Pularumvare Cinema (blog)

Indijski bloger Onattu Ajaykumar zaista ima dobar filmski ukus.
pularumvarecinema.blogspot.com/

Camille Claudel 1915 (2013)

Director: Bruno Dumont
Country: France
Runtime: 95 min









Winter, 1915. Confined by her family to an asylum in the South of France - where she will never sculpt again - the chronicle of Camille Claudel's reclusive life, as she waits for a visit from her brother, Paul Claudel.

Paradjanov (2013)

Directors: Serge Avedikian, Olena Fetisova
Country: Ukraine | France | Georgia
Runtime:95 min 

Sergei Paradjanov can, without exaggeration, be called one of the most distinctive filmmakers of the 20th century. Indeed, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Andrei Tarkovsky were among the many admirers of his fascinating powers of visualization. This biopic, evincing an original take on the genre, relates some of the key moments in the life and work of this director of genius, a native Armenian who was persecuted by the Soviet authorities. We watch Paradjanov as he makes his ground-breaking films Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and The Colour of Pomegranates, and also during his imprisonment by the communist regime. The filmmakers present Paradjanov as a gifted artist overflowing with ideas, but also as a complicated personality. In creating the film’s artistic vision, the directing duo relies heavily on Paradjanov’s own, unmistakable trademark style, vividly showing the audience his distinctive way of seeing the world.

Fuck for Forest (2012)

Director: Michal Marczak
Country: Poland
Runtime: 1 hour, 22 minutes





Danny, a roaming twenty-something from Norway, moves in with neo-hippies in Berlin. His new housemates form a group that campaigns on behalf of nature through 'ecoporn'. Surrounded by old-school clouds of incense and guitar music, they film their sexual exploits and then publish the films on their activist website. Visitors to the site pay to watch the films and the group uses the money to save rainforests. For this documentary, Marczak follows these extremely serious 'erotic activists' in Berlin and on their trips to Colombia and Peru, from which the well-intentioned hippies return rather disillusioned. The protagonists are introduced in a dryly comic voice-over that subtly confirms all the stereotypes. As do the protagonists themselves, who make coffee topless, incessantly smoke joints and say such things as: 'I really like your energy level.' Free love meets altruism meets twenty-first-century campaigning.

15: The Movie (2003)

Director: Royston Tan
Country:Singapore
Runtime: 96 min





Fast, frenetic, and furious, 15 is the story of five Singaporian teenagers who, abandoned by the system and estranged from their parents and life in general, build their own world in which gangs, drugs, fighting, piercing, self-harm and suicide are common and brotherhood is important above all else. Presents the chaotic lives of these boys, living in the shadows of a sprawling metropolis and with only each other to rely on.

The Only Journey of His Life (2001)

Director: Lakis Papastathis
Country: Greece
Runtime: 87 min

As Georgios Vizneyos, one of Greece's greatest authors, degenerates in an Athens mental asylum, the tale of another story-teller, his grandfather, begins to emerge through his mad ramblings. This lavish film recreates (through his own words) the writer's childhood life, rich with fantasy and legend. Apprenticed to a tailor, young Georgios' mind is filled with his grandfather fairy tales. He ponders the hill from which one can climb into the sky and waits each day for the chance to bring clothes to the princess and win her heart through song. But, just as reality begins to germinate doubt in his mind, Georgios is called home to his ailing grandfather, who will reveal one final, true story that may prove to be the most fantastic of all.

Los amantes pasajeros

Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Country: Spain 
Runtime: 90 min




AN AIRLINER circles above central Spain. Technical problems have left the plane doomed, destined for a crash-landing. Frantic with nerves, passengers and crew-members descend into an orgy of alcohol, drugs and sex. Thus Pedro Almodóvar, the prince of modern Spanish cinema, allegorises the state of his country in his latest film, “Los amantes pasajeros”

Director: Lakis Papastathis
Country: Greece
Runtime:     1h 45mn

Kostas returns to his homeland Mytilene in Lesbos, a Greek island in the Northern Aegean Sea, to settle down the details about the inheritance of the family house. He left the place twenty years ago to study in Paris and he never went back. Now his return forces him to deal with the traumas of the past. He obviously studied cinema and is able to watch the world from the safe distance provided by the lens of the camera. He’s gradually reconciled with both the living and the dead. And eventually this experience helps him not only to regain the love for his homeland but also to come in terms with his own self.

  Papastathis (Theofilos 1987, The Only Journey of His Life 2001) as a pioneer documentary director belongs to the generation of film-makers that established the so-called “new Greek cinema” of late ‘60s and early ‘70s. He came to fiction films only much later shooting his first feature film in 1981. Like other late-bloomers of new Greek cinema he retained the formal awareness of Angelopoulos cinema trying at the same time to find a distinctly individual style. He met with great difficulties to make films at a regular rate, especially at a time when film as an art in Greece had a limited domestic and international support. So this is just the fourth feature film in thirty years from a director who is unanimously considered ‘important’ by Greek film critics although he’s simultaneously been accused of 'formalism' or, even worst, of morbid infatuation with the decay and the death. But there’s nothing here to be scared of except for some extensive use of POV camera - if this can be frightening - combined with repeated flash-backs and ceaseless switch from b&w to colour and vice versa. ‘Journey to Mytilene’ is mostly a nostalgic, tender and humane film.

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)

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)

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. 

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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 ...

Renoir (2012)

Director: Gilles Bourdos
Country: France
Runtime: 111 min








 Set on the French Riviera in the summer of 1915, Jean Renoir -- son of the Impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste -- returns home to convalesce after being wounded in World War I. At his side is Andrée, a young woman who rejuvenates, enchants, and inspires both father and son.

Paradise: Faith (2012)

Director: Ulrich Seidl
Country: Austria
Duration : 1h 48mn

 Put together a subversive filmmaker like Ulrich Seidl with the subject of religious fanaticism and you’re bound to get something provocative. But Paradise: Faith, the second part of the Austrian director’s trilogy about three women from the same family on different quests, is possibly more interesting to think about and discuss afterwards than to sit through. Depending how you look at it, there’s a pitch-black comedy buried in here or a redeeming shred of empathy at the tail end of two grueling hours. Either way, it’s strictly for the faithful.
The film follows Paradise: Love, which premiered in competition at Cannes and dealt with a middle-aged frau on the prowl for romantic fulfillment among the sex tourists of Kenya. Seen briefly in the earlier film, that character’s sister, Anna Maria (Maria Hofstatter), is the key figure in Faith, while her daughter is the center of the forthcoming third part, Paradise: Hope, about a zaftig teen at fat camp. In each freestanding film a vacation forces the protagonist to confront herself and her longing for happiness.

Waste Land (2010)

Directors: Lucy Walker & Karen Harley & João Jardim
Country: Brazil
Runtime: 99 min

 

Brazilian artist Vik Muniz combines visual beauty with social awareness. Waste Land--a documentary about Muniz collaborating with the trash pickers in a staggeringly huge landfill--achieves the same fusion. Muniz, a remarkably upbeat and earnest fellow, is almost just an excuse for the movie to investigate the lives of the trash pickers, who are amazing people living on the fringes of a highly polarized society. The documentarians capture startlingly open and complex interviews with a handful of men and women striving to maintain some hope and personal dignity in some of the worst circumstances imaginable. Their vibrance and vitality will make you want to live your own life more fully. The tricky ethical issues around the entire project get a substantial discussion; Muniz is aware of the potential for exploitation and capsizing these delicately balanced lives, but proceeds with fervor. The glimpses into his artistic process (and his ability to genuinely collaborate with his subjects) provide a striking mirror to the collective effort of the trash pickers as they fight to form a political association to better their existence. Waste Land will truly make you examine your own life and may well inspire you to live better. --Bret Fetzer

Filmed over nearly three years, WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of "catadores" -- or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz's initial objective was to "paint" the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they begin to re-imagine their lives. Walker (Devil's Playground, Blindsight, Countdown to Zero) has great access to the entire process and, in the end, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit.

Charles Bradley: Soul of America (2012)

Director: Poull Brien
Country: USA
Runtime: 75 min


Starting off on his 62nd birthday, Charles Bradley: Soul of America follows the extraordinary journey of singer Charles Bradley during the electrifying and transformative months leading up to the release of his debut album "No Time for Dreaming." The 74-minute documentary feature will premiere at the SXSW 2012 Film Festival in Austin, Texas. Despite being abandoned as a child, a period of homelessness, the devastating loss of his brother and constant poverty, Charles never gave up on his life long dream to be a professional singer. With the help of producer and Grammy-winner Gabriel Roth (Daptone Records) and musician Tommy Brenneck, Charles moved away from the James Brown covers he'd been performing for nearly half a century and focused on finding his own unique voice. Earning himself an opening spot on tour for Sharon Jones, the biggest artist in the Daptone stable, Charles delivered the most impassioned performances of his life. Coming up during one of the worst economic downturns ... Written by Poull Brien

Días de pesca AKA Gone Fishing (2012)

Director: Carlos Sorin
Country: Argentina
Runtime: 77 min






Marco is a travelling salesman and a recovering alcoholic who decides to change the direction of his life after a stay at a detox centre. His counselor suggests he take up a hobby as part of his treatment and Marco decides to try fishing. He then heads to Puerto Deseado during shark fishing season to find his estranged daughter, Ana.

Upstream Color (2013)

Director: Shane Carruth
Country: USA
Runtime: 96 min






Primer director Shane Carruth returns nearly a decade after his debut feature with the enigmatic thriller Upstream Color. Amy Seitz stars as a woman whose life is shattered when a thief gives her a mysterious drug that forces her to do whatever he says. Years after this incident, she begins a tentative relationship with a man (played by Carruth), but both of them seem to suffer from strange memory problems, and she's still haunted by what happened to her before.

Capital (2012)

Director: Costa-Gavras
Country: France
Duration : 1h 53mn







We are slaves to the Capital. We tremble when it trembles. We celebrate when it grows and triumphs. Who will set us free? Should we liberate ourselves? We should at the very least know those who serve it and how. This is the story of the unstoppable ascent of Marc Tourneuil, an expendable servant of the Capital who became its undisputed master.

Director: Denis Côté
Country: Canada | France
Runtime: 72 min
Animals/People: Along the rhythm of the changing seasons they watch one another. Bestiary unfolds like a filmed picture book about mutual observation, about peculiar perception. A contemplation of a stable imbalance, and of lose, tranquil and indefinable elements.


A drawing course, a safari park and a taxidermist’s workshop: three settings in which humans and animals meet. The focus of observation is on relationships of sight and perception, which often reflect unequal power structures at the same time. In the process, the film also seems to be considering the question of how animals can be filmed.

It’s nothing like the technically high-powered animal films of today, whose almighty cameras transcend the boundaries of water, land and air and no longer know nature’s secrets. Sober visual observation without commentary, with an often static camera watching proceedings from a fixed position with a keen eye for form and movement: horns in front of a concrete wall, nervous zebras’ legs in the cramped stalls, the precision contained in the taxidermist’s skillful hand movements.

Carefully considered shots which allow the viewer time to reflect on beauty and the unfamiliar, on this domesticated wilderness in the midst of civilisation. This all allows a form of choreography to emerge to the accompaniment of the surrounding noises, a cinematic bestiary in which man too takes his place among the stoic, impassive, impatient, wild and rebellious animals.

The Land of Hope (2012)

Director: Shion Sono
Country:Japan
Runtime: 133 min

In the fictional Nagashima prefecture, Ono Yôichi (Murakami Jun) lives a peaceful life on his family's small farm, with wife Izumi (Kagurazaka Megumi) and parents Yasuhiko (Natsuyagi Isao) and Chieko (Ôtani Naoko). One day, an earthquake disrupts the calm, causing the reactor at a nearby nuclear power plant to explode. The Nagashima community is directly within the twenty-kilometer evacuation radius—except for the Ono farm. Haunted by memories of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, in which evacuees were forced out of their homes permanently, the Onos are faced with a terrible decision: stay and risk the possibility of radiation poisoning, or leave the home their family has spent generations building.

Out of concern for their unborn child, Yôichi and Izumi reluctantly opt to leave the farm, while Yasuhiko and Chieko remain. Relocated to a nearby urban community, the younger couple try to rebuild their lives. But the newly pregnant Izumi is plagued by paranoia, unconvinced that her new home is any safer from airborne contaminants than the farm. Back in Nagashima, meanwhile, where Yôichi's aged parents are being prevailed upon by authorities to voluntarily relocate, Yasuhiko's true motives for staying are revealed...

Neighbouring Sounds (2012)

Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho
Country: Brazil
Runtime: 131 min





Life in a middle-class neighborhood in present day Recife, Brazil, takes an unexpected turn after the arrival of an independent private security firm. The presence of these men brings a sense of safety and a good deal of anxiety to a culture which runs on fear. Meanwhile, Bia, married and mother of two, must find a way to deal with the constant barking and howling of her neighbor's dog. A slice of 'Braziliana', a reflection on history, violence and noise.

Director: Spiros Stathoulopoulos
Country:Greece
Runtime: 82 min




In the hot plains of central Greece, the Orthodox monasteries of Meteora are perched atop sandstone pillars, suspended between heaven and earth. Down in the valley, the eternal cycles of farm life – birth, milking, slaughter – provide a stark contrast to their ascetic world. The young monk Theodoros and the nun Urania have devoted their lives to the strict rituals and practices of their community. A growing affection for one another puts their monastic life under question. Torn between spiritual devotion and their human desire, they must decide which path to follow.

O Gebo e a Sombra (2012)

Director: Manoel de Oliveira
Country: Portugal
Runtime: 95 min
Despite his age and general weariness, Gebo keeps on working as an accountant to provide for his family. He lives with his wife, Doroteia, and his daughter-in-law, Sofia, but it is the absence of João, son and husband, that worries them. Gebo seems to be hiding something, especially to Doroteia, who is anxiously waiting to see her son again. Sofia is also waiting for her husband to come home, and yet she fears him. All of a sudden, João arrives and everything changes.
by Kenji Fujishima

The specter of death haunts nearly every dimly lit frame and extended take of Gebo and the Shadow, the latest film from the 104-year-old Manoel de Oliveira, and a work that, for once, could be said to reflect his age. That's hardly meant as a slight. Though the film is dominated by fixed-camera setups within one set, more or less, the Portuguese auteur's minimalist style, rather than seeming tired, ultimately meshes beautifully with the story's world-weary, reflective substance.
An adaptation of a stage play by the Portuguese modernist Raul Brandão, Gebo and the Shadow details a family on the verge of a long-time-coming collapse. Delusions run rampant among the clan members. Most notably, the titular patriarch (Michael Lonsdale) insists on keeping his wife Doroteia's (Claudia Cardinale) hopes for the return of their fugitive son, João, alive, to the point of pretending that he's seen him even though he actually hasn't in many years—a long-running charade reluctantly maintained by their servant, and João's wife, Sofia (De Oliveira regular Leonor Silveira). And then, João (Ricardo Trêpa, another De Oliveira regular) suddenly reappears—and rather than bringing about an end to family tensions, his return merely exacerbates them as his presence exposes even deeper fissures: the family's sheltered lives versus João's hard experience, an insistence on maintaining an increasingly outdated value system, and so on. At one point, a couple of their friends, Chamiço (Luís Miguel Cintra) and Candidinha (Jeanne Moreau), show up, and, in a moment that recalls a similar seemingly throwaway conversation in The Strange Case of Angelica, one of them pontificates about the consolation he finds in art in an increasingly "tasteless" society.
Brandão isn't especially subtle about his themes, and one could criticize the film for essentially offering mouthpieces for various points of view rather than fully fleshed human beings, however beautifully this particular cast of cinematic legends delivers their lines. In a sense, then, we're always aware that we're watching a "stage play"—and De Oliveira intensifies that feeling by basically refusing to open out the play in any way. Other than a couple of outdoor scenes, the majority of the film's action takes place in that one cottage; with De Oliveira sticking steadfastly to an aesthetic of stationary camera setups and long takes, the audience is put in the position of feeling as if its watching a filmed theatrical performance more than anything else.
But De Oliveira's style is hardly a mere stylistic affectation. Instead, a profound sense of stillness comes across in Gebo and the Shadow; we not only hear characters talking about their dead-end lives, but we also begin to feel that inertia in our bones. To that feeling of deadening stasis, Renato Berta's beautifully detailed, Goya-esque cinematography adds a sense of impending death hovering above these characters: Dark hues predominate, with candlelight providing the only sources of illumination in the gloomy decor. (One could conceivably think of this film as a kind of still life with humans.)
All of this might make the film sound like an impossibly bleak and austere experience, whatever its incidental visual and temporal beauties. And yet, the longer we stay with these characters, the more the film begins to come across as an extremely deadpan comedy about people resistant to change beyond all rational reasoning. "Happiness is nothing ever happening," the remarkably passive Gebo at one point says. Maybe it's fitting, then, that, when something truly dramatic does finally occur in his life and he's thus forced to make an honest-to-God decision, De Oliveira presents the outcome as a kind of ironic triumph, complete with outdoor light finally entering into this darkly lit purgatory.

Sabad Nirantar aka Word Within the Word (2008)

Director:Rajula Shah
Country:India
Runtime:74 mins.

Sabad Nirantar is a search for the Word within the word; a poised reflection on the formless essence of reality expressed through the living resonance, continuing and constant exchanges among diverse worldviews, epochs and emotions of the indigenous spirit and its undying echoes enlivening the emergent and modern soul. It seeks to comprehend and expand upon the Bhakti movement, an important chapter in the social, political and literary history as far back as 12th century, in India, that of medieval mystic poets like Kabir, Gorakhnath, devout singers Meera, Sehjobai and others blooming from within the wretched of the earth and coming to form cogent dialogues across socio-philosophic fractures in an ancient landscape ravaged by history. Embarking upon a journey into the flux, the film finds within the zeitgeist, ancestral voices question and dismantle fatal stereotypes, those blind yardsticks of lopsided reason with which knowledge attempts to measure the past and present.

Revolución (2010)

Director: Carlos Reygadas, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, Rodrigo Plá, Amat Escalante, Mariana Chenillo, Patricia Riggen, Gerardo Naranjo, Rodrigo García, Fernando Eimbcke
Country: Mexico
Runtime: 106min








Description: Made up of 10 short films, 'Revolucion' analyzes through the eyes of the directors what is the revolution today and what it means to the young minds of Mexico.

Figures of Thought (1990)

Director: Arun Khopkar
Country:India
Runtime:33min


A film about three of our leading visual artists, Bhupen Khakar, Nalini Malani and Vivan Sundaram. It takes, as its point of departure, a glass mural on which all three were working, then zeros into each of them. It links them to their physical and mental worlds through cinematic devices like associative sounds, variable light and montage. Compositionally, the visuals aim to link with the styles of each artist, as well as the larger narrative traditions of India.

Daughter... Father... Daughter (2011)

Director: Panahbarkhoda Rezaee
Country: Iran
Runtime: 70 min


The film poetically traces the solitary existence of three sisters living in the traditional central western region of Iran, where the occasional traveling salesman serves as a distraction from the general monotony.

Frida Kahlo: A Ribbon Around a Bomb (1992)

Director: Ken Mandel 
Country: USA
Runtime: 49min

A tortured Mexican artist whose work reflected her physical and psychological pain, Frida Kahlo lived in the shadow of her more famous painter husband Diego Rivera during her lifetime. But in recent years there has been a steady revival of her work, which has gained new respect among the artistic community.
To the average observer, her paintings immediately appear to be incredibly dark, if not disgusting and sick. But an understanding of her background gives Kahlo's imagery a wider dimension.
"Frida Kahlo: A Ribbon Around the Bomb" is a documentary about Kahlo's life, but it's hardly the traditional form for this type of film. There are talking-head interviews with some of those who shared Kahlo's life but the framing device — and clearly the emphasis — for exploring her work (some 120 of Kahlo's paintings are shown) is a dramatic interpretation by actress/co-producer Cora Car-dona.
Using excerpts from a play (Abraham Oceransky's "The Diary of Frida Kahlo"), Cardona portrays Kahlo as a fiery, angry, unfulfilled soul who dwelt on death and embraced pain. During her childhood she suffered from polio and later was severely injured in a bus accident, from which she never fully recovered. She also could never quite get over being unable to have children.
Meanwhile, Kahlo's self-portraits reveal a range of dark, self-destructive feelings, whether her haunting face is on a fawn plugged with bloody arrows or on a body opened to reveal a steel post replacing her spinal column or whether she is shown in various stages of bleeding in hospital beds.
While some of this is unpleasant, there's a morbid fascination with this woman who was unable to come to terms with herself during her lifetime.
Some of Kahlo's history is glossed over or omitted completely (her affiliation with the Communist Party, her affair with Leon Trotsky) and her relationship with the older and physically imposing Diego Rivera is only briefly explored. There are also some dramatic moments that seem to be here more for Cardona's benefit as a performer than to lend any insight into Kahlo.
Still, despite its dwelling a bit too much in the Land of the Tortured Artist, much of this is quite compelling. Although, whether she should really be compared to Vincent van Gogh is arguable.
"Frida Kahlo: A Ribbon Around a Bomb" (the title comes from poet Andre Breton's description of the volatile Kahlo) is not rated but would doubtless get an R for language and for some of the imagery in Kahlo's paintings.

Directed by K.P. Sasi
Country:India
Runtime: 90 Minutes

 A 90 Minutes Documentary Film on the Fabricated Cases on Abdul Nasar Maudany & Others.

This is a story of the post Independent India. Every year when this country celebrates freedom, there are thousands of innocent prisoners in Indian jails, waiting for justice without even a trial. Abdul Nasar Maudany is one such victim. As a Muslim spiritual leader, he reacted strongly against the demolition of Babari Masjid in 1992. His house was attacked and he spent nine and a half years in jail. All the charges against him were proven false and even the judgement makes it clear that the case was fabricated. He was released without any compensation. No trial on those who were responsible for such fabrication was conducted. But soon, Maudany was framed for another series of charges and he is still waiting for justice in Bangalore Parappana Agrahara jail. The documentary film shows that this is not an isolated case, but several Muslims, dalits, adivasis and activists from people's movements go through similar experiences. The question raised by the film is `why is a person spending so many years in jail in without being proven guilty?' This documentary film portrays the inner dynamics of the manner in which the present institutions of the democratic system functions, so that a large number of innocent people can be framed and fabricated with false cases and dumped in jails for long periods, without the provision of basic human rights as per the requirements of Indian Constitution.

Me and You (2012)

Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Country: Italy
Runtime: 1 hour, 32 minutes




Lorenzo is a quirky 14-year-old loner. He plans to fulfill his teenage dream of happiness by hiding out in his apartment building’s abandoned cellar. To escape his overwrought parents, Lorenzo will tell them that he is going away on a ski trip with school friends. For an entire week, he will finally be able to avoid all conflicts and pressures to be a "normal" teenager. He plans to live in perfect isolation with his horror and fantasy books. But an unexpected visit from his worldly older half-sister Olivia changes everything. Their emotional time together will inspire Lorenzo to come to terms with the challenge of casting aside his disguise of troubled youth and prepare to soon be thrown into the chaotic game of adult life.

Like Someone in Love (2012)

Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Country: France | Japan
Duration : 1h 45mn








An old man and a young woman meet in Tokyo. She knows nothing about him, he thinks he knows her. He welcomes her into his home, she offers him her body. But the web that is woven between them in the space of twenty-four hours bears no relation to the circumstances of their encounter.

Le corps sublimé (2007)

Director: Jérôme de Missolz
Country: France
Runtime: 75 min


American photographer Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) is best known for black-and-white pictures of herself and of female models, which still draws new fans. Many of her photographs show young women nude, blurred (due to movement and long exposure times), merging with their surroundings, or with their faces obscured. Years after her suicide at the age of 22, her photographic works became the subject of much attention, including many exhibitions and books.

It's a Fiction-documentary about the short life of the photographer Francesca Woodman (1958-81) who used to photograph herself, mostly naked in strange places, until she committed suicide.

Most aka Bridge (An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge) (1960)

Director:Janusz Majewski
Country:Poland
Runtime:14min

A very interesting curiosity here: another adaptation of Ambrose Bierce's An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge, made famous by Robert Enrico's version (as part of his Bierce anthology, In The Midst Of Life) which was subsequently used as an episode of the Twilight Zone.  What's interesting is that Majewski's version was seemingly made two years BEFORE Enrico's, and yet shares a number of stylistic similarities with the later film >> did Enrico see this adaptation (made as a student film), or does the material just suggest a certain cinematic interpretation that both Majewski and Enrico followed independently?

Synopsis:
Set during the American Civil War, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is the story of Peyton Farquhar, a Confederate sympathizer condemned to death by hanging upon the Owl Creek Bridge of the title. The main character finds himself already bound at the bridge's edge at the beginning of the story. It is later revealed that a disguised Union scout enlisted him to attempt to demolish the bridge, and subsequently he was caught in the act.  When he is hanged, the rope breaks. Farquhar falls into the water and makes a bid for freedom...

Nirakar Chhaya AKA Shadows Formless (2007)

Director:Ashish Avikunthak
Country:India
Runtime:82min

A film trapped between two monologues. A lonely and abandoned wife’s fantasy comes to life when the paramour she invokes springs forth and transforms her reality. Shadows Formless is an interpretation of the Malayalam novella Pandavpuram by the distinguished novelist Sethumadhavan from Kerala.

Director's Statement:
This film is a stylized adaptation of a novel called Pandavpuram by an important Malayalam author, Sethu Madhavan. It explores the psychological universe of a lonely woman abandoned by her husband, awaiting a paramour who she believes will rescue her from the mundanity of her existence and bring passion into her life. This yearning stems from both her emotional need to overcome loneliness and a suppressed sexual desire. As the yearning translates into an imagined reality, the film travels through the daily life of this lonely woman, inhabited by a affectionate sister-in law and a paramour.

Contemporary urban society in India is increasingly faced with the problems of alienation and loneliness, arising from nuclear family units and rising levels of marital separation and abandonment. In the absence of the support of the larger joint family, this alienation can take on the nature of a psychosis. The film attempts to probe into the complexities of such a state, which blurs the boundaries between reality and unreal. This film contemplates upon the reality of such an imagined world through the use of the aesthetic and structural possibilities of the cinematic medium.

Katho Upanishad (2011)

Director:Ashish Avikunthak
Country:India
Runtime:82min

 “Teach me the path beyond death,” asks Nachiketa to Yama, the God of Death. ‘Katho Upanishad’ is a film that expounds on this basic quest of human existence. It is a film about a man's pursuit for nirvana. The film centers on the metaphysical dialogue between Nachiketa and Yama. It is an adaptation of a two and half thousand years old Sanskrit treatise of the same name, where Yama instructs Nachiketa about the path towards enlightenment. Structurally, the film is a triad with three chapters – the quest, the dialogue and the final liberation
Film contains only three shots

Do Not Forget Me Istanbul (2011)

Directed by
Hany Abu-Assad        
Stefan Arsenijevic        
Aida Begic        
Josefina Markarian        
Eric Nazarian        
Stergios Niziris        
Omar Shargawi
Country:Turkey
Duration : 1h 54mn

Six directors from the Balkans and the Middle East including Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now), and Aida Begic (Snow) have been enlisted to make short films for a portmanteau revolving around the city of Istanbul.
Do Not Forget Me Istanbul is being produced by Huseyin Karabe at Asi Film Production, Sevil Demirci at Yeni Sinemacilik and Emre Yeksan at YXN Film and is designed to demonstrate the cultural influence of the city throughout the centuries.
The other directors on the film are Serbia’s Stefan Arsenijvic, Eric Nazarian, an American of Armenian descent whose first feature was The Blue Hour, the Danish-born Palestinian Omar Shargawi (Go With Peace Jamil) and and Stergios Niziris from Greece.
Petros Markaris, the Greek co-writer of numerous films by Theo Angelopoulos, is the script editor and consultant, while Karabey, who directed My Marlon And Brando, is the artistic head of the project…

 Half Moon Strangers by STERGIOS NIZIRIS
Vangelis has to frequently travel between Thessaloniki and Istanbul to buy textile to sustain his job, even if he doesn’t like the Turks. Each time, instead of spending the night in Istanbul, he prefers to make the long round trip journey on the same day. He is stressed and lonely man and Istanbul has no interest for him. This time, following a fraud by the shopkeeper with whom he collaborates, his money is stolen and he has to stay overnight…

 Mirko by STEFAN ARSENIJEVIC
Dragan and Ana are having a vacation in Istanbul. Having been married for a long time, they are quarrelling continuously. During one quarrel at the Spice bazaar, Ana looses her husband in the crowd…

 The Jewish Girl by OMAR SHARGAWI
Fayez, a successful Palestinian writer living in London, has recently been in Israel to negotiate the adaptation of his latest novel to the screen with a film studio. There, he has met a young woman, Levana, with whom he had an affair. But a relationship between an Israeli and a Palestinian is no easy thing in these territories, so the two agreed to meet in Istanbul for a romantic weekend….

 Otel(o) by AIDA BEGIC
Young Bosnian actress Alma has come to Istanbul to prepare for auditions of Othello. On one side she is dealing with the jealous and incessant phone calls of her lover, on the other she’s trying. To prepare the part in the trendy hotel he has booked for her. At some point of the evening she convinces hotel employee Ayca to help her…

Almost by HANY ABU-ASSAD
When Israel was created in 1948, Palestinian Samah was displaced and forced to settle in Syria. Her sister Zahra has not seen her since 62 years. Only now are they able to meet in Istanbul…

 Bolis by ERIC NAZARIAN
Armenak is a successful Oud player who is in Istanbul for the first time for an important musical event. His feelings towards the city, where his Armenian grandfather disappeared from “at the tip of the sword” on April 24, 1915, are very complex. Armenak arrived expecting to hate the city, but instead finds it full of familiarity…


Epilogue by JOSEFINA MARKARIAN
The famous Greek writer Petros Markaris left his native Istanbul in the 60s after turbulent political and social conflicts. Now he is back to the city and visiting all the places that mattered to him one by one…

Germany-DADA: An Alphabet of German DADAism (1969)

Director: Helmut Herbst
Country: West Germany
Runtime: 61 min

In post-World War I Zurich, out of the conflict's sobering aftermath, there was born an artistic movement that preached a baffling, radical-yet-whimsical philosophy of creativity. Random and meaningless by definition, calculatedly irrational by design, the movement spread like revolt to America and across Europe, voicing the delightfully bizarre protest of a brave new community of artists and writers. Filmed with the cooperation of original Dadaists Hans Richter and Richard Hulsenbeck, this unique motion picture collage of art, music and poetry is not only an alphabet of German Dadaism, but is in itself, a true Dadaist experience.

Moacir Arte Bruta (2006)

Director: Walter Carvalho 
Country: Brazil
Runtime: 71 min

Documentary on naïve Brazilian artist Moacir. Facing many problems, such as impaired hearing and speaking, abnormal bone formation and poverty, black artist Moacir lives in the National Park of Chapada dos Veadeiros, aloof and oblivious of outside world, and was discovered by director Walter Carvalho in the 1980s. He spends his days drawing marvellous works with his crayons, depicting human and fantastic beings, fauna, flora, his own inner visions, mystical themes and sex, with a trace of impressive primitivism and beauty. The film registers his daily life, and another Brazilian artist, Siron Franco, paying him a visit.

HAVE YOU SEEN THE ARANA?

DIRECTOR /   Sunanda Bhat
Country:India
Year:2012
Runtime:85min

In a world that has grown more dynamic and uncertain, where diversity and differences make way for standardization and uniformity, the film explores the effects of a rapidly changing landscape on people’s lives and livelihoods. Set in Wayanad, part of the fragile ecosystem of the western mountain range in South India, the film takes you on a journey through a region that is witnessing drastic transformation in the name of ‘development’.

A woman’s concern over the disappearance of medicinal plants from the forest, a farmer’s commitment to growing traditional varieties of rice organically and a cash crop cultivator’s struggle to survive amidst farmers’ suicides, offer fresh insights into shifting relations between people,knowledge systems and environment.

Interwoven into contemporary narratives is an ancient tribal creation myth that traces the passage of their ancestors across this land, recalling past ways of reading and mapping the terrain.

As hills flatten, forests disappear and traditional knowledge systems are forgotten, the film reminds us that this diversity could disappear forever, to be replaced by monotonous and unsustainable alternatives.

WON AWARD FOR THE BEST DOCUMENTARY  AT THE SIGNS FESTIVAL, 2013, TRIVANDRUM.

 Sunanda Bhat has been making documentaries and short films since 1995, under the banner
Songline Films. Her interest in documentaries is to represent people living on the margins of
a fascinatingly intricate and stratified Indian society. Unraveling these layers reveal glimpses of
lives that are often far more interesting than fiction.
`Let`s make it right` about rural sanitation won the `Gold Drop` award at the International Water and
Film Events 2012 at Marseilles, France. Her first documentary `Bol Ayesha Bol (Speak Ayesha
Speak)` was screened at IDFA, 1998. Her other films are `Athani to Dusseldorf` on the transformation
of leather crafts people from artisans to entrpreneurs; `Nalai Nammadai (Tomorrow is ours)` on
micro enterprise; and `Yoga as therapy`, a series of 14 films on Yoga for stress related illnesses.

The Sperm (2007)

Director: Taweewat Wantha
Country: Thailand
Runtime: 93 min








A teenage rock musician masturbates gleefully and often. Way too often. One night, flying
sperm escape and impregnate local women. The babies grow into an army of little creatures
with the teen's head -- and libido.

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Director: Peter Strickland
Country: UK
Runtime: 92 min


In the 1970s, a British sound technician is brought to Italy to work on the sound effects for a gruesome horror film. His nightmarish task slowly takes over his psyche, driving him to confront his own past. Berberian Sound Studio is many things: an anti-horror film, a stylistic tour de force, and a dream of cinema. As such, it offers a kind of pleasure that is rare in films, while recreating in a highly original way the pleasures of Italian horror cinema.

5 Broken Cameras (2011)

Directors: Emad Burnat, Guy Davidi
Country: Palestine
Duration : 1h 34mn


Five broken cameras—and each one has a powerful tale to tell. Embedded in the bullet-ridden remains of digital technology is the story of Emad Burnat, a farmer from the Palestinian village of Bil’in, which famously chose nonviolent resistance when the Israeli army encroached upon its land to make room for Jewish colonists. Emad buys his first camera in 2005 to document the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel. Over the course of the film, he becomes the peaceful archivist of an escalating struggle as olive trees are bulldozed, lives are lost, and a wall is built to segregate burgeoning Israeli settlements.

Gibreel’s loss of innocence and the destruction of each camera are potent metaphors in a deeply personal documentary that vividly portrays a conflict many of us think we know. Emad Burnat, a Palestinian, joins forces with Guy Davidi, an Israeli, and—from the wreckage of five broken cameras—two filmmakers create one extraordinary work of art.

You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet! (2012)

Director: Alain Resnais
Country: France
Runtime: 115 min


Boris Nelepo (translated by Anton Svynarenko)" wrote:
Several famous actors, including Michel Piccoli, Pierre Arditi, Lambert Wilson, and Mathieu Amalric, receive the same phone call informing them that Antoine d'Anthac, a prominent playwright who would frequently cast all of them, has passed away. Summoned to the late man's estate by his well-mannered butler, they arrive to see Antoine's videotaped last will and testament: speaking from the screen, the deceased asks his lifelong friends to evaluate a contemporary take on his play, Eurydice, adapted by a much younger company. As the projection begins, the spectators involuntarily repeat the familiar dialogue, as if it were lifted out of their shared favorite movie; so the performance begins on its own and the spacious living room suddenly turns into a small-town railway café. Orpheus starts his soft fiddle-scraping. He is about to meet Eurydice.

"The playwright's duty," Jean Anouilh, French dramatist, once wrote, "is to produce plays on a regular basis. Actors must go out onstage every night for the audiences who come to theatre to forget about death and hardship. If one of the plays is found to be a masterpiece, well, so much the better." Alain Resnais has stuck to this ethos for a couple of decades now, enriching his already stellar back catalogue with some brilliant autumnal work, but You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet is a veritable masterpiece on par with his major accomplishments. Its audiences, however, are unlikely to forget about death, since it is based around it, as are both Jean Anouilh's plays that coalesce in Resnais' script: the immaculate Eurydice and the oft-neglected Dear Antoine; or, The Love That Failed. The latter was originally a story of a playwright who, under circumstances not dissimilar to the premise of the film, invites his friends to act out a play within a play. Here, the play in question is Anouilh's Eurydice, blithely attributed to the fictional Antoine d'Anthac.
The scene of characters arriving at Antoine's mansion bears a distinct classical Hollywood tinge: the wind is howling outside, yellow, withered leaves are strewn across the doorstep in a sublime frame worthy of Douglas Sirk. Greetings come to the guests in the form of a Rivettian intertitle: "As soon as they crossed the bridge, the ghosts did not take long to present themselves" (Et quand il eut dépassé le pont, les fantômes vinrent à sa rencontre). It is a direct quote from the French version of Murnau's Nosferatu. The score, just as gentle and nuanced, fades out before it climaxes: Resnais meant to recreate live music that often accompanied silent movies. Anouilh's Orpheus and Eurydice, incidentally, lament the fact that they did not grow up together, and therefore missed out on a chance to watch Pearl White's star vehicles side by side (specifically, Les Mystères de New York by Louis Gasnier and Le masque aux dents blanches by Edward José). Their verdict is wistful: "Now it's all gone. You can't bring it back. Cinema is painted a different color, and the heroine is old."

Resnais deliberately omits this line, as if aiming to prove it wrong. What is most captivating about You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet is how time is regained in it; after all, it offers a vantage of a filmmaker who is just twelve years Anouilh's junior and virtually the same age as his Orpheus and Eurydice (the play was written in 1942). The fragile Eurydice ponders, "So, if you happen to have seen a lot of ugly things, they all stay with you, don't they? All the abominations you've witnessed, all the people you've hated, even those you've tried to escape, they're all there, neatly shelved?" It might be true, but it also applies to all things beautiful. At one point, Anouilh began staging his own plays, so Sabine Azéma, for instance, had an opportunity to work under his direct supervision; the rest did not, yet none of them are strangers to Anouilh's oeuvre, as they have participated in his Eurydice productions and been strongly influenced by it across the board. These things, too, remain within them. Their personal experiences with the source material are engraved into their body language and faces that Resnais frames with yet another retro device, i.e. the iris-in, which darkens the edges around them. The movie screen always responds to such enhancements, instantly adding more depth. Sometimes You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet shifts into documentary mode, when the actors step out of their characters and become themselves and watch the next generation of thespians reenact the memories of their youth in a barely recognizable manner. New shapes replace old habits. Anouilh himself turned to an ancient myth for inspiration. A poster of Resnais' most enduring classic, Hiroshima, mon amour, is taped onto a railway station wall as a reminder of the unbreakable bond between eras and the immense span of the 20th century. Encapsulating this meticulous consistency of time is the self-explanatory "It Was a Very Good Year" Sinatra ever so tenderly croons over the closing credits. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, in a way, cinematizes the song's lyrics.

It features several couples of Orpheuses and Eurydices: Resnais' fixtures, Azéma and Arditi, plus Consigny and Lambert, also frequent collaborators. Each one instills their own inimitable charms: Azéma's Eurydice is ghost-like and glow-eyed, while Consigny's is vulnerable and ethereal. Let's also not forget about the young'uns from the rendition they watch: it was, actually, staged and shot by Bruno Podalydès, whose unrelated film also screened at Cannes as part of La Quinzaine des réalisateurs. Resnais intended to delegate this video production to one of his successors who would see beyond cinematic and theatrical parochialisms. In Podalydès' production, the pendulum swings, transforming the harp Orpheus' father is holding into a shopping cart grate, café tables into barrels.

Once Antoine d'Anthac's living room has morphed into a set, Resnais showcases his superlative staging skills and greatly developed instinct for mise-en-scène. Take one of his saddest, most beautiful sequences: Orpheus and Eurydice are alone, in hiding at a cheap hotel, sprawled on a bed and surrounded by an empty room sans props or set decorations. The only two objects in the void are a pair of spike-heeled shoes that cling to each other just like the star-crossed lovers. Or take the grand finale, truly of the we-ain't-seen-nothin'-like-it brand and unequalled in this year's Cannes competition: Orpheus and Eurydice are locked in a convulsive embrace, not allowed to make eye contact, filmed with little to no editing. Clearly not above flashy techniques either, Resnais, on one occasion, splits the screen in half, and lets the two versions mirror one another. As Eurydice runs away from Orpheus, the halves converge to compel both Orpheuses to face the mysterious Monsieur Henri, a messenger of death or maybe Death himself.

This challenging part went to Mathieu Amalric who, unpracticed in such challenges, had to reinvent himself from scratch and flee his typecasting comfort zone. He first appears against a backdrop of an eerie blue forest, mist curling all around: it is Resnais' haunting vision of Hades that brings to mind Jean Cocteau's poetic claim of mirrors being doorways to death. Looking into a mirror means watching death do what death does, as your reflection is a chronicle of minute changes you go through; it is very much like cinema, which led Jean-Luc Godard to deem it "truth 24 frames per second." His dictum stemmed from Cocteau's perspective. Later, in his Histoire(s) du cinéma, Godard would quote Jean Epstein: "Death is making us promises via cinema." (Hereby I briefly refer to the essential points of the brilliant André Habib's article La mort au travail published in French in Hors Champ.)

Eurydice contrasts the banalities of human existence with eternal love that is unattainable in life and therefore defined only by death and its final freeze-frame (or, rather, freeze-life). How is Orpheus supposed to live after Eurydice is gone? Resnais needed the other play not to conclude his film with this question but to pose another. At the Cannes press conference, he often referred to magic as his primary artistic goal. To this end, he utilizes naïve, outdated special effects like people disappearing into thin air and emerging out of it; the constant glow about their silhouettes lends a dreamlike, hypnotic quality to the images. The characters walk around as if in a state of trance, which, weirdly, makes sense since acting indeed is very much akin to sleepwalking. But once the play is over, it is time for the utmost intimacy actors can afford: they shed their roles and reclaim their selves. Just a moment ago, you were so passionate and eloquent as Orpheus, King Lear, Ranevskaya––but the magic cannot last forever. Once the limelight has fizzled, does the actor feel the way Orpheus does after Eurydice perishes?

You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet ends on an ambiguous note. As it turns out, Antoine, still alive, has tricked his actors into coming there. Afterward, however, he drowns himself in a lake. An aspiring actress shows up at his funeral, trying not to catch the eyes of his grief-stricken friends. Who is she? A character in search of a writer, Eurydice paying respects to her creator? A starlet bidding adieu to the playwright who launched her career in theatre? Most likely, she is Antoine's ex, mentioned in passing at the beginning (note that the other play is subtitled The Love That Failed). So, Monsieur Henri was right when he told Orpheus their love would never last under life's pressures and Eurydice would have left him, had she stayed alive. In this soliloquy, Anouilh equates l'amour and la mort, the words phonetically different by a single vowel. Antoine discovers it to soon become an Orpheus as well.

In the final shot, we see yet another theatre adapting Eurydice. Resnais connects past and future by an undying human ability to believe in and genuinely ache for fiction. His flippantly self-aware framework is multilevel: we watch actors playing other actors watching a videotape of a play. And yet, no matter how many mirrors the filmmaker sets up and how stylized the imagery comes out, the moment Orpheus and Eurydice see each other for the first time, it all becomes real. What if he keeps himself from looking back? What if they, after all, escape Hades unscathed? Art is a reality in its own right. This illusion will live on long after we are gone; this myth will prevail. Boy always meets girl. Orphée est avec Eurydice, enfin!

Vücut (2011)

Director: Mustafa Nuri
Country: Turkey 
Runtime: 104 min





Leyla and her boyfriend Yilmaz are in porn film sector for 25 years in Germany. While ago, they move to Istanbul and Yilmaz left her for another woman. Although they are separated, Yilmaz comes up with a last minute request: one last movie where Leyla meets 20 years old handsome but quite traumatic character Izzet. The age difference between Leyla and Izzet, unsolved problems of Izzet's chubby mother and sister, Yilmaz's passion to his work and its results are crash into each other in an unexpected way. (~IMDb) 

No(2012)

Director: Pablo Larraín
Country: Chile
Runtime: 118 min






Military dictator Augusto Pinochet calls for a referendum to decide his permanence in power in 1988, the leaders of the opposition persuade a young daring advertising executive - René Saavedra - to head their campaign. With limited resources and under the constant scrutiny of the despot's watchmen, Saavedra and his team conceive of a bold plan to win the election and free their country from oppression.

Southwest (2012)

Director: Eduardo Nunes
Country: Brazil
Duration : 2:06:54

In a secluded Brazilian coastal village, where everything seems to stand still, Clarisse watches her life over the course of a day, unlike those around her who live that day just like any other. She tries to understand her obscure reality and the destiny of the people around her in a circling, disturbing sense of time.

Slow-moving, almost dreamlike Brazilian black-and-white film "Southwest" has the initial feel of a tropical Tarkovsky or a Bela Tarr movie with better weather. But though rookie scribe-helmer Eduardo Nunes' technical approach to storytelling might be partly borrowed, he ensures that his tale of a girl whose entire life passes in a single day is also singular enough to captivate hard-to-please auteurist auds. With its extremely wide aspect ratio, richly detailed bichrome photography and two-hour-plus running time, adventurous fests are the logical venue for this effort, which deserves to be seen on the bigscreen.

Corpo celeste (2011)

Director: Alice Rohrwacher
Country: Italy
Runtime: 100 min 





13 year old Marta who is struggling to resettle to the south of Italy after ten years growing up in Switzerland. Bright-eyed and restless, she observes the sights, sounds and smells of the city but feels very much an outsider. Marta is about to undergo the rite of confirmation and she takes catechism but confronts the morality of the local Catholic community. From experiencing her period to making a bold decision to cut her hair, Marta begins to shape her own life for the first time since moving back to Italy.