French documentary on the world of a brain-damaged, physically-handicapped child confined to a wheel chair, unable to speak but trying desperately to communicate with his nurse and the other children in the hospital. It chronicles his friendship with another youngster even more crippled than himself, their joy in being together, their little spats and, finally, the termination of their friendship by death. Directed by Pierre Jallaud, it is a remarkable achievement, treating its subject creatively yet with complete integrity. There is no commentary, no dialogue, only the natural sounds of the children and their environment.
Tag: 1970s
A fascinating insight into the life and works of photographer Imogen Cunningham. Coming into public attention around 1910, she was celebrated in the late sixties through awards, honorary degrees and exhibitions. Her photos are looked at from three focal points: nature, portraits and figure studies.
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This film is a visual diary of Nedeljko Dragic’s visit to the United States, for which he has transformed his impressions into a rapidly flowing, semi-abstract series of images. He has created a nightmarish vision, with certain ideas, such as the pace and superficiality of life, technological and economic power and ostentatious advertising, predominating. In his somewhat sardonic comment on American values the more innocent images of the past, like the love-sick mouse chasing a cat and the small figure of Chaplin’s little tramp, are few and far between.
Dorothea, a 16-year-old bourgeois girl from Hamburg, plays with her friends of both sexes, imitating the production of adult movies. In the end, pretending to make sex-scenes is not satisfying enough, and with a street professional, Dorothea is initiated in hard sex.
In flashback, the film traces the law-enforcement careers of African American Gregory Foster and Italian American Rocco Laurie. Friends as well as partners, Foster and Laurie endeavor to improve community relations in their crime-ridden Lower East Side precinct–which results in their being murdered by three militant extremists, who hope to intimidate the rest of the force (at the time the film was made, this motivation for the crime was still pure speculation). The killings have the opposite effect, as the rest of department rallies against its enemies, inspired by the memory of their fallen comrades. Foster and Laurie was based on the book by Al Silverman.
The main character of the film is a teenage boy, called Trta who lives with his mother, a prostitute, in a small provincial town. He roams the streets, commits small thefts and soon is sent to Belgrade to a home for juvenile delinquents. There, he is assigned to counselor Žarko who tries to win the boy’s full trust and treat him in a way that is not the practice of the Home. The Home’s authorities are against Žarko’s manner of special treatment, and the conflict is unavoidable.
Singing on the Treadmill is a surreal operetta parody about the realities of day-to-day socialism. The film is set in a vast garbage dump where, in the depths of a quarry, next to a derelict factory building, two librettists are penning a frothy operetta about the paternalism of Kadarism, its lies, reality perceived through rose tinted glasses and squabbles over a housing allocation. However, their lacquered players are not prepared to bend to their will, they take offence and start demanding independence, rejecting ‘orders from above’ about partners and housing. Gyula Gazdag’s grotesque parody that works on several levels is amusing and dream-like, full of free-flowing associations and remarkable solutions. Citing its “disheartening existentialism”, the authorities banned the film for 10 years.