1976 marks the beginning of Beirut’s calvary. With a child’s eyes the filmmaker follows for six months the daily destruction of the city’s walls. Every morning, between 6 and 10am she roams around Beirut while the militia from both sides rest from their night of fighting.
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The documentary, filmed during ethnographic field research, shows three portraits of ‘ordinary’ personalities — Mala, a young weaver sharing a one-bedroom house with nine siblings; Santa Cruz, once a fishtrader and now a healer and magician; and Muthiah, a videographer of upper class weddings — living in a neighbourhood in Nagercoil, a south Indian town. The aim of the video is to show the persons not as representatives of homogeneous masses, but to acknowledge them as individuals who nurse their own specific worries and strategies in a changing world. The protagonists thus themselves comment about their own lives and actions.
What starts as a chance meeting between a 30-something English woman Alice and a 16 year-old French boy quickly develops into much more on an overnight ferry ride. As the conversation progresses, it is clear that although the two have virtually nothing in common, the sexual tension is evident. When they finally act on their growing attraction, a surprise twist is thrown in that will leave you wondering who really seduced who.
Alfredo seems to lead the life of so many Ticinese families born in the valleys, who now only go back to their native village for the weekend. But Alfredo doesn’t longer experiences the journey as a form of escapism, but as an obsessive rite which is repeated over and over again. Alfredo has lost his own identity.
An animated urban tabloidshort about late socialism in the Kádár era, based on interviews with passersby. Its title, which combines the words “report” and “portrait,” features exclusively talking heads and offers an overview of the living conditions, opinions, and plans of Budapest residents of different backgrounds and ages during the János Kádár era.
“The Chair” by Daniel Szczechura is a brilliant animated political satire depicting the timeless mechanism of the struggle for power. In a monumental hall, a meeting is underway – one seat at the presidential table remains empty. The candidates, shown from a bird’s-eye view as abstract, moving figures, compete ruthlessly, using tricks and underhanded tactics to win the titular chair. The film, made using cutout animation techniques, suggestively employs graphic simplicity, irony, and distance.
Set during the first period of independence for Latvia (1918–1940), the film’s plot revolves around a shrewd business man Edgars Ceplis, who establishes a clay brick business with the aim of exporting and building on his already considerable wealth. At first a fantastic success he soon becomes aware that his empire is crumbling beneath him due to a contamination of the clay, which makes the bricks unstable. He narrowly escapes defeat, however, by manipulating those around him, successfully extracting himself from the business before anyone discovers that there is anything wrong and the company collapses under a new director.
The long and flamboyant career of the French filmmaker is depicted in Abel Gance: The Charm of Dynamite, a documentary created for the BBC by film historian and Abel Gance scholar Kevin Brownlow. A Blue Ribbon winner at the American Film Festival of 1976, this documentary, along with Brownlow’s history of silent film The Parade’s Gone By and his restoration of Gance’s 1927 Napoleon, was instrumental in bringing Gance’s cinematic genius to a new generation of film enthusiasts.