Maren, a young girl, is the sole survivor of the Black Death in her Norwegian village. Using instincts, folklore, luck, and the clairvoyant powers granted her by being born with a “Victory Cap,” Maren survives on her own, waiting for other people to discover her plight. Painstaking recreations of medieval customs and settings dominate the film.
Author: Jon W.
A day in the life of Monika, an ordinary, modern (ca.1975) Swedish woman. Her surroundings are a lot sleeker than her daily existence, though; she’s unemployed, her husband is gone, and she’s alone in the midst of what ought to be the good life.
Beshkempir takes its title from the name of the boy whose story it tells. His life is sunny and carefree, spent in childhood games, until the day he hears terrible news from his playmates: he is not his parents’ biological child. Overnight, his best friend becomes his rival and the young girl of his dreams starts going bicycling with somebody else. His pleasant and peaceful existence is over: if his parents are not his own, Beshkempir feels he has lost his whole identity. He tries to gradually overcome the problems that arise from this new situation. Aktan Abdykalykov’s first feature was also the first independent film to be produced and directed in Kyrgyzstan.
Teenagers Glen and Randa are members of a tribe that lives in a rural area, several decades after nuclear war has devastated the planet. They know nothing of the outside world, except that Glen has read about and seen pictures of a great city in some old comic books. He and Randa set out to find this city.
With a playful associative montage, Parajanov offers an overview of portrait paintings by Hakob Hovnatanyan, the “Raphael of Tiflis.” Combining sights and sounds from both Hovnatanyan’s paintings and 19th century Tbilisi, Parajanov’s short documentary can be seen as a direct precursor to The Color of Pomegranates (1969).
Independent filmmaker Nina Hedenius Det speglar i mitt öga [My Eye Is Reflecting] is a poetic film on the act of seeing and on the details that rarely gets our attention. The film is a collage of diverse scenes depicting life, death, objects and people; a Swedish crayfish party, a classroom, cows in the meadow, the Stockholm subway…
Parajanov: A Requiem charts the evolution of the controversial director’s artistry, which culminated in the creation of his brilliant, hallucinatory film fantasies of poetry and folk legends. Rare, extensive interviews with the outspoken director, along with film clips, drawings, photographs, and fragments of uncompleted films coalesce to make this a revealing account of an unforgettable artist.
The story focuses on an ambitious young executive, Amanda, who inherits a lovely B&B on a remote island in Maine when her grandmother dies. She arrives with every intent of selling it all off and going back to her busy career, but in going through her grandmother’s belongings, she discovers much about her family’s past which ultimately makes her re-evaluate her life and values. Amanda is faced with making right decisions amidst trying circumstances.