The solemn, intent faces of the Japanese schoolboys playing video games in Jun Ichikawa’s “No Life King” bespeak a new type of modern horror. Addicted to their favorite new game (from which the film takes its title), these children have become seriously estranged from the real world. The film’s constant emphasis is on the ways in which this has been allowed to happen, and on how emblematic it is of larger attitudes in a technological society. When a young boy trying to converse with his mother must compete with a home computer for her attention, it’s not hard to see why the boy has retreated into his own computer-dominated world.
Tag: 1990s
The Days follows the life of Dong and Chun, married artists who have recently graduated from the Beijing Art Institute. Living meagerly in the hope of making enough money off their works, it soon becomes obvious to everyone but themselves that the marriage has begun to die.
A comedy about a thirty-something man, named Victor who is to perform in a town, after having left group therapy. Victor cleverly bases his diatribes on the handful of locals who attend his performance. As his monologue coils out, his stories accurately reflect the audience’s own lives, offering glimpses of themselves which irrevocably shift their relationship with each other.
The fight for power in an isolated Iranian village. Two families have been enemies for so long they cannot even remember why. The only hope for peace between the feuding families is lost when an arranged marriage agreement is broken. Some days later, the groom, Karamat, returns with a brand new minibus. But a fierce competition for passengers break out when the bride, Mehrbanou, decides to do the same…
In the early 1990s, five leading Arab film directors were asked to create a short work that expressed their thoughts and feelings about the first Gulf War and its impact on Arab people, culture and intellectual thought. The Gulf War, What Next? is the revealing and rewarding feature-length collection of these five impressive short works.
A man recollects the conflict in the middle east through his personal memory. In this short documentary, Omar Amiralay reflects on the first time he heard of Israel. Through recorded conversations with filmmaker Mohamed Malas, both Amiralay and Malas share their own unique stories and experiences about Israel and Israeli occupation. In the company of fellow Syrian filmmaker Mohammad Malas, the ground-breaking director Omar Amiralay revisits the ruins of the destroyed Golan village of Quneytra, occupied by Israel and then abandoned following the 1973 war.
Told from the perspective of two children, The Small Town describes the relationship between members of an extended family in a small Turkish town. Told in four parts which unfold with the seasons, the film is a touching and bittersweet portrait of childhood and fears. Intimately observed and beautifully shot, Ceylan’s feature debut won the Caligari Prize at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival.
In a small Welsh town, a boy lives alone with his unstable mother. The mother is determined to see that her son enter the clergy some day, but her insistence on this issue is a source of tension between the woman and her boy. As the child’s protests grow more violent, the mother’s sanity deteriorates, leading to tragedy. Years later, the son, now a grown man, returns to the town where he was born to confront his dark past.