Eight years have passed from the Akihabara massacre. A pop star whose mother was killed in the incident, a teenager who left her home to Akihabara, a delivery boy who turns his directionless anger to the city. This is a story about the characters striving to grasp the string of hope within the darkness surrounding the city, the incident, and the people.Read More »
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Berlin, the Romantic Era. Young poet Heinrich wishes to conquer the inevitability of death through love, yet is unable to convince his skeptical cousin Marie to join him in a suicide pact. It is whilst coming to terms with this refusal, ineffably distressed by his cousin’s insensitivity to the depth of his feelings, that Heinrich meets Henriette, the wife of a business acquaintance. Heinrich’s subsequent offer to the beguiling young woman at first holds scant appeal, that is until Henriette discovers she is suffering from a terminal illnessRead More »
2013/35mm & 16mm & 8mm film → HD/16:9/30min
Music by Makino Takashi
Everything I saw during 2012. This work will show you the dynamic moment of changing from film image to digital image. —Takashi MakinoRead More »
Fragments of an endless night, Robert and Teresa meet and get to know each other, and get separate by the force of oppression and the threat of death and disappearance that continually creeps in.Read More »
Filmed in one sequence shot of 81 minutes, this virtuosic film draws back the curtain on a moment in the life of a small community of outcasts, Jews and Arabs, who live together in a forgotten enclave surrounded by mass public housing near Jaffa. A young journalist (Yuval Scharf, intelligent and glamorous) visits them and discovers, among the dilapidated shacks and an orchard of lemon trees, a range of characters far removed from the usual cliches of the region. Compelling performances by Sarah Adler, Assi Levy, and Yussuf Abu-Warda shed light on private dreams and desires. From internationally acclaimed director Amos Gitai (Berlin Jerusalem NYJFF 1993, Kedma NYJFF 2003, Alila NYJFF 2004, News from Home / News from House NYJFF 2007).Read More »
Synopsis
Two lives cross in New York. Lamis, a Lebanese woman, has just moved to the city and describes her impressions while the Brazilian man Wilson has already lived there for 10 years. We never see them on the screen, but their relationship is described in poetic Arabic and Portuguese voice-overs, which contrast starkly with the images, shot in New York, Berlin and Brazil. In this way, the film speaks literally to the imagination: the events take place between what we see and what we hear. This hybrid form of documentary, fiction, travelogue and letters makes this ‘film diary’ reminiscent of News from Home (1977) by Chantal Akerman. Whereas Akerman brings together two different worlds based on letters from her mother in Belgium and images of New York, While We Are Here adds macro and geopolitical issues, such as globalisation and migration, to this approach. The main thread remains intimate and human: desire, love, fear and memories.—International Film Festival RotterdamRead More »
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You could potentially create some sort of slogan from Garde à vue meeting Buffet froid, if it was at all possible to classify the unclassifiable director Quentin Dupieux, as illustrated by Keep an Eye Out, the new film by the very offbeat director of Steak, Rubber (Cannes Critics’ Week in 2010), Wrong (in competition at Sundance in 2012), Wrong Cops (Piazza Grande at Locarno in 2013) and Reality (Horizons section at Venice in 2014). In a feature film as zany as ever that marks the director’s return to the French language, the filmmaker has nevertheless embarked on an interesting and subtle variation of his exploration of absurd realism.Read More »
German actress Maria Schrader subsequently became well-known as the director of the prize-winning 2020 Netflix miniseries Unorthodox. But in this 2016 feature film her considerable directing talents are already on clear display as she portrays Austrian author Stefan Zweig’s years of exile after 1936, moving between Buenos Aires, New York, and Brazil in search of a new home.
Zweig, whose writings inspired the film The Grand Budapest Hotel, was one of the most prominent Jewish intellectuals in Europe between the wars. Schrader shows him struggling with life as a nomad and with his separation from the homeland whose language had always nourished him. Though in despair at the collapse of European civilisation, Zweig hesitates to publicly denounce the Nazi regime…Read More »
“I learned and stole a lot from James Broughton…
See this movie!” – Gus Van Sant
Review (from slackerwood.com)
James Broughton’s epitaph says about all you need to know about him: Adventure — not predicament.
For those who want to know more, the splendid documentary Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton is a terrific tribute to the revered poet, writer and pioneering experimental filmmaker.
Born in 1913, Broughton overcame a difficult childhood to have a long, fulfilling career and personal life. His father died when Broughton was five, and his overbearing mother sent him to military school at age 9, hoping to break him of his effeminate tendencies. These experiences no doubt informed his work and his lust for life and love as an adult.Read More »