2001-2010

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The Tibetan film Milarepa, produced in 2006 is set in the magnificent Spiti Valley high in the Himalayas in the Zanskar region close to the border between India and Tibet. Directed by Neten Choklin, a Lama from Western Bhutan who has previously worked with Khyentse Norbu on the films such as The Cup and Travellers and Magicians, the film is the first part about the adventurous formative years of the legendary buddhist mystic, Milarepa (1052-1135) who is one of the most widely known Tibetan Saints, but whom set out for vengeance and retribution.
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Ditmas Park, Brooklyn. A young Orthodox woman, ROCHEL MESHENBERG, is about to begin her first year as a special education teacher at the local public school. She is also about to embark on what her father and mother call the “most exciting time of her life” – the process of finding a husband via the time-tested method of using a “shadchen,” or matchmaker.Read More »

This is an adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s story “Letter from an unknown woman” to China settling in a time period before the cultural revolution (1930-1948).

Plot:
Peking, 1948. A winter night. A man returns home to find a letter awaiting him written by a woman before her death. in the letter she tells him the story of her love for him – a life-long passion that has not diminished over time, but one that he has never known. Her story spans 18 years from the moment she -then a 13 year-old girl- sets her eyes on her new neighbor. She tells their brief but passionate love in her youth and the hardship she goes through raising their child alone, and their final encounter after the war, during which the man fails to recognize her and one which leaves her in despair. Now having lost her son, she no longer has the courage to live on. Only in a letter is she capable of telling him everything, for the first and the last time. Shaken by the letter, the man searches his memory for the nameless woman…Read More »

Longtime Koreeda cinematographer (Nobody Knows, After Life) Yutaka Yamazaki’s first directorial effort, Torso, plows some similar ground to Koreeda’s Air Doll, but to much different effect. Torso covers the relationship between two half-sisters. The older one, Hiroko (Makiko Watanabe) is an uptight, disengaged urban survivor, whose only relationship is with an inflatable male torso. Her secret life of bathing, frolicking and having sex with this headless, armless and legless prosthetic is rudely interrupted when her half-sister, Mina (Sakura Ando) – all extroverted enthusiasm and blabber – appears at her doorstep running from her abusive boyfriend, the one person, or rather body, that never physically appears in the film. The torso and continuing variations of objectified bodies – perfume bottles, pillows, a dress-making mannequin and a gravure idol – becomes the underlying leitmotif of this sensitively rendered portrait of how individuals come to terms with their issues and problems. The “strange” sexuality of blow-up doll attraction is rendered somewhat positively. Watanabe and Ando are perfectly cast and directed with a strained chemistry that at once binds and separates them.Read More »

Mommy, I’m scared

What’s a human anyway…
This is the question the film explores. Through the streets of Istanbul, echoing with seagull cries and boat whistles, through the people in their homes who, scream, shoulder to shoulder, back to back, lip to lip, hand in hand, fist to fist, eye to eye, cheek to cheek: Ali and his father Rasih… Neriman the tailor and her son Keten… Ipek with her baby in her belly… The doorman Riza, his wife Selvi and their son Cetin… The neighborhood butcher, Kemal… Neriman’s dog, Cakir. Ipek’s gymnast roommate Umit… Ex-boxer Aytekin and his friend Zambak…Read More »

Plot:
Meenakshi, a young women from a very traditional Hindu family (Tamil Brahmins), travels by bus from a mountain town to catch a train from the plains. It’s a long journey, especially when one has a small baby to care for (like Meenakshi), so she is entrusted into care of Raja, worldwide known photographer. They behave as polite strangers until some religious flare-up disrupts the journey.Read More »

A very personal journey, almost like a diary, with hand held camera Kowalski travels along the oldest highway in Polan, built by Hitler. While travelling along the highway Kowalski meets the people that now ply their trade their. The
the director uses his camera to cut a swath through Hitler’s legacy from a new perspective.Read More »

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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.Read More »

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Sometimes it’s easier to enter a work through the window than through the front door in order to catch it at its most intimate. The hypothesis of this interesting documentary is that the truth of Hervé Guibert the artist was that he was a thwarted film-maker.

In his well-researched film, Anthony Doncque retraces the genealogy of Guibert’s cinematic desire from his failed admission to IDHEC to the late phase of video journals accompanying his agony.

To create a film was Guibert’s obsession. In the 1980s, he wrote three film scripts, one of which, co-authored with Isabelle Adjani, would have turned into a film if the actress hadn’t suddenly vanished into thin air. Guibert commented on this betrayal in his book A l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie. Adjani, in turn, talks (only off screen) about this failed projectRead More »