For generations, shepherds from villages high up in the mountains have been travelling with their vast sheep herds, moving them to distant pastures where they spend the long winter. Each of the villagers has a story to tell, intimated through flawless concision, while the film’s effortlessly fluid epic narrative is interwoven with lyrical passages, together creating a timeless cinematic poem about the primary values in life.
Tag: 1960s
This exquisite Soviet animated adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale tells the story of a water-dwelling maiden, Rusalochka, who trades her voice for legs after falling in love with a human prince. The story transitions between the black and white human world of Copenhagen, where tourists believe in love but not in mermaids, and the gorgeously vibrant visuals of the underwater mermaid kingdom, accompanied by Aleksandr Lokshin’s haunting music.
Édourd Berlon lives care-freely, collecting lovers until he meets Hélène Laroche, a married woman. Despite their different worlds-his simplicity, her luxury-they run away together. Can their love survive their differences?
Ibrahim Shaddad’s graduation film Jagdpartie, which he shot at the Deutsche Hochschule für Filmkunst Potsdam-Babelsberg, is a treatise on racism. Shot in a forest in Brandenburg, it uses the Western genre to portray a black farm worker pursued by a mob of white men. The film dramatizes working-class solidarity across the color line, signally achieved through shared labor, but culminates in the violent foreclosure of this common horizon.
Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination. After meeting the Muse, he proceeds to the “forest.” There, under an apple tree, he communes with his selves, represented by celebrated personages from the New York “underground scene” who appear as modern correlatives to the figures of Greek mythology. The filmmaker, who narrates the situations with a translation of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, finds the personalities of his characters to have a timeless universality.
Don Owen’s groundbreaking short drama tells the story of two young women who go to the city to work in a dress factory, and who share a room to ease their expenses and their loneliness. The film shows the currents that brought them together and the facets of their natures that first made them seem compatible but eventually drove them apart. Their story reflects, to a degree, the situation of anyone who has ever shared the life of another.
Horror, but with a comedic twist? Tadeusz Wilkosz decided to tell the story of abandoned objects from the attic. The titular sack goes on a rampage of destruction and begins to devour the numerous junks gathered there. Will the red beast devour all the things scattered in the attic? Puppet animation made at the Studio Małych Form Filmowych “Se-Ma-For” in Łódź.
Philip Ransome, a boy from the west of England about ten-years-old, has been mute since age three and spends his days roaming the moors alone. His parents despair of a cure. One day, he sees a singular wild albino pony with blue eyes and befriends it avidly. A kindly retired Colonel, who accepts Philip as he is, a girl his age, and a pet falcon she gives him provide him with more things to love and care about. Gradually, Philip emerges from his shell. But the way out is full of heartbreak and setbacks.