Djembefola (1991)

Djembefola (1991)

Director: Laurent Chevallier
Country:Guinea
Runtime: 65 min

Mamady is one of the best african percussionist in the world. This film from 1991 follows him as he goes back to the village where he grew up in Guinea for the first time after 26 years. It becomes a moving adventure as we witness Mamady getting back in touch with his people and his old master. It features some really amazing dance moments ; LOTS of emotions ; and great chanting/percussions of course.

At the begining we learn how Mamady, as a baby, cried so much that his father took him to a witch doctor. After predicting a great future in which the baby would grow up to overshadow everybody else in the village, the doctor washed the infant's hands in a rare herbal potion.

Mamady Keita became a prodigy who at 14 was one of five percussionists selected for membership in the National Djoliba Ballet. His instrument, the djembe, is a large drum that is made of goat's hide tautly stretched over yoroko wood and is beaten with the hands. Depending on which part of the instrument is touched, it yields three distinctive tones. Even now he marvels at how, after hours of playing, his hands never become stiff or blistered.

The straightforward, smoothly edited film follows Mamady from Brussels on a pilgrimage to his native village of Balandugu, Guinea. After flying from Brussels to Conakry, Guinea's capital, Mamady Keita and the film crew make the rest of the trip by jeep to the remote village. There, he has a tear-filled reunion with friends and relatives who had assumed he was dead.

"Djembefola" accomplishes a lot in its 65 minutes. In addition to sketching a vivid portrait of its subject, it clearly describes the basic qualities of the djembe. The film's several extended musical sequences suggest how the instrument's beats and tones become a complex emotional language that serves as a kind of communal heartbeat for the people of Balandugu.

Post Tenebras Lux (2012)

 Post Tenebras Lux (2012)

Director: Carlos Reygadas
Country: Mexico
Runtime: 115 min

POST TENEBRAS LUX (“light after darkness”), ostensibly the story of an upscale, urban family whose move to the Mexican countryside results in domestic crises and class friction, is a stunningly photographed, impressionistic psychological portrait of a family and their place within the sublime, unforgiving natural world. Reygadas conjures a host of unforgettable, ominous images: a haunting sequence at dusk as Reygadas’s real-life daughter wanders a muddy field and farm animals loudly circle and thunder and lightning threaten; a glowing-red demon gliding through the rooms of a home; a husband and wife visiting a swingers’ bathhouse with rooms named after famous philosophers. By turns entrancing and mystifying, POST TENEBRAS LUX palpably explores the primal conflicts of the human condition.

Shabdo (2013)

Shabdo (2013)

Director: Kaushik Ganguly
Country: India
Runtime: 100 min 






Tarak is a professional foley artist whose obsession with creating sound effects for films makes him oblivious to all the talking around him. As his family and friends struggle to cope up with his changing soundscape, Dr Swati tries to figure out the roots of his obsession and finally succeeds to identify. Yet, Tarak plunges deeper and deeper into the world of the unheard as his love for cinema is unplugged. 

Almayer's Folly (2011)

Almayer's Folly (2011)

Director: Chantal Akerman
Country: Belgium
Runtime: 127 min

Chantal Akerman’s 2000 film The Captive was an ingenious reduction of the fifth volume of Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Almayer’s Folly, her second foray into literary adaptation, transplants Joseph Conrad’s 1895 debut novel, which concerns a Dutch trader living in Malaysia, to the 1950s.  Almayer (Stanislas Merhar) came to Southeast Asia long ago to seek his fortune. He married the adopted Malay daughter of the wealthy Captain Lingard in the hopes of winning an inheritance, but Lingard’s fortune gradually dwindled after a series of ill-advised journeys in search of hidden treasure. Now Almayer is resigned to a meagre existence, running a trading post where no one trades. Nina (Aurora Marion), his half-Malay daughter, is his sole source of hope and comfort. But Dain, the young man Almayer had enlisted to help him find the lost treasure his father-in-law fruitlessly sought, has eyes for Nina, and threatens to steal her away from this steamy backwater forever.

I'll Sing For You(2001)

I'll Sing For You(2001)

Director: Jacques Sarasin
Country: France
Runtime: 76 min

 In the early '60s, the West African nation of Mali was under French rule as its people struggled toward independence, and musician Boubacar Traoré became a star in his home country as its people dreamed of political freedom and better lives. Boasting a strong, blues-influenced voice and a hypnotic guitar style, Traoré -- better known as "Kar Kar" -- played music that showed the influence of the newer pop and rock sounds from Europe and the United States, and spoke of love and freedom in equal measure. However, at the height of his fame in Mali, Kar Kar disappeared; while he was a popular radio performer, he was unable to secure a record deal, and he was unable to support himself and his wife on his radio performance fees. Traoré became a tailor, and in time left Mali for self-imposed exile in Paris after the emotionally devastating death of his wife. Years later, a music producer who had heard recordings of Kar Kar's fabled radio performances offered him a chance to make an album, which led the artist back to Mali and the musical career he had abandoned. Je Chanterai Pour Toi is a documentary on Boubacar Traore's long road from fame to obscurity and back again, which features performances by both Traoré and fellow African guitar hero Ali Farka Toure.

Spring Breakers (2012)

Spring Breakers (2012)

Director:Harmony Korine
Coutry:USA
Runtime: 94 min

Brit, Candy, Cotty, and Faith have been best friends since grade school. They live together in a boring college dorm and are hungry for adventure. All they have to do is save enough money for spring break to get their shot at having some real fun. A serendipitous encounter with rapper "Alien" promises to provide the girls with all the thrill and excitement they could hope for. With the encouragement of their new friend, it soon becomes unclear how far the girls are willing to go to experience a spring break they will never forget.

It is actually quite artistic with great colors (lots of neon and saturated colors) and beautiful photography, and yet goes often against the classic movie making rules. Just watch the scene of the girls dancing with guns, wearing sweat pants, bikini tops, and neon pink ski masks. Why is it in there? Any normal movie would not have that kind of out of the blue scene, unrelated to the storyline. The way the story unravels without filling in a lot of blanks or multiple repeats people's statements (a common complaint in the IMDB reviews) is another reason why I don't believe it's part of what you call mainstream. In mainstream movies you follow the rules, you show something standard, a story which is easy to follow with enough drama, action, sex, and you try to avoid anything likely to alienate the viewer. And finally just take a look at the ratings, it's almost evenly spread out from 1 to 10, as if nobody could agree on what it deserves.

Cinema Komunisto (2010)

Cinema Komunisto (2010)

Director: Mila Turajlic
Country: Serbia
Runtime: 100 min





When history has a different script from the one in your films, who wouldn't invent a country to fool themselves? The collapsing sets of Tito's Hollywood of the East take us on a journey through the rise and fall of the illusion called Yugoslavia. Exploring the ruins of the forgotten film sets and talking to directors, producers, policemen and Tito's projectionist about the state run film studios and Tito's personal love for cinema and it's stars, 'Cinema Komunisto' uses film clips to go back to the film when 'His story' became the official history.

Buenas noches, España (2011)

Buenas noches, España (2011)

Director: Raya Martin
Country: Spain | Philippines
Runtime: 81min

In another lifetime, a Spanish couple takes drugs and teleports through their television set. A troubled young man travels through the countryside and meets a lost woman. During the trip, they discover a museum housing the expatriated paintings of the most important Filipino artist of the revolution. Eventually, the Spanish couple disappears toward their colony. Inspired by one of the earliest teleportation accounts, which happened between the Philippines and Mexico during the colonial period.

 Martin replicates the experience of being under the influence of drugs. He also replicates the feeling of being lost in time, seeing scenes played a few moments ago played again and again with various details changed, and listening to sounds that evoke reminiscence of carefree childhood. Being in the influence of drugs and time travel, although at first glance are two very different experiences, are actually interchangeable, giving Martin's proposition logical sense, and very personal sense, too, since drug influence and time travel are both panacea to heartache, allowing a person an option to forget and to make what has been made permanent by the movement of time more or less malleable. Thus, the lovers seem to be in incomparable bliss being in that state of temporal randomness, oblivious of where they are and where they are going.

The Best Offer (2013)

The Best Offer (2013)

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore
Country: Italy
Runtime: 124 min 

A story about an art expert who has some issues (he doesn't seem to like people much, he doesn't have a cell phone, he always wears gloves not to touch other people) and on top of that he uses his job as auctionner, and an accomplish, to get hold of precious paintings and other masterpiece he claims to be not really worth when instead they're expensives. The peculiar thing is, he seems to be really fond of women's portraits and he has a whole security chamber filled with this kind of paintings all over the walls.
One days he's been called by Claire Ibeson, daughter of a rich couple died in a car accident: she wants to sell all the stuff in the house she's been living in for her entire life, literally since she suffers agoraphobia and never leaves her secret room hidden behind a wall.
 

Inch'Allah (2012)

Inch'Allah (2012)

Director: Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette
Country: Canada | France
Runtime: 102 min

Chloe is a young Canadian doctor who divides her time between Ramallah, where she works with the Red Crescent, and Jerusalem, where she lives next door to her friend Ava, a young Israeli soldier. Increasingly sensitive to the conflict, Chloe goes daily through the checkpoint between the two cities to get to the refugee camp where she monitors the pregnancies of young women.

As she becomes friends with Rand, one of her patients, Chloe learns more about life in the occupied territories and gets to spend some time with Rand's family. Torn between the two sides of the conflict, Chloe tries as best she can to build bridges between her friends but suffers from remaining a perpetual foreigner to both sides.

Following up her acclaimed debut-feature Le ring, filmmaker Anais Barbeau-Lavalette delivers with Inch'Allah the moving tale a young woman's encounter with war and its everyday life. Avoiding any political agenda, Chloe's story questions how one can internalize a foreign conflict without ...