In its mesmerizing montage of autistic children, seen at the same institution in discrete, vivid moments of repose, reverie or trance, SEULS marks an encounter at once rapturous and serene. Filmed in a luminous black-and-white evocative of an even earlier era, its subjects appear at times curious but more often merely tolerant or indifferent before the camera (its scrutinizing lens, no doubt, already a part of their monitored world). But the tacitly charged portraits prove deeply humanizing and even collaborative in their formal response to the insistent rhythms and expressions of the children, all of them very much agents in the making of this hauntingly beautiful work.
Tag: 1990s
Ammonites were a kind of snail-like precursor to today’s mollusks, common in the seas of the Cretaceous period, many millions of years ago. They are among the most commonly found fossils, so they must have been extremely plentiful. In this meditative and largely unstructured first feature, a young geologist is traveling by train to visit his sister in the countryside after having received a disturbing and mysterious letter from her. As he travels, he remembers his childhood fixation with rocks, nurtured by his mother, and his very strong affection for his sister.
A “cyclo” is a bicycle-drawn taxi similar to a rickshaw, and, in this story, the nickname of an 18-year-old boy trying to scrape together a living in the desperate poverty of Ho Chi Mihn City. Cyclo lives with his grandfather and two sisters, and drives his taxi for a bitter woman who devotes most of her time to her mentally unstable son. When the pedal-cab is stolen, Cyclo is forced into a life of crime to repay the debt and falls in with a group of petty thugs led by a self-styled poet. What Cyclo doesn’t know at first is that the poet is also a pimp, and he’s been using his romantic wiles to lure Cyclo’s older sister into a career as a prostitute.
A profile of American author Paul Auster and his personal history with New York City, accompanied by readings from his work, clips from “Smoke” and “Blue in the Face”, and a dual interview with the author and Lou Reed.
Journey into Life follows the struggles of three concentration camp survivors-Yehuda Bacon of Israel, Gerhard Durlacher of the Netherlands, and Ruth Kluger of the United States-in rebuilding their lives after World War II. In on-camera interviews, these extraordinary individuals discuss their childhood memories of Auschwitz, internment in Displaced Persons camps, and their search for a new homeland after World War II. Using U.S. Army archival film footage to illustrate these powerful stories, Mitscherlich’s film focuses on the subjects’ attempts to cope with the psychological trauma of their experiences and to comprehend the meaning of the Holocaust.
An Italian movie crew goes to London to see a very close friend of the director, Tilda Swinton, who leads them on the trail of an actual event that took place a few years before – about two teenagers who murdered a complete stranger simply to prove themselves that they had the courage to do it.
This film is a moving blend of blues music and images recounts the journey of the millions of African-Americans who made their way from the Mississippi Delta to cities in the North during the 1930s and 1940s. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
A seven-year-old boy is sent to a farm on a remote island, when his mother goes abroad. On the island the boy gets to know a twenty-year-old woman who seems willing to take on a mother’s role. But the boy is reaching an age of sexual awareness and instead of regarding her as a mother figure, he falls obsessively in love with her.