Tashkent Station in the Uzbekistan capital: Passengers rush to catch their trains. A couple, locked in an intimate embrace, so deeply affects the train driver that leaves the train standing and makes a fundamental change in his life. A miniature by Veit Helmer.
Year: 2024
DIFFERENT DRUMMER is a short documentary directed by Edward Gray about Jazz great Elvin Jones. In it he talks about his early days with John Coltrane (with whom he’s seen performing in a ’60s film clip) and pianist Bud Powell. He also performs drum solos and an original piece, “Three Card Molly,” with Ryo Kawasaki (guitar), Pat LaBarbera (sax) and David Williams (bass).
Felix in Exile was created in 1994, a momentous time when South Africa was transitioning through a social, political and economic revolution to a new post-Apartheid society, with new uncertainties and struggles ahead. William Kentridge states that, although his work does not focus on apartheid in a direct and overt manner, but rather on the contemporary state of Johannesburg, his drawings and films are certainly spawned by, and feed off, the brutalised society that it left in its wake.
Dr. Carol Evans, a physician who recently conspired with her lover Gus to kill her rich husband for his inheritance, finds herself being blackmailed by him for a share of the money. Carol seduces Brian, a young motorcycle-accident patient of hers, in the hope that he’ll help her kill Gus. When Gus is killed in a struggle, Carol coerces him into hiding the body, but finds herself being investigated by Brian’s friend David, an amateur sleuth, who has always believed her to be a murderer.
Budapest, in the ’80s. Géza and his family living in the block flat microdistrict. One morning Géza meets a young lady in the elevator. This moment change his life. On the same day he quits his factory job and decides to start his own business: became a wall driller, as there a big demand for it in the neighborhood.
In the first documentary feature film made in Gaza, Gaza Ghetto highlights the historical precedents of war, dispossession and military control that influence a family’s daily life in Jabalia Palestinian refugee camp. Intimate scenes –a child is born, a grandmother dies — are inter-cut with visits to the architects of the Israeli military occupation. Ariel Sharon, Benyamin Beneliezar and soldiers on patrol candidly discuss their responsibilities.
——UPGRADED——
Composed entirely of archival material and narrated by actor Pat Hingle, this hour-long film documents the run-up to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. Made in the 1970s, the film carefully lays out major historical events, as with the stunning footage of the German Zeppelin Hindenburg bursting into flames over New Jersey in 1937. Powerful images such as this are both literal and metaphoric documents of the tragedies of the age. By relying on the old newsreels alone to depict the events, the filmmakers immerse us in the period in a way that would not have been possible had they interviewed a team of experts.
At Sulina, a small town in the Danube Delta, three men and a woman belonging to three different generations survive from one day to the other one. People say that Sulina was called Europolis in the past. But the flourishing town of the past has sunk into oblivion and is surrounded by marshes. Thomas Ciulei has scrutinized the life of three generations of Romanians who try to build their life in this abandoned city as well as they can.