Surrealist Motion Volume One (2008)

Surrealist Motion Volume One (2008)
Director: Jonathan Knape
Country: Sweden
Runtime: 41:30 min

The people at Filmic Art have 'intended to create Surrealistic works with motion suited for flat LCD-plasma screens. Influenced by some well known surrealist paintings, this silent collection of four animated vignettes is an attempt to bring to life Salvador Dali-esque artwork in the comfort of your own living room. How much you get out of it will likely depend on your appreciation of painted surrealism and/or the state of mind you're in when you watch it.

So without further ado, here's a look at what happens in the four 'paintings' contained on this disc:
Directed by Jonathan Knape Sweden, Ambient, 2008,

Room With A View: (10:10)
In this work we have set-up a room with some objects that we have paraphrased from Rene Magritte. The idea with a painting within a painting is not new and could be seen already in early Dutch 14th ... still photo from the film

This Castle Is Not Located In The Pyrenees: (10:00)
The painting Castle in the Pyrenees 1959 by Magritte has obviously been an inspiration for us in the creation of this work. Magritte gave the title as a play on the French expression "Châteaux en ... still photo from the film

Prairie Serenades: (7:02)
In Magritte's work Voice of the Winds from 1928, three iron bells hover above the ground symbolizing the sound of the wind. In our work there are three wooden churches on a prairie that slowly lift ... still photo from the film

Persistence of the Watchful Eye: (13:00)
In this work, we have used Salvador Dali and his painting Persistence of Memory from 1931 as inspiration. However, the only object that we actually have paraphrased from this painting is the idea ..

It's hard to know exactly what to make of these four computer generated moving paintings. It is meant for a specific audience and if you're not a member of that target demographic, you may not have a predisposed inkling to appreciate what they've done. What can be said is that this material does effectively capture the look and feel of the work of the surrealist painters who inspired it. At the same time, watching 41 min of slow moving paintings shift and turn and morph and change isn't exactly a recipe for excitement...

Karen Cries on the Bus

Karen Cries on the Bus(2011)
Director:Gabriel Rojas Vera
Country:Colombia
Runtime:98 min

Karen discovers, after 10 years of marriage, which to have left behind his dreams to devote herself to the home chores has been a mistake that cost him his youth. She decides then to separate and go in search of a life of its own. With his savings she rents a room in the center of Bogota and try to get a job, but his age and inexperience will make it difficult. Karen will have to decide between returning to the stability of a relationship or face life for herself.

Maya Deren's Sink

Maya Deren's Sink (2011)
Director:Barbara Hammer
Country:USA
Runtime:30 min


Maya Deren's Sink, a 30 minute experimental film, is an evocative tribute to the mother of avantgarde American film. The film calls forth the spirit of one who was larger than life as recounted by those who knew her. Teiji Ito's family, Carolee Schneemann and Judith Malvina, float through the homes recalling in tiny bits and pieces words of Deren's architectural and personal interior space. Clips from Maya Deren's films are projected back into the spaces where they were originally filmed appearing on the floorboard, furniture, and in the bowl of her former sink. Fluid light projections of intimate space provide an elusive agency for a filmmaker most of us will never know as film with its imaginary nature evokes a former time and space. Written by Anonymous

True Noon

True Noon(2009)
Director Nosir Saidov
Country:Tajikistan
Run time: 83 min


Nilufar, a girl living in town below, is about to marry a man living in town above. But one day, soldiers come and plant barbed wire to separate the two towns. The life of people, who have thus far enjoyed peace, now falls into severe chaos. Students must take classes with the barbed wire in the middle of the class, and it becomes difficult to go to the hospital. However the biggest problem is Nilufar`s wedding. Kirill, the chief of the climate observatory, tries his best to help her wedding, but then a terrible tragedy occurs.

The four Times

The four Times (2010)
Director:Michelangelo Frammartino
Country:Italy
Runtime:88 min

A story of anarchic goats, lively spiritual celebrations and reincarnation, Michaelangelo Frammartino’s “Le Quattro Volte” (which won the Europa Cinemas Label in Cannes’s Directors’ Fortnight) has a heavy philosophical load. Nevertheless, this painstakingly constructed, quasi-documentary about a shepherd and the flock where he’s eventually reborn maintains an unexpectedly playful sensibility on its own terms.

The story of sorts takes place in the quaint area of Italy’s Calabria province, where the elderly shepherd (Giuseppe Fuda) goes about his quiet existence while his impending death looms. Frammartino slowly brings us into the world, following the shepherd on his routine until his death somewhere around the end of the first act.

Then, a revelation: The director positions a camera overlooking the goats’ holding pen and watches a series of increasingly strange events gradually develop. The result is one of the most fascinating long takes ever put on screen. Patient viewers will be rewarded with a slapstick punchline as the goats run wild across the town, eventually invading their shepherd’s home as he breathes his final breath. When he finally does die, the lunacy comes down to Earth as fast as it arrived.

But things quickly turn cosmic. The shepherd’s body is placed in a tomb, the movie cuts to black, the sound of a heartbeat slips onto the soundtrack and suddenly a shot of sheep birth fills the frame. The not-so-subtle reincarnation, however, leads to a stream of subtle moments. Baby sheep wander around the farm and play together as if they were a pack of preschoolers. They then embark on a lengthy voyage through the wilderness that culminates with one of them getting separated from the pack. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, or at least just go “aww” a few times, because “Le Quattro Volte” is cinema at its most primal, yet simultaneously contains a wealth of ideas.

Frammartino keeps the material engaging simply by aiming the camera at his subjects and letting the material organically emerge—rather than enforcing the supernatural element with overstatement. The final equation has a Zen quality to it, as Frammartino cycles through a quartet of mini-stories that find new characters in increasingly unlikely places: First man, then sheep, followed by the dead of winter and eventually a Good Friday celebration. In the closing sequence, a rising fume becomes the real star of the show. Given its grandiose dimensions, it speaks to Frammartino’s humility that he allows the entire concept to go up in smoke and let the visuals complete the cycle of life. ..

by Eric Kohn

We're All Christs (2006)

We're All Christs (2006)
Director:Marek Koterski
Country: Poland
Runtime: 105 min



ward-winning Polish director Marek Koterski takes an unflinching look at the pathological effects of severe alcoholism on familial relationships in the no-holds-barred drama We're All Christs (Wszyscy jestes'my Chrystusami). The story concerns Adas (played at ages 33 and 55 by Andrzej Chyra, and Marek Kondrat, respectively), a father caught in the web of alcohol addiction passed down from the generations before him. The disease once threatened to destroy his own relationship with his young son. Now, after admitting his own problem and experiencing therapy and rehabilitation, Adas takes the first steps toward a challenging reconnection with his family and attempts to rebuild long-decimated bonds. As a lapsed Roman Catholic, he begins to turn toward the faith that he shunned as a youth, and recognizes the necessity of turning away from the evil, abusive legacy of his father on earth and toward his Heavenly Father as a far-superior alternative. In the end, his Catholicization will partially entail turning to Christ as a role model by assuming responsibility for his own earthly burdens (and thus, taking up his cross).

The Man Who Quit Smoking (1972)

The Man Who Quit Smoking (1972)
Director:Tage Danielsson
Country:Sweden
Runtime:104 min






Young Dante Alighieri inherits 17 million of his father the sausage maker on one condition - he has to give up smoking in 14 days. But the days go on and he simply can't quit. He hires a detective agency to physically stop him. He has an uncle, who inherits the money if Dante fails, and the uncle tries to keep him smoking. Written by Mattias Thuresson

Vision

Vision(2009)
Director:Margarethe von Trotta
Country: Germany
Runtime: 106

Aside from the obvious power of Barbara Sukowa's central performance, much of what is best in Margarethe von Trotta's "Vision" lies just beneath the surface. Entirely of a piece with the writer-director's various feminist-angled dramas, historical and otherwise, the film exalts the diverse accomplishments of the 12th-century Benedictine nun Hildegard von Bingen in a manner that is deeply serious but not austere in the Dreyer or Bresson mold. The very nature of the subject will limit commercial options to the rarefied art realm, theatrically and otherwise.

Outwardly, the picture examines what it took for a nun to dramatically expand her range of interests and activities into such realms as holistic medicine, scientific inquiry, music and drama, in addition to being sanctioned for expressing her "visions" of the Lord's word, at a time when women of the cloth were not even allowed to preach. If secular as well as religious sainthood were possible, von Trotta would surely advance her film as a nomination brief in both categories.

Often angering the brothers at the Disibodenberg cloister by disputing their authority, Hildegard (Sukowa, in her fifth film with the director) does whatever it takes to get her way. This is a woman with a very special feel for how the levers of power work within the church hierarchy and, in quietly suggesting that she may have resorted to such grand subterfuges as feigning illness and near-death to achieve her ends, von Trotta would seem to be indicating, and endorsing, the "by any manipulation necessary" approach that her heroine -- and, by extension, any woman -- was obliged to employ.

Cheekily beginning with a brief prologue showing how the end-of-the-world predictions of certain fin de millennium Christians proved unreliable, this episodic presentation of the life of a woman who lived 81 years jumps from her being "given to God as a gift" to the order at a young age to, 30 years later, being elected magistra. Setting herself apart from sisterly docility by her thirst for the wisdom of the ancients, interest in being at one with nature, and disdain for the locally popular sport of self-flagellation, Hildegard really puts the abbot's rosary in knots by announcing that she receives messages from God via clarifying visions.

Forced to present her case before a distinctly unsympathetic panel, the fearless and articulate Hildegard prevails by appealing to the pope himself. This emboldens her to further outrageous behavior, such as, in the wake of one novitiate's shocking pregnancy, breaking away to establish her own cloister so her nuns can live apart from male contact.

Her great love and, eventually, Achilles heel turns out to be her young protege. The lovely, teenage Richardis (Hannah Herzsprung) is like an unbroken colt at first, sprinting around and spinning about in a way that makes you think the other nuns will, at any second, break into a chorus of "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" But Richardis eventually becomes Hildegard's closest confidante and imagined successor, just as Hildegard was for the magistra who raised her. When, after many years, Richardis is posted elsewhere, a fierce battle and eventual trauma ensue. Hildegard's late life story stirringly shows the breaking of yet one more barrier to women's usefulness in the church.

For all her admiration for her subject's bravery and intellectual adventurousness, von Trotta remains uncommitted when it comes to buying her religious utterances. Hildegard's verbalizations of her visions mostly consist of doctrinal embroidery, insights into what God must have meant when He did this or that, and the film neither endorses nor rejects, flatters nor mocks the human vessel that articulates them. Ultimately, this is the story of a woman who, temporarily, forced the church to be a little less sexist, even as she used her wiles with more powerful men to overcome the men with immediate power over her. Sukowa embodies her character's imposition of will with complete conviction, just as she does Hildegard's imposing intellect and bottomless devotion. Heino Ferch warmly plays her lifelong supporter among the monks, while Herzsprung is radiant as the daughter figure.

One moderate distraction is the production's pristine look. After a generation or more of films dedicated to how filthy olden times really were, "Vision" almost has the appearance of a 1950s period production, with each robe and veil appearing freshly cleaned and every monastery chamber looking as though it were scrubbed that very morning, all shown off via unnaturally bright lighting. Chris Heyne's active score combines styles and orchestration motifs to reasonably good effect. (Variety)

Mistérios de Lisboa (2010)

Mistérios de Lisboa (2010)
Director:Raoul Ruiz
Country: Portugal
Runtime: 255



Raúl Ruiz is one of the great cinematic self-perpetuators, like Louis Feuillade and Jacques Rivette—a film like this gathers a motion and a rhythm that makes it feel like it could on and on, self-generating new stories and new characters ad infinitum. Based on the novel by Camilo Castelo Branco (whose writing has been the source for Oliveira’s similarly fatalistic romance,Doomed Love), Mysteries of Lisbon is, to paraphrase a line from one of its many characters used to describe a disastrous relationship he had, a game that turns into a bourgeois romantic drama, to which I would add, that turns into a game. It starts—as all stories must?—with an orphaned boy questioning his parentage and falling into a fever, and out of that starting point the film evolves less as a story than a cartography of characters crossing points in space and time. On paper it is indeed all melodrama: identities revealed, lives saved in the past coming back to haunt the saviors, secret connections, loves turns to hatreds. But as traced by Ruiz’ oscillating tracking shots, which arc back and forth across rooms, pleating our view onto itself, folding time and space and people, the 19th century soap opera is transformed into an oneric submergence into ill-wrought fate, stories-within-stories, the nesting of all things, and the mysterious system which, quivering with ironic mirth and melancholy, holds everyone in place. This elegantly languorous, epic film (four and a half hours long), carries with it a paradoxical sense of infinite expansion outward, with each new character, each new place a new story, a new irony, a new connection backwards and a suggestion thrown forwards, yet this expansion seems to exist within a closed system. If this closure is not the film itself, which must end, than it is some other, secret measure of control that binds the interlocking orbits of people and their passions in space and time and does not allow them to escape. Perhaps the Mysteries are both expanding and elastic? Certainly a model for the universe, if that’s the case. As for the bourgeois drama, everyone’s fable-like unsurprise at the strange motions, histories, and identities of those characters around them opens their simple emotions to a greater cosmic plane, as if they have an awareness they have to live both in the elastic, restricted world (of their society, of a normal dramatic film) and one that has mysterious, expanding mind of its own. (Daniel Kasman @mubi)

Aurora (2010)

Aurora (2010)
Director:Cristi Puiu
Country:Romania
Runtime:181 min




An apartment kitchen: a man and a woman discuss Little Red Riding Hood, their voices hushed, mindful of waking the little girl sleeping next room. Waste land on the city outskirts: behind a line of abandoned trailers, the man silently watches what seems to be a family. The same city, the same man: driving through traffic with two hand-made firing pins for a hunting rifle. The man is 42 years old, his name - Viorel. Troubled by obscure thoughts, he drives across the city to a destination known only to him.