Hymn to a Tired Man uses a flashback narrative to reflect on war and its aftermath. A mild-mannered office worker is driven to recall his past when his son falls in love with the daughter of the commanding officer under whom he served during World War II. Memories of abusive discipline resurface throwing the former soldier’s relatively quiet postwar life into turmoil. Kobayashi offers an unsparing indictment of the lack of accountability for the scars of battle.
Tag: 1960s
Uncle Moustache’s tale shows a developement of an emotional relationship between an old man who has rested heartsick in his solitude for years, and the children who are joyous by nature. The old man lives in a room beside an abandoned site, where children have transformed it into a soccer lot. He is disturbed by children’s commotion. Till one day, children’s ball hits the old man’s window pane and breaks it…
The life of a first grader is difficult: he has to attend school, do homework and flee from his uncle who always wants to wrestle with him. It’s a good thing his imagination is always ready to help out and he can always count on his little girlfriend, Zizi. The playfulness of French New Wave had a major influence on the first full-length feature film of the two young directors Ferenc Kardos and János Rózsa. The film is full of classical burlesque gags and borrows freely from the effects toolbox so as to make all the more palpable the imagination of a child wondering at the world around him.
A cine-poem. Presents the sights, sounds, beauty, and rhythm of rain as it comes to living things on a farm and to people in the city. Explains that rain is a source of the water which we use, and that it affects plants and other living things as well as people working in the community.
The House is Black is an empathetic portrait of a leper colony from Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad. Her work, both in film and poetry, has influenced everyone from Iranian New Wave master Abbas Kiarostami to French essay film pioneer Chris Marker. With The House is Black, Farrokhzad unflinchingly captures the world of a leper colony in Tabriz, Iran. She recites her own poetry over images of everyday life for a people shut away from society. Farrokhzad’s portrait highlights a world weighed down by tragedy yet uplifted by community. The result is a heartbreaking film that eschews condescension in favor of hard-won empathy.
This experimental short by Bruce Conner uses Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say” as accompaniment to constantly shifting collage of female nude, cartoons, and newsreels of atomic bomb explosions.
A series of strange abstract images are projected in a movie theater. An old man from Russia in the audience watches this and can make neither head nor tail of them. He heckles the picture, wondering out loud, “Vhat da hell is dis?” while irritating the other patrons around him. He comments outrageously the entire time, saying, “It must be some symbolism! I think it’s symbolic of… junk.”
MEET MARLON BRANDO is a delightful, unusually candid portrait of the world-famous movie star: A tongue-in-cheek confrontation with the press. While television journalists interview him about his most recent film, Brando counters their futile questions with wit and insight, a man unwilling to sell himself. “It’s a wonderful show,” one woman comments about the new project. “Did you see it?” he asks. “No, I haven’t seen it yet.” “Then how do you know?” Always smiling and never modest, Marlon Brando shines in one of his most revealing performances.