War

Synopsis:
Anura is a loyal soldier tainted by the tedium of a service he has forgotten how to define. His only company at the remote outpost is an alcoholic soldier named Piyasiri, whom he sees in passing as they trade shifts. Anura finds that even the prankish behavior of the infrequently passing soldiers isn’t enough to offset the numbing stillness of his eternal wait anymore. Even at home, the inertia of the emotionless landscape persists, and between disconnected sexual encounters with his disinterested wife, Lata, detached conversations with his single sister, Soma, and the heart-breaking dejection of their young charge, Batti, it appears as if, in this war-torn wasteland, hope is nothing more than forgotten emotion and routine is the only nourishment for a collection of sad, starved souls.Read More »

Quote:
The story is set in a small village during the German occupation of Ukraine. When one of the local partisans kills a German officer, the occupants vow to kill the whole village if the perpetrator is not found and delivered to them. What would your conscience tell you to do if the choice was between your own life and that of an entire village? Conscience is a striking combination of expressionistic, metaphorical images and dramaturgic realism, and the soundtrack darkens the mood. Due to the film’s themes, it did not see wide release until perestroika. Made by students of the directing-acting workshop of Vladimir Denisenko at the Kiev National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University, it was only allowed to be made because it was never to be screened. Nowadays, the film is considered a classic of Ukrainian cinema.Read More »

Quote:
The story centers on a group of young people who travel back in time when they are in a movie theater just before closing time. They witness deaths during the closing days of Japan’s feudal times and on the battlefront in China before they are sent to Hiroshima just before the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of the city.Read More »

Quote:
During the Battle of Sutjeska, partisan troops must endure 24 hours of big and heavy attacks on German units Ljubino grave, to the main Partisan units, with the wounded and the Supreme Headquarters, pulled out the ring that is tightened around them.Read More »

Quote:
The most electrifyingly timely movie playing in New York was made in 1965. Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers is famous, but for some time it’s been available only in washed-out prints with poorly translated, white-on-white subtitles. The newly translated and subtitled 35-millimeter print at Film Forum is presumably the version that was privately screened in August for military personnel by the Pentagon as a field guide to fighting terrorism. Former national-security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski volunteered this blurb: “If you want to understand what’s happening right now in Iraq, I recommend The Battle of Algiers.” I wonder if these politicos are aware that Pontecorvo’s epic was once used by the Black Panthers as a training film? In fact, not much in the current Iraq situation is historically comparable to the late-fifties Algerian struggle for independence dramatized in The Battle of Algiers, but its anatomy of terror remains unsurpassed—and, woefully, ever fresh.Read More »

A boy and a rather younger girl lost their families in an air raid. They have heard about a valley where there is always peace and fancy that this is the house of the boy’s uncle. They start wandering for the valley. At the same time an airplane is shot down and the black American pilot jumped by parachute. He finds the children at a ford. There is absolutely no danger. But the girl is standing in the middle of the river, scared and crying and neither daring to go forth or back. The pilot cannot abandon the children although they will reduce his chance of escaping. Both the Germans and the partisans know that the pilot had survived. Who will find him first? Several things happen in rapid succession. The children and the pilot find the uncle’s house, which had since a long time been abandoned. The Germans arrive and catch the pilot. The partisans attack and liberate the pilot, who joins them. But during the fight he is soon deadly wounded and orders the children to run away….Read More »

A sanitary battalion of Italian Army is sent to Sorman oasis in Lybia during the Africa campaign in 1940. Soon an Italian missionary, living nearby, succeed to transform the occupation by Italian Army in a kind of humanitarian mission. In fact all the battalion is involved to help the local population. The war anyway goes on with no regards to human feelings. The “glorious” Fascist campaign is going to became a fast retreat.Read More »

Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre is an uncompromising portrayal of the war crimes perpetrated by the Japanese Imperial Army upon the Chinese military and civilian population of Nanking during the occupation of the city. Hailed by critics as one of the most disturbing films ever released, Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre is unflinching in its depiction of the barbaric cruelty with which the occupying army raped, pillaged and terrorized the defeated populace.Read More »

The five films are a dramatized account of the liberation of the Soviet Union’s territory and the subsequent defeat of Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War, focusing on five major Eastern Front campaigns: the Battle of Kursk, the Lower Dnieper Offensive, Operation Bagration, the Vistula–Oder Offensive, and the Battle of Berlin.Read More »