Sándor Sára’s short experimental film juxtaposes pitiful war memorials against actual footage from the First World War. Thus, by exploiting the power of montage, the absurdity of celebrating war is brought to the fore along with the tragedy of how ordinary people are manipulated by ideologies and then despatched to the slaughterhouse. Pro Patria can be viewed as the overture in Sára’s film series on war, in which he does not yet apply the medium of the ‘talking heads’ documentary but instead the montage art form in order to dig deep into the subject: the tragic truth of the individual sent off to battle.
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Unconvinced by the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy, lawyer Mark Lane begins his own investigation. In this documentary, Lane travels to Dallas to interview witnesses, friends of Oswald’s and other people connected with the assassination. Archival footage of the immediate aftermath, an FBI recreation and visits to the scene of the crime are used to argue that the Warren Commission’s report is fundamentally flawed.
Kaoru, a wealthy woman whose youth is fading, abandons the hustle and bustle of the city to live a peaceful life in a house on the coast. There she takes care of an old deaf, dumb and blind man as if he were an insect, a child or a pet. He can’t do anything for himself, so she feeds him and accompanies him on his walks. This strong mutual dependency offers Kaoru an escape from society and allows her to free herself from restrictions imposed by common sense.
In 1935, at the age of 13, Simon Chalumot is enrolled in a military school by his father. His reluctance to become a soldier is apparent to all and he is bullied and abused by the military staff and his fellow pupils. At 15, he runs away, but is captured and returned to the school by his father, a patriotic veteran of the last war. Soon after, Chalumot graduates to a higher military school, but now the bullying is so brutal that he can take no more…
Four socialites unexpectedly clash: heiress Brooke Carter runs into gambler Johnny Spanish at the race track while playboy Michael O. Pritchard nearly runs into stage star Kitty O’Kelly with his car. Backstage at Kitty’s show, it turns out she and Brooke are old friends who attended public school together. The foursome do the town, accompanied by Brooke’s companion Elizabeth, who throws herself at Michael’s butler and chauffeur Rodney James.
Eleven-year-old petty teen criminal Maroa lives with her violent grandmother Brígida in Caracas. After her boyfriend Carlos is involved in a shooting, Maroa is arrested and sent to a school where Joaquín conducts the youth orchestra, which he asks the naturally talented Maroa to join. Joaquín is immediately interested in the talented young girl who lacks all notion of discipline; as he becomes the only person to offer her hope in the midst of her rejection, he realizes that through Maroa his own world has also changed forever.
Jean-Claude Lauzon’s highly praised film tells the strange story of Léolo, a young boy from Montréal. Told from Léolo’s point-of-view, the film depicts his family of lunatics and Léolo’s attempts to deal with them. Not one individual in the boy’s life is well adjusted. His brother, after being beaten up, spends the film bulking up on growth protein. The grandfather hires half-naked girls to bite off his toenails and, in a brutal rage, almost kills Léolo. As he witnesses his family decay around him, Léolo retreats into himself and the fantasy world he has constructed. In response to the weirdness of his daily life, Léolo creates a little mental mayhem of his own which Lauzon renders in an amazing series of free-form, surreal images.
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.