FAVOURITES 2011: 10 FILMS

By: Grey Daisies

American Falls (Phil Solomon)

For American Falls, Solomon rifles through a collective memory fashioned from both fact and fiction, mixing elements from newsreels, actualities and narrative films in a monumental retelling of American history which draws parallels with and reflects upon the current state of the nation. Houdini, Harold Lloyd, Keaton and King Kong commingle with presidents, gold-diggers, railroad barons and the civil rights movement.

Atmen (Karl Markovics)

The film turns on an on-probation teen offender who picks up work at the Vienna municipal morgue, then sets out to find his mother after facing with a dead woman who bears his family name. Even though it soon turns out that she is not his mother, Roman wonders about his past for the first time.

Conference (Notes on Film 05) (Norbert Pfaffenbichler)

No other historical figure of the 20th century was portrayed more often in movies and by so many different actors than Adolf Hitler. In this grotesque and uncanny identity parade Adolf Hitler is presented as an undead who is impersonated by an alarming number of revenants.

Correspondencia Jonas Mekas – J.L. Guerín (José Luis Guerín, Jonas Mekas)

José Luis Guerín takes an idea coming from Jonas Mekas: film is a response to life. With this concept in mind, they start exchanging a series of letters and develop a personal relationship which reveals the impressions and similarities of two filmmakers linked by their wish to share opinions and concerns.

Cut (Amir Naderi)

Described as a love poem to Japanese films of the past, as well as a protest at the present, Cut is an exploration of one man’s obsessive relationship with cinema.

In film nist (Mojtaba Mirtahasebi, Jafar Panahi)

This is not a Film tells how, for months, Jafar Panahi waited for the verdict of his court appeal. Through the depiction of a day in his life, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (a documentary filmmaker and former assistant director) offer us an overview of the current situation of Iranian cinema.

Low Definition Control—Malfunctions #0 (Michael Palm)

Low Definition Control is science fiction in a literal sense: a visionary anticipation of biopolitical/governmental processes that began some time ago, in which technology is so deeply inscribed into human behavior that a disciplinary and control society could at some point be replaced by one comprising disembodied, predictable interface subjects.

small roads (James Benning)

small roads, which took two years to complete, moves from the powerful trains in Benning’s RR (2007) to even more remote hinterlands of the U.S. and to those back roads only sporadically visited by vehicles or animals.

The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)

The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father.

YouTube Trilogy: 4 Songs, History, Asian Girls (James Benning)

An eerie collection of materials from the world’s largest moving image archive: “The film mirrors what is out there, and what is looked at.” (James Benning)