Quote: An open-ended exploration of the energies and rituals of various workplaces. From one worker to another and one machine to the next; hands, faces, breaks, toil: what kind of absurdist, abstract dialogue can be started between human beings and their need to work? What is the value of the time we spend multiplying and repeating the same motions that ultimately lead to a rest – a state of repose whose quality defies definition.Read More »
Documenting Mekas’s return to the Lithuanian village of his birth, Semeniškiai, for the first time since he and his brother Adolfas escaped from German labor camps and emigrated to the United States in the late 1940s, Reminiscences is arguably the greatest achievement within Mekas’s exploration of the film-diary form. We begin in Williamsburg with footage shot by Mekas with his first Bolex of his and Adolfas’s first years in exile, before skipping ahead to the brothers’ return to Lithuania in 1971, their reunions with family members, their experience of their home country as displaced people, and finally, their visit to the labor camp near Hamburg where they were imprisoned during World War II.Read More »
Quote:
Yuki lost his mother after a long illness, when his sister and him were still children. For loved ones, she is now only a distant voice, a foreign face on photos, a ghost who visits them in their dreams, an increasingly blurred memory. Munemitsu, his father, has done all he could to fill this unfathomable emptiness, even forgetting. But to no avail, given that Norie is still there, like a latent and sprawling presence, entwining the invisible bonds of the family. But who really was Norie ? To answer this question, the director Yuki asks his father to accompany him to the annual festival of the dead, to retrace the portrait of this woman—who one day—was his mother, as well as the mad love that his father carries for her. Throughout this epiphanic journey, Yuki and Munemitsu discover each other. They are no longer just father and son, but two men facing the pain of loss. The director builds, with extreme delicacy, a film on the complexity of family relationships, on transmission, on love. A poetic journey through the sprits that continue to live in the memory of others.
Elena López RieraRead More »
China is currently marked by a phase of rapidly growing urbanization. The film in this context deals with two particular cities. Yum en a derelict ghost town and Or dos a mythic city of the future, both are deserted. They exist because of completely different reasons. The film shows through impressive images how these two cities and the relation of inhabitants to these cities are developing in China in times of urban growth.Read More »
Quote: In 1975 Nina Shivdasani Rovshen (aka Nina Sugati SR), made Chhatrabhang – the first Indian film to win the International Fipresci critics award. This 80 min 35mm colour film was shot by AK Bir over a period of 2 weeks, and edited over 1 year by the filmmaker herself. The film was made within Rs 2 lakhs and has rarely been screened in India. Based on a true story, Chhatrabhang explores caste dynamics in a drought stricken village in rural India. This complex film transforms a 3 line news report into a lyrical feature film about the trauma of dilemma, and the processes involved in resolve, change and reform.Read More »
On retrouve dans ce film le va-et-vient entre l’intime et le monde, entre le vrai et le faux dans ces passionnants Nuages américains, journal de Morder qui couvre la période de l’été 1982 au 1er janvier 1983. Le film se divise en deux parties : la première retrace son voyage aux Etats-Unis où le cinéaste est censé retrouver un ami avec qui il va rompre et une seconde, française, où il évoque une rencontre avec un autre garçon.Read More »