In 1998, filmmaker Dan Reed and cameraman Jacek Petrycki traveled to the Drenica Valley as the civil war in Kosovo came to a head. They spent much of the year there, and The Valley documents the lives of soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict, as well as the violence and brutality they confront on a daily basis. Dispensing with narration, The Valley allows its subjects to speak for themselves, giving a sense of how bitter the divide had become between Islamics and ethnic Albanians, and how cruel fate had been to those caught in the middle of the fighting, as women and children who’ve lost their families shiver in makeshift huts, and people discover the bullet-riddled bodies of their loved ones.
Tag: UK
A taut crime thriller about the hunt for a mysterious stranger who is poisoning small children with barbiturates. A tough and compelling film, which offers a gritty reflection of life in 1960s South East London behind the initial whodunnit. Ellen McIntosh gives a bravura performance as a single mother juggling work with raising a family, and Jean Anderson paints a sympathetic portrait of an older mother coming to terms with the extent of her son’s mental health issues. Striking and bold, The Silent Playground explores the fine line between innocence and criminality.
While on his way to work one morning, a man looks out the window of the train and sees a young woman being murdered. When he investigates the crime, he discovers a foul-tempered illusionist, Zoltini, who has a turbulent relationship with his young wife Vivienne.
Set inside a “Quake” like video game, one of the game’s cannon-fodder grunts falls for the Lara Croft-inspired heroine and, in a constantly looping game level, tries time and again to catch her attention before she can “chain gun” him.
Tab Hunter plays a mentally unbalanced ex-con living in London, who is seen emerging from prison during the opening credits. His wife seems to have struck up a platonic friendship with Hunter’s employer during his incarceration and their son (whom it appears Tab has never met) clearly looks at this “uncle” as a surrogate father. It emerges that Tab’s character murdered someone in a brawl so his mental state has always been questionable, but the combination of dealing with the sudden onset of paternal resposibility, a love rival and the alienation he feels upon release lead to a tragic climax!
The stories of several individuals who consult a marriage bureau, including a peer of the realm, his butler, a lonely school teacher, a French girl on the run from a violent boyfriend, a country vicar, and a newspaper reporter, sent by his editor, to do an undercover story.
‘Nancy Franklin’ was so overwhelmed by the film I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) that she traveled from New York to the Western Isles of Scotland to see the places where it was made and to find out more about the people who made it. This documentary retraces her steps on a subsequent visit.
Once Upon a Time was filmed entirely in different spaces in and around John Berger’s house in the Haute Savoie in France. It’s a moving and unusual meditation on our experience of time, as revealed through a careful selection of contrasting and thought-provoking time-centred ‘stories’, both old and new. And whether written by himself or others, all were read by John and beautifully edited, using only the filmed images of things found inside the house in books or on the walls, or outside in the surrounding countryside and nearest town.