman is impregnated by the sun, another by the wind.

BISHAR BLUES

2011-08-17T11:14:00.002+05:30

BISHAR BLUES(2006)

Director: Amitabh Chakraborty

Country:India

Runtime:79min

Bengali Fakirs are Islamic people who live in Bengal, in Eastern India. The Bengalis are the second largest ethnic language group who practice Islam. The Fakirs are Bengali with their own typical ethnic, cultural and geographical mix. In their practice of Islam they have extended it’s scope over the complex multiplicities of their own land.

The Fakirs believe that to know oneself is to know God. There is no higher entity than Man. In fact, they search for Allah in Man. Through the practice of this indigenous form of Islam, called 'Marfat', they keep Islam open-ended. 'Marfat' is passed on in the oral tradition through songs.

'Bishar Blues' undertakes a journey to understand 'Marfat' through encounters with various Fakirs and their songs.

Winner of:
Golden Lotus, Best Film award in the 54rth National Awards Nonfeature section;
National awards also for Best Audiography and Best Editing;

Filme do Desassossego aka Disquiet (2010)

2011-08-14T11:49:00.002+05:30

Filme do Desassossego aka Disquiet
Director: João Botelho
Country: Portugal
Runtime: 120

Lisbon, nowadays. A room in a house in Rua dos Douradores. A man invents dreams and establishes theories about them. The very essence of dreams becomes physical, palpable, visible. The text itself becomes matter in it's musical sonority. And, before our eyes, this music felt in our ears, in our brain, in our heart, spreads trough the street where he lives, trough the city that he loves most of all, and trough the whole world. Disquieted movie about fragments of an infinite and trapped book, of an almost mad flamboyance, but, of a brilliant clarity. The solar moment of Fernando Pessoa's creation. The absolute and perfect loneliness of the I, outer and hopeless. God am I!, also wrote Bernardo Soares.

~~~~~

It is late night in a café. A typical young intellect in his early twenties with sharp black eyes peering through black steel framed glasses is muttering that the modern method of measuring time is wrong and staring at a young man who is slouched with a face that looks pale, indifferent, and worried, all at the same time. Modernist poet Fernando Pessoa, who had keen observations of the dailiness of modern times in Lisbon in the 1910s, The Book of Disquiet, which Pessoa wrote in 1913, and the character of Bernardo Soares, into whom Pessoa projected his identity, all come to life in Lisbon in the 21st century through this film. The film is based on The Book of Disquiet, a diary about the distance between feelings of loneliness and the monotonous reality of daily life written by Bernardo Soares who goes back and forth between the accountant's office where works as an intern and his room, both of which are located on Rua dos Douradores in Lisbon, and may have been an impossible project to bring to the big screen; much like Joseph Strick’s attempt with James Joyce's Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Nevertheless, João Botelho began this project that everyone advised him against with the conviction that the quality of cinematic time, which resists the chronological flow of time and is able to illustrate daily life in a fragmented and musical rhythm, was the optimal vessel in presenting the extratemporel text that refuses to be confined to the limitations of a ‘book’. The characters in the film and the additional incidents become existences themselves in no time and become a part of the present of 2010. (Park Jinhee)

~~~~~

The Book of Disquiet, “composed” by a mysterious and modest bookkeeper’s assistant, named Bernardo Soares, heteronymous of Fernando Pessoa, is translated in 37 languages and distributed throughout the whole world. It is the most read and distributed book of the poet, a puzzling and unmatchable literary adventure. In a brilliant analysis professor Eduardo Lourenço said that Fernando Pessoa, the most prodigious cultural myth of the XX century is, today, definitely larger than Portugal. There has never been a creative genius that identified so completely with the heart of the city where he was born, that matched almost exactly the tangle of streets that he walked through, and described as no one could, with the infinity of people who he came across with and described with the “gaze of god”, in a Lisbon that is the centre of a world without centre. How premonitory Pessoa can be, isn’t that the way the world is today?
Speaking of labyrinths, identification, and brilliant minds, who can deny that Joyce is Dublin, Kafka is Prague, and Borges is Buenos Aires? What if, like in the case of Pessoa, the identification is perfect, why not, then, to say, once and for all, that although Pessoa is bigger than the country, Lisbon and Pessoa are the same thing. Especially when the “Book” has changed forever the quotidian and fabulous poet’s city, and has projected him (and us with him) to the limits of the universe, fulfilling the Portuguese destiny written in the enigmatic final verses of the “Mensagem”: “To haunt the world, definitely building a new, spiritual and poetic empire.”
“My nation is the Portuguese language”
This sentence from the Book of Disquiet represents, to me, our biggest invention since the XVI century Discoveries. 28 years ago, when in a mix of innocence and outrage I dared to do a film (“Conversa Acabada”) based on the correspondence exchanged between Fernando Pessoa and Mário de Sá Carneiro, I had “in my power” apart from the personal objects of the poet, of incalculable value –glasses, silver cigarette case, ivory cigarette holder and even the handwritten journals of Mário de Sá-Carneiro, noted and amended by Pessoa, with the blue cover - the famous chest, “pregnant” with kilometers of unedited fragments, many of which would latter constitute the several versions of this rambling Book of Disquiet. In the presence of that mythic chest (“the myth is the nothing that is everything”), the studio where I directed the film turned into a cult place, a kind of a church, and the act of filming turned into something sacred. I was 30 years old. The film was made and remained forever. Today the chest is empty, but the ghost of Pessoa still inhabits it, probably laughing of the perturbation or anxiety that was caused to so many people when a shapeless sea of papers became a universally known work. The trap of a genius, a perfect puzzle and brilliant because all the solutions are different and none is definitive.
“It is impossible to film the Book of Disquiet” everyone tells me. Maybe, I say, but I also say that departing from a timeless text, a text that has no end, and that is unique, it is possible to create the FILM OF DISQUIET that does not want to be the book (the cinema is a very different thing from the literary art) but a disturbing film, that resists time and that lives up to the fragments from which it departs.
Today, having the perfect conscience of the risks I’m taking, I want to face the “brilliant monster” not for the sake of experimentation or artistic dilettantism, but for the sake of cinema, that I love above anything, and of the Portuguese language, that is also my nation.
The international approval and respect that the Portuguese cinema has conquered in the last 30 years, was granted by a series of prototypes, films that have no match in any place in the world, that, while exhibiting an enormous freedom, represent one of the biggest artistic creations that this country ever produced. Some are better, some are worse, I know, but every single one is original, unique, the most part of them constituting a great and beautiful cinema, that resists time and that makes everyone proud.

Cinema isn’t just one thing, but wonderful hundreds of ways to film.
Jean- Luc Godard

What modern movies lack is wind in the trees.
D. W. Griffith

Everyone knows, and I do as well, that cinema it’s not the “what” (what action takes place), nor the “when” (when did it took place), but the “how” (how do you film it). Different directors, departing from the same text, or the same script, make completely disparate films. Thus let us explain the way of filming THE FILM OF DISQUIET. Abstraction it’s cinema’s impossible dream, but to try to reach as close to it as possible, fighting for the progress of the ideas and forms, it’s the ambition that, today, a worthy and free filmmaker must chase. It is the best form of respect we can have for those who are still to come, our children and grandchildren.
Hence, what I want is to bring the text to the present, to a time outside the time when it was created, and to the future, refusing the historical reconstitution of the period film, refusing the psychology and the sociology, deathly enemies of the art, trying to reach the matter of transcendence, the physics of the soul, creating irresistible emotions. The spectators are human beings, with a heart, a brain, feelings and intelligence.
There is in The Book of Disquiet two small and precious texts that were decisive to structure the film and the way of filming it. One of the texts is about the grand autonomy of the sonority of texts that, when read, out loud or in a low voice, elevate themselves way up their creator, making the writing become bigger than the one who created it; The other small text is about the notion of time and its distortion, idea that adjust perfectly to the notion of cinematographic time. “Time” in cinema can and should be matter and truth, but it never is the time of life. There is also a small saying on light: “The same light illuminates the faces of the saints and the shoes of the common man”. I don’t need anything else to be happy.
To reach the grain of the voice, to find the rhythms of truthful and grand music of the fragments of the book. Read it, out loud, or in a low voice, as Pessoa says. The grip you feel in your chest isn’t that of a glorious happiness? Doesn’t your eyes become flooded with tears and your brain fizzy? Distorting time and images, to question our way to look at them (utilization of different speeds, ralenti, accelerations and even anamorphic lenses, steamed up, out of focus) to paint the space with excessive colors, non realistic, but also to make them faint, almost disappear, reach the pale shades, until the purity of the grey range, of the black and white. I don’t propose an experimental film, but a just film, that respects the idea and the grandiosity of that astonishing “Book”.

Characters and Sets. If the “Book” and the “City” must overlap everything else, I must abandon the obvious iconography usually related to Pessoa – the little man with a Jewish look, with a hooked nose, a hat, glasses and a mustache - ( to the character of Fernando Pessoa I leave the glasses because I’m interested in using them as a narration element and as a material idea of an altered sense of vision). Also, and more importantly, the absolutely fictional character of Bernardo Soares will be a contemporary man, of a regular look, undistinguishable from the rest of the common mortals, but with the anguish and the desperate tedium of a modest employee, today’s equivalent to the modest bookkeeper’s assistant, that, many years ago, Pessoa made ramble trough Lisbon, maybe without leaving its room or the office in the Rua dos Douradores. And I only keep the Rua dos Douradores because it is an integrant and fundamental part of the creation of the “Book”. Today Bernardo Soares should live in the outskirts, spend several desperate hours kept in traffic jams to arrive to work, or in crowded public transports, be our equal, the same as people all around the world. But I will make him ride the subway and attend places from the present day, abandoning the Pessoa itinerary that is closer to tourism than it is to the truth.
However, Lisbon will still be a mysterious city, labyrinthine and deep, of an unquestionable beauty and light. “Oh Lisbon, my home!”
Every other character and incident that involve him are, in the vertigo of the sounds of the sentences that make them exist, part of the disquiet of the year of 2009 of our era.
Economy and distribution: In the year of 2008 the 120th anniversary of the birth of Fernando Pessoa was celebrated. It is time to attack, using the means I possess - cinema -, a unique text, and give it to the young generations, so thirsty of images and sounds and so disconnected to the books. Lets make an effort, I assure you that hundreds of thousands of eyes and hears will see this film throughout the years. Today, the cultural tourism is the main responsible for the horde of people from foreign countries that continuously invades Lisbon, How many thousands sit in the chair next to the statue of the poet in the Brasileira’s terrace? How many thousands wouldn’t buy the DVD of the “Film of Disquiet” if it exists, in Portugal and throughout the world?

~~~~~

João Botelho is the Portuguese filmmaker of memory, whose films seek to transform the physical into the metaphysical and to render ideas and poetry physical. His work is based on the word, a creative approach that is almost more poetic than cinematographic and which was already demonstrated in his debut feature, Conversa Acabada (1982), a conversation between two great Portuguese writers, Fernando Pessoa and Mário de Sá-Carneiro, that could be defined as an epistolary framework for an examination of what is articulated through different times and fashions: a conversation that is anything but ‘finished’ (‘acabada’).

His subsequent films include Hard Times (1987) and Aqui na Terra (1993), for which he wrote the screenplay. In 1999 he was in the Venice Film Festival with Se a Memória Existe which received a good critical reception. He returned to Venice with Quem és Tu? (2001) from a novel by Almeida Garrett called Frei Louis de Sousa, and in 2005 with O Fatalista, from Diderot’s celebrated novel, which played in competition. His most recent feature is A Corte do Norte (2008), which was featured in the third Rome Film Festival.

A decidedly Lusitanian cinema, a cinema of poetry and memory, a silent Portuguese farewell…

Namibia Crossings (2004)

2011-08-06T16:50:00.002+05:30

Namibia Crossings (2004)
Director: Peter Liechti
Country: Switzerland
Runtime: 90

The Hambana Sound Company is a chamber orchestra, initiated and devised by Bernhard Göttert to present a ’sound portrait’ of Namibia in collaboration with musicians from Switzerland, Zimbabwe, Angola, Russia and Namibia.

During its tour in 2001, the Hambana Sound Company staged more than seven concerts in different regions, inviting local artists to participate. The music presents a mixture of traditional melodies and dances, contemporary songs as well as extemporised experiments.

”In NAMIBIA CROSSINGS (...), Liechti accompanies the Hambana Sound Company, a diverse multicultural group of musicians and singers, on a concert tour across Namibia. The film documents an ambitious musical project (...), the aim of which is not only to bring together the most various musical styles - from classical through jazz to traditional African music - but also to provoke a fundamental encounter between cultures. Using only minimal commentary, Liechti records the results of this artistic experiment: both the successful, mostly musical, moments, as well as the worsening conflicts within this heterogeneous ensemble. The film is not a chronicle of a failure: on the contrary, it points out the difficulties of the continuing need for self-determination in a globalized world.”
Constantin Wulff

Aita AKA Father (2010)

2011-08-06T11:41:00.002+05:30

Aita AKA Father (2010)
Director:José María de Orbe
Country:Spain
Runtime:85min

An oddly poignant hymn to memory, time, and place, José Maria de Orbe’s Aita (Father) may appear to be about two custodians of a dilapidated Basque Country estate, though make no mistake: the central character is the frail 13th Century mansion whose nooks and crannies are revealed throughout the course of the film’s stately duration. Ostensibly a documentary on the property and its occasional inhabitants, de Orbe’s film crisply conflates fictional and nonfictional practices with an eye towards the experimental, resulting in a personal essay on the intrinsic and spiritual value of the house in question. (de Orbe inherited the mansion from family, and spent three years filming it.) Once home to aristocrats or a decadent class, the building’s origins are unavoidable when contemplating its image on screen; cinematically, it conjures up allusions to the dwindling dynasty in The Leopard; while politically, it seems inseparable from the region’s war-torn past (namely, the Spanish Civil War). But de Orbe is more fascinated by the architecture’s waning life force than he is the ancestral context or historical burden of the site—a fading, if still breathing entity which history moves continuously through, rather than weighs heavily on.

Periodically, de Orbe’s gaze will pause on a muffled conversation between the groundskeeper and caretaker, or an excitable group of school children touring the house—brief human interludes, which merely serve to remind us that people no longer occupy the space, and quite the opposite of advancing any sort of plot, boldly draw attention to a sense of absence and decay (such as when the place is ransacked by vandals one night). If this strategy around dignifying the building’s existence sounds aggressively minimalist, it is, however there is more to de Orbe’s film than speaking the stark visual language of contemporary art cinema. Aita is beautifully edited, and the finite length in which shots are held—never too long, never too short—imbues the static camerawork with a lightness of being while allowing us to lose ourselves within the frame. And as we explore the interior space with our eyes—guided, in part, by the majestic play of natural and artificial light (as in the film projections creatively used to illuminate rooms in darkness)—the sound of ageing is unmistakable. In one scene, the elderly caretaker (Luís Pescador, who tends to the property in real life) presses his ear against the wall of a corridor, catching the echo of a choir whose voice warmly reverberates throughout the ailing structure. Like a seashell, the mansion is a receptacle for ambient murmurs—an elusive leak, the creak of a staircase, or an uncanny silence—and de Orbe amplifies these noises as an evocation of memory and time passing. While it’s perfectly justified in the festival’s “Go Slow” section, Aita is slow cinema at its most heightened and alert, giving improbable life and dimension to a derelict old house.

Kağıt (2011)

2011-08-05T12:05:00.003+05:30

Kağıt (2011)
Directed by: Sinan Cetin
Country: Turkey
Runtime: 105 min

“Kağıt” (Paper) stars Öner Erkan as Emrah, a young man with a passion to make movies. As he directs his debut film, he hits bureaucratic roadblocks, first in receiving a certificate of eligibility to film on the grounds that it threatens the unity of the state, and later when he finally tries to release the film, the shooting of which proved so difficult. Bureaucrat Müzeyyen (Asuman Dabak) becomes the symbol of Çetin’s dysfunctional and autocratic state, turning every stage of filmmaking into hell. Emrah takes revenge on the woman by kidnapping her.

*

Filmmaker, movie mogul, commercial powerhouse and larger-than-life public persona Sinan Çetin has taken a break from making ads to return to the silver screen with ‘Kağıt’ (Paper), a not-so-subtle autobiographical metaphor about one man fighting bureaucracy to make a film. ‘Kağıt’ is the latest testament to Çetin’s contradictory stance toward the state.

It would be unfair to call Sinan Çetin just a filmmaker, despite the broadness of the term. He has remained a hovering presence over Turkey’s pop culture for two decades whether he makes movies or, as is generally the case, does not. Çetin is a persona who is much larger than the sum of his parts. It’s a rule of thumb that nearly all popular figures generate their unique brand of devoted fans and followers, along with haters of a similar fervor. With Çetin, the number of fans and followers has diminished and are arrayed against an impressive number of detractors that include other filmmakers, movie critics and viewers. The director, however, has chosen to show the finger to anyone who deigns to tarnish his work and his persona and has managed to maintain his position in Turkey’s culture scene and his currency among the artistic elite. Çetin is a director, producer, writer, actor, publisher, commercial powerhouse, movie mogul and a real estate mogul. His directorial debut, “Bir Günün Hikayesi” (Story of A Day), goes back to 1980, when he wowed critics and audience as a promising newcomer. His subsequent films “Çirkinler de Sever” (Ugly But In Love) and “Çiçek Abbas” (Abbas in Flower), both in 1982, received positive reviews as well. Interestingly, the early 1980s is a period Çetin doesn’t much care to remember yet alone be proud of. Since then he has directed, produced and wrote the occasional blockbuster, as well as the flop. Çetin is now more associated with the hundreds of expensive, extravagant and award-winning commercials he directs and produces. He is also rumored to own half of Istanbul’s Cihangir neighborhood, where his production company Plato Film and film school Plato Okul are located. (-DailyNews)

The Eye Above the Well (1988)

2011-08-04T11:54:00.002+05:30

The Eye Above the Well (1988)
Director:Johan van der Keuken
Country: Netherlans
Runtime: 94 min

A poetic depiction of life and ritual in the south Indian state of Kerala. We see how knowledge is passed down from generation to generation: within the family, through the village economy, and especially from teachers to students. Performance footage shows how song, dance, martial arts, and religion constitute the building blocks of a culture. Written by International Film Circuit

Satah Se Uthata Aadmi (1980)aka Arising From The Surface

2011-08-03T15:08:00.003+05:30

Satah Se Uthata Aadmi (1980)aka Arising From The Surface
Director: Mani Kaul
Country: India
Runtime: 106 minutes

Cast:
Gopi ... Ramesh
Vibhuti Jha Madhav
Satyen Kumar
M.K. Raina Keshav

Satah Se Uthata Aadmi is regarded by many Indian film scholars as Mani Kaul's most superior work. It is also a very rare film which I finally got around to yesterday after two and a half years of intense search. It was the only Mani Kaul film to be shown at Cannes where it was competing for the Un Certain Regard in 1980. Here's a brief review of the film from The Encyclopedia of Indian Cinema by Ashish Rajyadhyaksha and Paul Willeman:

Kaul’s film addresses the writings of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh (1917-79), one of the main representatives of the Nai Kavita (New Poetry) movement in Hindi. Muktibodh also wrote several short stories, one of which provides the film with its title, and critical essays. The film integrates episodes from Muktibodh’s writings with material from other source, including a reinvented neo-realism derived from Muktibodh’s literary settings. The narrative is constructed around 3 characters. Ramesh (Gopi) iis one who speaks and enacts Muktibodh’s writings, functioning as the first-person voice of the text; his two friends, , Madhav (Jha) and Keshav (Raina), are Ramesh’s antagonists and interlocuters esp. in the debates about modernity. Kaul gradually minimizes the fictional settings until, in the remarkably shot sequences of the factory, the audience is directly confronted with the written text itself. Kaul had begun his studies of Dhrupad music, the classical North Indian music known mainly for its extreme austerity, and derived a number of cinematic styles from this musical idiom which have continuously influenced his films since, e.g. the continuously mobile camera, the use of changing light patterns and the importance of improvisation.

Satah Se Uthata Aadmi is candidate alongside such other works as Chattrabhang and Maya Mrigaya as being one of the most obscure Indian films particularly in the contemporary DVD era. The film on the literature of Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh, a left-leaning Hindi author from India's turbulent '60s and '70s, recreates Muktibodh's literary settings quite effectively. However the concerns in both the form and content of the film, including lines from Muktibodh's iconic poem Andhere Mein are adapted by the director to create a work very much in line with his previous masterworks Uski Roti(1969) and Duvidha (1973). In fact the work can be studied as a combination of the two distinct approaches, that of the pure object in Uski Roti and its sensorial effect on a constantly changing society in Duvidha. Kaul starts by appropriating the events according to the text but gradually reduces the narrative signifiers until in the gorgeous factory sequences the spectator is confronted with the written text itself. Kaul had begun his studies in the austere form of Indian music, Dhrupad and used its leading vocalist Ustad Zia Fariduddin Dagar to render (Raga) Bilaskhani Todi. Kaul transforms this form of music into a cinematic idiom where the form emerges first through exacting (calculating) and then by approximations (improvising) A remarkable film by Mani Kaul

Hanji (2011)

2011-08-03T11:16:00.002+05:30

Hanji (2011)
Directed by: Kwon-taek Im
Country: South Korea
Runtime: 118 min

Storyline

Low-ranking civil servant Pil Yong (Park Joong Hoon) has things hard looking after his disabled wife(Ye Ji Won). He takes charge of a hanji project in hopes it will bring him a promotion. His wife comes from a family of hanji masters. One of his tasks include working with quarrelsome filmmaker Ji Won (Kang Su Yeon), who is shooting a documentary about hanji. Though he knows little about the subject to begin with, the more he learns about hanji, the more it takes on a new significance for him and the world around him. Written by 2004hkfan

In the past, Im Kwon Taek brought the traditional Korean folk music of pansori to the silver screen in his internationally renowned films Sopyonje and Beyond the Years. For his 101st film and first HD feature, the legendary director weaves a handsome, modern fable around another Korean tradition, Hanji, or paper art. The film is both informative and poetic in its exploration of the art of traditional papermaking and its role in the mediation of past and future, old and new, in present-day Korea. Acclaimed actor Park Joong Hyun stars as the flawed everyman whose eye-opening journey into hanji is shared by the audience. Leading actress Kang Su Yeon reunites with the director 20 years after starring in Im’s classic Come, Come, Come Upwards.

Womb (2010)

2011-07-23T11:06:00.001+05:30

Womb (2010)
Director: Benedek Fliegauf
Country: Germany | Hungary | France
Runtime: 1 hour, 47 minutes

A woman is torn between two sorts of love in this thoughtful fusion of drama and science fiction from filmmaker Benedek Fliegauf. When she was nine years old, Rebecca met a boy named Tommy and found herself smitten with him; before long, Rebecca and her family moved away and she resigned herself to the notion that she'd never see Tommy again. But at the age of twenty-one, Rebecca returns to the town where she lived as a girl, and to her surprise she crosses paths with Tommy, and she finds they still have feelings for one another. Rebecca and Tommy have entered into a mature and loving relationship when he dies in a car wreck, and Rebecca is shattered. However, Rebecca is given a chance to give Tommy another chance at life -- she was be implanted with genetic material that will allow her to give birth to a perfect clone of Tommy. Rebecca agrees, and nine months later she finds herself raising a baby who looks like the man she loved, who she names Thomas. However, as Thomas grows to be a man, she finds herself struggling between her maternal love for her son and a more troubling attraction to a young man who is a duplicate of the man who won her heart years before. ~ Mark Deming, Allrovi

Forgiveness (2006)

2011-07-22T14:22:00.002+05:30

Forgiveness (2006)
Director.........: Udi Aloni
Country..........: Israel
Runtime:97 min

On April 9, 1948, a Jewish militia entered the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin and killed over 100 villagers. Soon after, a mental hospital was built on the ruins. The first patients to be committed were Holocaust survivors. A legend says that to this day, the survivors have been communicating with the ghosts of the village. FORGIVENESS tells the story of David Adler, a 20-year old American-Israeli who decides to move back to Israel, only to find himself committed to a mental institution that sits on the ruins of a Palestinian village called Deir Yassin. Flashbacks and flashforwards reveal the events that led up to his hospitalization. A 10-year old female ghost holds the secret to the riddle. But only when the secret is revealed can she find rest and give David the option to end a perpetually-repeated destiny... Doctor Itzhik Shemesh, a psychiatrist at the mental institute, injects David with a chemo-technological drug in an attempt to build a bridge over the trauma zone and allow David to live a normal life. Even though he doubts its ethical consequences, his use of the drug is an act that mirrors his own deep denial... Doctor Shemesh is given permission to use the drug by David's father, Henry Adler, a Holocaust survivor who spent a short time in Israel before becoming one of the most pre-eminent musicians in America. Henry, who has the arrogance of Oedipus and faith in the rational overcoming of trauma via action, doesn't understand why his son has been hospitalized. But Henry's lust for life and his desire for normality make him live in denial of the past, which is unbearable for David, whose restless soul seeks the truth. Henry will confront a horror beyond all horrors when the truth reveals itself. A blind patient in the hospital named Muselmann, also a Holocaust survivor, tells David to listen to the ghosts that are haunting him, that they have something important to tell him. Like the blind prophet Tiresias, Muselmann knows that the truth does not hold redemption, and this is why he never tried to reconstruct his life after the camps. Because he lives between the world of the dead and the living, Muselmann can act as a conduit between the murdered ghosts and David. The flashbacks and flashforwards from the mental institute reveal, with the story of David's life, the story of the eternal return of the trauma and a destiny that seems unalterable.

Uski Roti (1970)

2011-07-19T10:37:00.004+05:30

Uski Roti (1970)
Director: Mani Kaul
Country: India
Runtime: 101 minutes

Mani Kaul's Uski Roti is one of the most significant Indian films for its use of scales closest to Indian classical music. Notice the use of two lenses to oppose Renaissance logic of perspective.

The burly bus driver Sucha Singh travels through the dusty, flat Punjabi countryside. His wife Balo spends long hours waiting for him at the bus-stop with his food packet. One day her younger sister is sexually molested, causing Balo to arrive late at the bus-stop. Sucha Singh is upset by her late arrival, rejects her food and drives away. She remains standing at the roadside until nightfall.
Mani Kaul's debut film is an adaptation of a short story by Mohan Rakesh and is perhaps one of the earliest formal experiments in Indian cinema.

Sucha Singh, a bus driver travels through the dusty Punjabi countryside, while his wife Balo spends long hours waiting for him at the bus-stop with his food packet. One day, her younger sister gets sexually molested, causing Balo to arrive late at the bus-stop with the food packet. Sucha Singh gets upset with her being late, rejects the food and drives away.

Here's a response from a student at the Redcat screening of the film in 2005:

Quote:
Last night I had the opportunity to see Mani Kaul, one of the key figures of the New Hindi Cinema of the late-’60s and ’70s, present his first feature, Daily Bread (Uski Roti, 1970), at the REDCAT theatre in Los Angeles. Kaul’s career has been associated with somewhat experimental and documentary films. “As for autobiographical, experimental or otherwise self-reflexive strands [in documentary], these are almost nonexistent in India,” writes Tom Waugh in Cine Action. “Virtually the only exception is Mani Kaul.” Although Kaul studied under famed Indian director Ritwik Ghatak, his primary inspiration came elsewhere. “I think I was his favourite pupil,” Kaul has said, “but I betrayed him. When I saw Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, my outlook changed completely.”

Bresson’s influence can be seen in Daily Bread, a dramatic film full of silences, gestures, near-stoic expressions, and offscreen sounds. But Kaul is far from a simple imitator, and Daily Bread has a remarkable aesthetic all its own, particularly in its emphasis on time. Shots are extended beyond their usual limits, sometimes even incorporating flash frames where the exposure ceases to exist. Telling the story of a traditional housewife who waits at a bus stop for her working and often absent husband, the film artfully transitions between the present and past in a way that accentuates the woman’s subjective experience of time more than a traditional narrative structure would. Kaul has said that he wanted to make a film about waiting. At our screening, he referred to the film’s polarized audience reception in 1970 and joked about the people who hated its pace. (Reportedly, a member of the Indian parliament once said the film was so boring that she would never forget it in all her life. A criticism or a praise?)

Unfortunately, none of Kaul’s films have been distributed in the US, and the print screened at the REDCAT didn’t even contain subtitles. Not that it detracted from the film; on the contrary, there isn’t a lot of dialogue in it and not having to read the words allowed me to immerse myself more fully into the film’s lulling, evocative rhythms. (Kaul pointed out that Bresson often considered the various tones of a film’s dialogue as being more important than the actual words being expressed, anyway.) As the housewife stands beside a tree in the shade, flies buzzing around her, the sun-dappled foliage swaying, her thoughts drift through recent events and conversations, merging memories with the present moment in a fluid, seemingly unordered path.

Daily Bread is a highly impressive feature that makes me enthusiastic to seek out Kaul’s other work as well, and yearn for the day when some of his films might be released on DVD. His mastery of the medium, even in this debut feature produced at the age of 26, is readily apparent. In recent years he has lived in Rotterdam and is currently a visiting artist teaching classes on Bresson and cinematic sound at CalArts.
Description by the original uploader, devdutt@kg:

As If I Am Not There (2010)

2011-07-18T13:03:00.001+05:30

As If I Am Not There (2010)

Director: Juanita Wilson
Country: Ireland
Runtime: 105 min

Few films this year—if not this decade—will challenge you like As If I Am Not There. The film is based on real horrific events that happened during the Bosnian War of the early 1990s. The film is based on real life experiences that were told during the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague and as told in Slavenka Drakulic’s book that covered the war crimes hearings after the war.

Samira (Natasha Petrovic) is a teacher in Sarajevo who gets a teaching contract in a remote village where the previous teacher has gone mysteriously missing. The village is a far cry from the modern city she is used to and the villagers are suspicious of anyone new. There is nearby civil war fighting going on but Samira doesn’t feel she has anything to worry about because she isn’t from the area.

Soon the village is overtaken by Serbian soldiers, and the villagers are separated into two groups of women/children and men. The men are immediately shot and the women and children are taken by bus to a make-shift prison camp on a farm. There the older women are used for laborers and the young, attractive and even a few children are used for ongoing rapes by the soldiers. This isn’t a one time event. The women are locked in a room where they are beaten and raped on daily basis. Even though Samira pleads that she isn’t one of the villagers, she is ignored and becomes one of the ongoing rape victims. The small band of women fight to survive the ordeal both physically and emotionally.

Natasha Petrovic bravely plays the difficult lead role of Samira. Usually casting a woman so beautiful for the role would have been unrealistic, but her natural beauty actually would have made her a bigger target to the soldiers. Her performance is played for a large part of the film in silence, but she manages to perfectly to convey what she is thinking throughout film just by the look in her eyes.

The film deals with this harsh and brutal world realistically and still keeps its artistic integrity completely. Not only does it document the horror that these people went through, but it actually explains the cycle of hate without being at all preachy. Everything you need to know about the cycle of torture and hate is in the in the very first frame and the last frame. The ending manages to be both poignant and tragic at the same time and will likely stay with you long after. The viewer is left to ask “Is the ending a redemption or does she simply have no other options?”

The subject matter of this film isn’t for everyone and I can say without much hesitation that this was one of the more difficult films I have ever had to watch. In particular the ongoing rape and violence to a young girl is particularly hard to watch. Having said that though, the film is an artistic triumph that works both as a historical document and brilliant piece of film making.

Review by Kelly Stewart TIFF 2010