Last Train Home

Last Train Home(2009)
Dir;Lixin Fan
Country:China

Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year’s holiday. This mass exodus is the world’s largest human migration—an epic spectacle that reveals a country tragically caught between its rural past and industrial future.
Working over several years in classic verite style, Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Lixin Fan (with the producers of the award-winning hit documentary Up the Yangtze) travels with one couple who have embarked on this annual trek for almost two decades. Like so many of China’s rural poor, Changhua and Sugin Zhang left behind their two infant children for gruelling factory jobs. Their daughter Qin—now a restless and rebellious teenager—both bitterly resents their absence and longs for her own freedom away from school, much to the utter devastation of her parents. Emotionally engaging and starkly beautiful, Last Train Home’s intimate observation of one fractured family sheds light on the human cost of China’s ascendance as an economic superpower.

Oxhide

Oxhide(2005)
Dir: Jiavin Liu
Country:China

The most important Chinese film of the past several years—and one of the most astonishing recent films from any country—doesn’t come from the so-called Sixth Generation, formerly underground Chinese rebel directors whose output has fed Western film festivals regularly since the early 90s (e.g., Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, and Zhang Yuan). Nor does it come from the newly anointed masters of the Fifth Generation, whose leaders, Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, are busying themselves these days crafting media content, cinema morphed into blockbuster-ready marketing opportunities. The film is called Oxhide (a literal, though pleasantly strange direct translation of the Chinese title Niupi ), and it comes from young female first-time director Liu Jiayin.

Liu is a 23 year old Beijinger currently enrolled in the Masters program of the literature (i.e., screenwriting) department of the Beijing Film Academy . Oxhide is notionally underground: it was produced outside of the system, which means that the director made it by herself, and isn’t interested in submitting her film to the Film Bureau for its approval (which doesn’t much matter: they ignore her, she ignores them). After premiering in Berlin, Oxhide is making the rounds of foreign festivals, where it has already won a clutch of top prizes (including Vancouver’s Dragons and Tigers Award, the Jeonju JJ Star Award, the Hong Kong International Film Festival’s Golden DV Award), and has been shown in China at at least one semi-private Beijing screening.

Oxhide stands out from the multitudes of digital films that bubble up every month from the astonishingly fertile cultural well of present-day Beijing due to its ambition, its pure nerviness, and the extent to which it has achieved the outsize goals it sets for itself. Liu’s subject is her immediate family: the film is about a father, mother, and daughter, played by her father, her mother, and herself (there’s also a cat who pops up once in a while). It is shot entirely in their tiny apartment near the main train line in southern Beijing . The parents design and manufacture leather purses and bags, but their business seems to be failing. The daughter is very short and isn’t growing, a source of great concern and disappointment to her father. The family makes purses, prepares food, eats, squabbles, and sleeps, all in a warren of tiny, cramped spaces that they occupy so fully there’s barely enough room for the air that they need to breath.

So far, so minimal. Liu’s formal choices are absolutely clear and unvaried. The film is in 23 scenes, each scene shot in one continuous take from a stationary camera. The shortest shot is just under two minutes; the longest is a Jeanne Dielman-like dinner preparation. Its format is widescreen DV, Liu using the frame to capture what looks at first like merely the middle slice of each scene: often all we can see are torsos, hands, the top of a table, or the bottom of a couple of heads. This aesthetic choice is partly dictated by the extremely cramped space she lives in, one that’s typical for working-class Beijingers still housed in the un-modernized parts of the city centre. ‘Scope framing accentuates this sense of extremely tight focus, of a scene that is made only partially visible. We only get pieces, and have to infer the rest from visual and aural clues. Within these constraints, Liu knows how to design the frame so that it sings. Each setup is precisely arranged, with an astonishingly well-developed sense of balance and, in scenes with action, a beautifully clear choreography of movement in counterpoint.

Liu’s precise control of offscreen sound and space keeps the film intelligible: even if the beginning of a scene is difficult to decipher, we eventually hear and see enough to know what’s important. One characteristic example: the second scene opens with a view down to a desktop. A bit of a machine is in the upper right, and we hear voices apparently discussing Chinese calligraphy. Finally, the conversation resolves into the father instructing his daughter about formatting a text; she types in response to each of his suggestions; and after about six minutes, the visual punch line: the machine in the upper right starts to sputter, and coloured pages emerge. It’s a printer, and we can almost make out the content of the shop signs she’s printing for her father: “50% off sale.” While the signs are printing, Liu uses the time and extra screen space to run her brief credits, naming herself as the film’s screenwriter, cinematographer, and director.

This scene also exemplifies a principle of Oxhide’s dramatic construction: Liu loves a punch-line. Though she’s chosen a rigorous form, Oxhide is genuinely funny. Out of the stressed, frequently quarrelsome interactions of the family, Liu finds moments of humour, and places them right at the end of most of her chapters. Whether it’s her father’s realization that a pull-up bar he has engineered can’t actually help lengthen his daughter’s lower body, or his insistence that a truly correct sesame paste can be made only by stirring the glop clockwise, many of the chapters play as comedy.

Though Liu insists the film is carefully scripted, the relentlessly close, absolutely still camera catches the family in what feel like documentary-style moments of self-revelation. Chapters that end in abrupt flares of minor violence are as frequent as punch lines. We learn that much of the stress is economic: the family is getting poorer—they used to have a car and a larger apartment—and now there seem to be a monthly struggle to meet the rent. The film’s central crisis, a moral as well as a financial one, is precipitated by the act of printing those “sale” signs. Customers, the father complains, demand discounts, but for him discounting his goods is akin to denigrating the value of his labour and skill. It’s a question of dignity, his definition of his worth as a person. Liu characteristically converts her father’s unbearable sense of humiliation into a moment of humour when he apologizes to the long-expired cow whose skin he’s working with for failing to do justice to said cow’s sacrifice.

The father emerges as something of a tragic figure by the final chapters: a generous sensibility ground down by a society that no longer has space for his art. Liu Jiayin’s accomplishment here is to give the viewers a feeling that they are discovering a new way of looking, coming into being right before their eyes. Her film’s gaze shows us what we couldn’t see otherwise: people rich with potential who can’t grow, precisely because the spaces that they inhabit are too small for them. Oxhide sections and distorts the outsized figure of the father, recapturing him in claustrophobic framings that can’t contain the grandeur of his wounded dignity. At the same time, it gently mocks the figure of the daughter, who seems to submit to such a limited space and refuses to grow.

Liu’s restrictive apparatus is paradoxically liberating. We feel these characters vibrating outside of the frame: their existence—and Liu has surely made a film communicating an existential urgency—is made palpable by our experience of seeing them partial, and inferring the rest. The film not only affirms its characters’ vitality, it also calls an activated, participatory viewer into being by exercising our creativity as well. O ne of the last lines the father has—“I have a lot of things waiting to be fulfilled”—is followed by his plaintive calling out, in the dark, to his wife and daughter, who don’t answer. But the palpable vitality with which the film imbues its family assures us that they are anything but defeated. With films as confidently and stunningly radical as Oxhide, Chinese cinema’s future looks no less bright.

Oxhide II (2009)
Dir:Jiavin Liu
Country:China
Just as in her previous film, Oxhide, the Chinese director films herself and her parents in their rather claustrophobic apartment with documentary realism. She uses nine fixed camera positions, with which she turns clockwise around the kitchen table (so that the last shot has exactly the same perspective as the first). The shots, from 5 to 20 minutes long, were made from close by, so that the three family members largely remain off-screen. The resulting rigorously minimalist story passes in real time: Oxhide II is as long as it takes to clear a worktable, to prepare Chinese dumplings on it and to eat them. While the meal is being prepared, the three talk occasionally about the problems surrounding their bag shop, with the wife and daughter having a serious word with the father. However, as long as they talk about making dumplings, the family is united.

Kinatay

Kinatay(2009)
Dir:Brillante Mendoza
Country:Philippines

Dedicate a movie to one thing, respect the singular attention of the camera, and a film should be rich enough to overcome just about anything. Brillante Mendoza gives almost half of his film Kinatay to the nocturnal drive of a group of policemen out of Manila to its suburbs, and another half hour of night awaits them at their destination, a police black site. This rich vision of so much gloom, dim suspension, no action, no spectacle, no drama is a beautiful thing, something out of an avant-garde film dedicated to textures, subtle shifts in color, and spatial uncertainty of a sunless world. There is a story of course, of a young police trainee just married (that very day!) taken along on an off -he-books mission to torture a drug addicted stripper, and for a long time Mendoza plays the story like Haneke’s Funny Games (or a Park film), building up the audience’s desire for his hero to act violently, here to lash out at his sadistic superiors. And some of Kinatay is that tasteless, with its handholding music (riffing off of Kubrick’s synth scores for A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket) and artless, didactic cutaways That Explain Motivation by showing the cops’ horrific acts, the home that must be thought of. But, as with Mendoza’s previous film Serbis, the rest of the movie is given as a handheld dedication to space—there, a porno theater, here, a sinister, anonymous police van traveling great distances at night for the purpose of terrible things, and later a torture house. But it is a space of obscurity, of uncertainty in a morally certain situation, and so the space, covered and run over again and again by the roving camera, takes on an abstraction nearly outside the story itself. A palette of sleek grays makes a death grip on this film that started—again, didactically—in daylight with a marriage, and Kinatay’s immersion into nightfall stands strong, splendidly, as independent force.

A grim Filipino tale of extreme police corruption that sparked as much outrage at Cannes as Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist,” not least when its helmer, current festival mainstay Brillante Mendoza, coolly picked up the Best Director prize. If you were paying even vague attention to the furore at the time, you’ve by now heard the film’s story in a nutshell: a naive police cadet is drafted by one of his superiors into a secret after-hours mission, which turns out to be the merciless rape, murder and dismemberment of a prostitute, a procedure depicted in real time and in shadowy, sometimes wincingly graphic, detail.

It’s not hard to see what about the film ruffled so feathers — but accusations that Mendoza is dealing in dangerous or self-gratifying torture-porn prove unfounded as the film, not unlike Gaspar Noé’s “Irréversible,” reveals its rigid moral framework from the outset. Our perspective mirrors that of the increasingly horrified protagonist throughout; we lose our grasp of the situation together with him and suffer the significant emotional consequences.

Apparently based on true events, the film derives none of the pleasure from its pain that much mainstream genre film does, rather using the horrific central incident to probe social weaknesses. Like his quieter, more recent (and more accomplished) “Lola,” the film amounts to a stinging attack on Filipino bureaucracy, sometimes via over-egged symbolism, but often via intelligent observational detail. “Kinatay” is a hard film to love, and an even harder one to like, but it’s difficult to stand unaffected by its long night’s journey into day.

Chekist

Chekist(1992)
Dir:Aleksandr Rogozhkin
Country:Russia

A small Russian town in the early 1900′s is the backdrop for this deeply disturbing film about a group of communist revolutionaries called the cheka-men who spend their days rounding up their political rivals for execution. The majority of the film takes place inside the basement of a charnel house. We are witnesses to execution after execution as people are killed with rapid expediency and professionalism. Men, women and children are forced to strip, stand against a wall, and then are shot. When the dead are removed, five more are brought in and the atrocity is committed again.
There is not a moments reprieve from the brutality as director Rogozhkin plants the camera and the story inside that basement. I found his examination of the assassin’s mindset most interesting. Early on, the cheka-men seem indifferent to their jobs, but as the film winds down, we see that all the killing has slowly begun to erode their very souls. Igor Sergeyev is amazing as the ambitious chekist who finds himself caught up in a machine of death that he helped to create and slowly losing his mind. The film is like passing a car accident on a highway, it’s horrible and you might not like what you see but you can’t take your eyes off of it. A disturbing film that is hard to forget.

Under the Hawthorn Tree

Under the Hawthorn Tree(2010)
Dir:Zhang Yimou
Country:China


Zhang Yimou's highly anticipated film, which is adapted from a popular novel of the same name from Ai Mi, harkens back to the innocence of the 1970's in presenting this pure and moving tear jerking love story, set in 1975 in a small village in Yichang City, Hubei Province. The story is of an unfulfilled romance between Jingqiu and a young man named Laosan during their “zhiqing” days towards the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Zhiqing refers to young urbanites who were sent to the countryside during that turbulent decade. Jingqiu, who had had a difficult life after her father was labeled a right-winger, met the handsome Laosan, who had a promising future because of his high-ranking military officer father. The couple fall in love, despite the gulf between their backgrounds. The only question remains is if their romance ever become fulfilled.

Homero Manzi, a poet in the storm

Homero Manzi, a poet in the storm(2009)

Dir:Eduardo Spagnuolo
Country:Argentina

Bio-pic which chronicles the life and work of one of its greatest poets, Argentine, author of famous tangos such as "Malena", "South" and "Barrio de tango".

The story unfolds in a narrative plot where the historical time and social conditions and becomes in stock and fictional scenes, real-life recreation of Homero Manzi Añatuya from his childhood, his adolescence in the neighborhood of Pompeii as well as maturity facing the glare of the Buenos Aires upper class by the foreign culture, especially the French. As an important radical political approach does not hesitate to President Perón, who recognized as representative of the people of the underclass and the poor of the country.



Homero Manzi is part of national and popular art movement of the early century and rescues in his poems the suburb where they mixed poor European immigrants and newly arrived countrymen to the city.

With a memorable performance of actor Carlos Portaluppi, like Homero Manzi, the film recreates in his band, 28 of his tangos like "Old Blind", "Romance de barrio", "Che bandoneon. Choreographed tango shows, theatrical scenes, film images that Manzi filmed as "The Gaucho War," "My poor dear mother," "The Last Payador", "Pampa Barbara."

His life, his passions and his true love. His tangos back to the screen not only as a document of his work, but as lines of opinion that are combined with fictional scenes, showing that the work of Homero Manzi is a reflection of what was his life, his feelings and convictions .

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Popular Music

Popular Music(2004)
Director: Reza Bagher
Country:Sweden/Finland

Growing up in Pajala isn't much fun for Matti and Niila. Between the puritanical community, abusive parents, a kiddy-fiddling peddler and a janitor who uses his shoes to sedate children who muck around, it's awful. In fact, it looks pretty bleak for them until Grandma's funeral where Niila's American cousins introduce them to The Beatles. From that day on they decide upon their destiny: to become rock'n'roll stars!

The Feast of the Goat

The Feast of the Goat(2005)
Dir;Luis Llosa
Writer:Maro Vargas Llosa
Country:Spain

Based on the best-selling novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, this is the story of Urania Cabral, a beautiful, kind, intelligent and independent Manhattan lawyer whom, after 30 years returns to República Dominicana to face her ghosts... and the horrifying circumstances that altered her life forever when she was a teenager and Rafael Leónidas Trujillo a.k.a El Chivo (The Goat) was the iron-handed ruler of this island paradise... after Urania faces her past, nothing in her present or future will ever be the same again.

Submarino

Submarino(2010)
Dir:Thomas Vinterberg
Country;Denmark
As children, Nick and his little brother take care of their baby brother while their mother drinks herself senseless. But the baby dies, and both brothers blame themselves. Many years later, Nick is out of prison after serving time for an assault. He drinks, lives in a shelter and tries to help an old friend. When their mother dies, Nick meets his brother at the funeral. The brother, who remains nameless, is a single father to a young boy, but also supports a drug habit that is spiraling out of control. When an opportunity presents itself, he becomes a drug dealer to secure his son's future. Eventually, the two brothers meet again. (imdb)

A story about two estranged brothers, marked by a childhood of gloom. They were separated from each other at a young age by a tragedy that split their entire family. Today, Nick's life is drenched in alcohol and plagued by violence, while his kid brother, a solo-parent, struggles as a junkie to give his son a better life. Their paths cross, making a confrontation inevitable, but is redemption possible? (det danske institut)

I have not read the novel, and barely knew that this was based upon one. This film is like a splinter in your heart, from the first frame to the last. It is pushed to the limit of what we can handle of authentic misery. The social realism, so unrelenting, such rich detail to it, and none of it strains credulity. I was interested in this from when I first heard of it, and when I found out it was by Thomas Vinterberg, the man behind Festen and Dear Wendy, I knew I would watch this. He does wonders with the editing and the cinematography, creating a bleak and mundane(not to be confused with ugly or boring) feel to the visuals, matching the lives of the people we are witnessing and their environment. The camera stays "in the background", letting what we see speak for itself. This has impeccable writing, the events, the dialog(and its delivery), the crowning little touches, it's all excellent. In the end, what truly makes this work beyond belief is the amazing acting from everyone(who are all perfectly cast, as well), and that definitely also goes for the children(who, might I add, are charming and sweet kids, too, including the baby; seriously, can't you count on one hand the infants in movies that are *genuinely* cute?

This is one of the only ones, in over a century of the medium), who deliver some of the most astonishing performances seen from ones around that age. Honestly, there is perhaps one single(and entirely understandable) moment that isn't completely convincing, but everything that comes before or since is. In spite of all that we see them do, we sympathize with the credible and well-developed characters. There is a lot of disturbing content, a bit of violence, some sexuality and infrequent strong language in this. I recommend this to anyone mature enough for the subject matter, at least if you can handle it. 10/10

Three Step Dancing

Three Step Dancing(2003)

Director:Salvatore Mereu

Country:Italy
4 wins & 4 nominations See more »

Four separate-but-interconnected stories - one for each season - about life in Sardinia.

Developing through four episodes marked by the four seasons, the film tells the story of many characters of different ages, strictly linked to Sardinia's world and whose fates seem to become accidentally intertwined.

Ballo a tre passi is a fine example of the encouraging renaissance of independent Italian cinema, in which young directors are turning afresh to regional subjects and locations. Like L'isola and Il dono, Ballo a tre passi skillfully conjures up a sense of its locale, avoids overdramatic narrative and is more concerned with the evocation of mood and atmosphere and a truth that can be found in simplicity and incident.