Amidst the wreckage beneath the ruined statue of the Buddha, thousands of families struggle to survive. Baktay, a six-year-old Afghan girl is challenged to go to school by her neighbour’s son who reads in front of their cave. Having found the money to buy a precious notebook, and taking her mother’s lipstick for a pencil, Baktay sets out. On her way, she is harassed by boys playing games that mimic the terrible violence they have witnessed, that has always surrounded them. The boys want to stone the little girl, to blow her up as the Taliban blew up the Buddha, to shoot her like Americans. Will Baktay be able to escape these violent war games and reach the school?
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
Melvin Van Peebles, director of the landmark independent film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, embraces the new age of digital filmmaking with his picaresque comedy, shot using DV equipment and taking full advantage of its creative possibilities. Van Peebles plays a fanciful version of himself, growing tired of life at home when he’s only ten years old and deciding he’d rather see the world than read about it in books or hear about it from his mother. Melvin runs away from home and hitches a ride from a friendly truck driver, but things take an unexpected turn when gangsters kill the trucker and the boy is tossed into the river with just an inner-tube for company.
This impressionist film is set in the period of “sweet peace”, at the turn of the century. Jeno Kelepei, a bohemain student, decides to move into Mutter’s brothel after a dissipated night, for food and accomodation. When the young man’s anxious mother arrives unexpectedly from the countryside, the Mutter quickly transforms the house into a boarding house for damsels.
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.
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.