2000s

A film that seeks a balance between feature, form and lighting essay, with autobiographical elements and echoes of the primeval fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. By the former Film Maker in Focus Stephen Dwoskin.

‘The Sun and the Moon, a film fairy tale, is about two women’s terrifying encounter with ‘Otherness’ in the form of a man, abject and monstrous, and for them to either to witness, accept or partake in his annihilation. All are caught in their own isolation and are fearful of the menace that has to be met. Read More »

Quote:
In the third film of the Tulse Luper Suitcases, Luper, writer, collector and archivist, continues his adventures as a professional prisoner during the later years of the Second World War and its aftermath, the Cold War. Luper is shipwrecked on the Paradise Island of Sark and spends three months in self-imposed imprisonment on an idyllic beach until betrayed to the Germans by the Contumelys, a trio of jealous sisters. Pursued by a bounty-hunting jailer, Luper escapes to Barcelona to support and protect the lesbian marriage between the widow Mathilda Figura, of one murdered jailer, and Madame Plens, the mistress of another.Read More »

Quote:
This second film in the Tulse Luper Suitcases series, deals with the life and times of Luper and his friends, lovers, jailers and enemies, during the Second World War, in three bizarre prisons, in a chateau at Vaux in Northern France, in a cinema in Strasbourg, and in a collaborationist household on the French coast at Dinard.Read More »

Quote:
This first film in the Tulse Luper Suitcases Series deals with the adventures of Tulse Luper and his great friend Martino Knockavelli, in three locations, in Newport South Wales, in Moab Utah and in Antwerp Belgium in the two decades before the Second World War.Read More »

Strumming the strings of a grand piano like a harp and performing Beethoven on toy piano are among the surprising scenes in Evans Chan’s documentary, Sorceress of the New Piano (2004). The film celebrates the trans-cultural career of Singapore-born, New York-based pianist Margaret Leng Tan, hailed by The New Yorker as “the diva of avant-garde pianism”.Read More »

Quote:
Ruiz is no lover of documentary. But the opportunity to make an essay-film offering his ‘observations of Chile’ produced in him a mammoth work, recently shown in seven parts on Chilean television. Shooting with a digital camera, Ruiz refinds the mobility and mercuriality of his early Chilean work. But he is also able to explore anew the transmutation of reality into fiction: Chile becomes the imaginary country of Cofralandes, ‘a popular version of paradise, a folkloric paradise. In the beginning there is a song about a place where poor people can live without poverty, and they can eat everything – even the houses. The rivers are made of wine.’Read More »

In Italy, immediately subsequent to the war, a group of people who lost all they possessed during the conflict, settle in a village in ruins. They intend to restore the city from the rubble and re-start life, in imitation of the women of Messina who rebuilt their city, destroyed as it was by an earthquake. Oscillating between respect and suspicion, co-existence between group members is tense. Things become complicated when an envoy from the government arrives to say that nothing there belongs to them. The film is a free adaptation of fragments of the novella ‘The Women of Messina’, by Sicilian writer Elio Vittorini.Read More »

Quote:
In this preternaturally assured feature debut by Carlos Reygadas, a man (Alejandro Ferretis) travels from Mexico City to an isolated village to commit suicide; once there, however, he meets a pious elderly woman (Magdalena Flores) whose quiet humanity incites a reawakening of his desires. Recruiting a cast of nonactors and filming in sublime 16 mm CinemaScope, Reygadas explores the harsh beauty of the Mexican country­side with earthy tactility, conjuring a psychic landscape where religion mingles with sex, life coexists with death, and the animal and spiritual sides of human experience become indistinguishable. A work of soaring ambition and startling visual poetry, Japón is an existential journey through uncharted cinematic territory that established the singular voice of its director.Read More »

Synopsis:
Adopted by a nomadic pansori singer, Dong Ho (Cho Jae Hyun) and Song Hwa (Oh Jung Hae) grow up as brother and sister, bounded by a deep unspoken affection. Their father trains them strictly, and Song Hwa’s love and talent for pansori becomes both her blessing and her burden. Young and brash, Dong Ho tries to keep pace as a traditional drum player, but eventually leaves the family in search of a better life. Though in the ensuing years he encounters news places and new people, he can never forget his love for Song Hwa. Together and apart, reunion and separation, the two keep moving in different directions while restlessly chasing each other’s shadows. Dong Ho spends a lifetime trying to find a place he belongs, a way to Song Hwa’s heart.Read More »