My Film of the Month 2010

By: kuxa kanema

Each month I have chosen a favourite film that I have seen from that period. My choice may not be my favourite film seen, as I have tried to be original in my choices and have steered away from the Cup films and already known classics which have enough exposure in other lists.

JANUARY

the German Sisters, Margarethe Von Trotta, Germany, 1981
Germany, 1968: The priest’s daughters Marianna and Juliane both fight for changes in society, like making abortion legal. However their means are totally different: while Juliane’s committed as a reporter, her sister joins a terroristic organization. After she’s caught by the police and put into isolation jail, Juliane remains as her last connection to the rest of the world.

FEBUARY

Light Years Away, Alain Tanner, Switzerland, Ireland, 1981
In the year 2000, Jonas is 25 years old and lives in Ireland. Disillusioned with his life as a pub barman, he decides to give up everything and live with a mysterious old man, Yoshka, at a run down garage in the middle of no-where. At first, the old man taunts Jonas, giving him useless tasks to do, such as attending a derelict petrol pump. This drives the young man to distraction and he tries to kill himself. Impressed by his young disciple, Yoshka finally decides to share with him his fantastic secret…

MARCH

We Won’t Grow Old Together, Maurice Pialat, France, 1972
ùJean (Jean Yanne) and Catherine (Marlène Jobert) are a couple whose every move charts an advancement deeper into an emotional warzone. Theirs is the classic and the tragic case of an emotional abuse centred around a perplexing, but powerful, interdependency. As the moment approaches wherein the relationship can no longer perpetuate its cycle of weekend holidays, apologies, and submissions, Maurice Pialat discloses all the ways in which the future might be at once liberated, and enslaved, by the past.Based on a novel by Pialat himself, and on the trauma of his own personal life in the years leading up to the film, “Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble” was a smash-hit at the time of its release, and retains its power up to the present day.

APRIL

Tricks, Andrzej Jakimowski, Poland
Six-year-old Stefek (Damian Ul), tries to persuade his estranged father to return to the family. Creates an evocative, lyrical setting in a small Polish provincial town where magic is possible from a child’s point of view.

MAY

Afterschool, Antonio Campos, USA, 2008
Robert is a young American student at an elite East Coast preparatory school who accidentally captures on camera the tragic death of two classmates. Their lives become memorialized as part of an audio-visual assignment designed to speed up the campus-wide healing process. But the video memorial assignment results in an atmosphere of paranoia and unease among students and teachers.

JUNE

Lucia, Humberto Solas, Cuba, 1968
Lucia tells three stories of three periods in Cuban history, each featuring a heroine named Lucia. The first playlet takes place in 1895: Lucia #1 (Raquel Revlizita) neglects her husband in order to become involved in the war against Spain — and incidentally, with a handsome young insurgent. The second story transpires in 1932: Lucia #2 (Eslina Nunez), a divorced mother, aids in overthrowing the corrupt Cuban dictator. The third story is set somewhat indeterminately during the Castro regime. Our third Lucia (Adela Legra) is, like her predecessors, a free-thinker and a rebel, who finally stands up to her particular oppressor: her loutish husband.

JULY

*Lion’s Den, Pablo Trapero, Argentina, 2008
Look Daddy, they’re pink said Mateo when he was four years old. I took my eyes from the highway and found these enormous concrete blocks, prison units. – – Those words from my kid on the chromatic detail of the walls, were the germ for LEONERA. Units that house mothers with child. Children that loose their freedom for being close to their mothers. Mothers that would do anything for their children’s welfare even when connement conspires against that elementary right. Everything became hard to understand.– –While researching we discovered that this reality is the product of a known and repeated scheme through penitentiary systems
in many countries. – – For all this, LEONERA, intends to build, not only a cinematographic tale but room for debate and reflection. Motherhood, solitude, love, confinement and hope are the axes on this film.
– DIRECTOR PABLO TRAPERO

AUGUST

Raging Sun, Raging Sky, Julian Hernandez, Mexico, 2009
Julian Hernandez explores the thin dividing line between love and eros while elevating desire to the level of mythic heroism in this grand-scale experimental drama. As Meche (Clarisa Rendon) drifts through an unforgiving urban landscape, she discovers Ryo (Guillermo Villegas), a handsome man with whom she feels an immediate connection, and they make their way through a rainstorm to his flat, where they consummate their new love. Elsewhere in the city, a number of men frequent a shabby movie theater where they search for companionship. Ryo visits the theater one evening and is drawn to Kieri (Jorge Becerra); they come together with a joy that transcends shame, but this breaks the heart of Tari (Javier Olivan), who worships Ryo from afar.

SEPTEMBER

La Nacion Clandestina, Jorge Sanjines, Bolivia,1989
In this Bolivian story, a man remembers his life while on a journey which will help him expiate his sins and which will result in his death. The focus on the story is on a man who has betrayed everyone he knows. He is planning to perform an ancient ritual dance which will end with his life being taken. He journeys from where he was living back to the village where most of the people he wronged still live. As he journeys, carrying his distinctive dance costume, his story is told in flashbacks. Once he gets there, he gets involved in the affairs of the villagers once more. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

OCTOBER

Dancing In the Rain, Bostjan Hladnik, Yugoslavia, 1961
Peter is the dark brooding type. Leading a vacuous, shapeless life, he longs for the ideal woman, while at the same time, half heartedly continuing with his habitual girlfriend, Marusa , who is considerably older, a fact that Peter is quick to point out. As an ageing actress, struggling for parts in her local theatre, she oozes insecurity and breathes uncertainty. Together, they spend their time in the local restaurant, smoking, drinking and trading verbal blows. “I bet you’ll just end up a drunk,” she tells Peter each time. Peter just grins and tells her how old she looks. Compounded by a thankless director who soon shows her the door, Marusa finds her identity being squeezed harder and harder against the wall.

NOVEMBER

Sangre, Amat Escalante, Mexico, 2005
An absolutely ordinary working class couple leads a mundane existence until something quite exceptional intervenes, in “Sangre.” Hypnotically banal in content but strangely riveting in execution, whatever the opposite of an action picture is, this is it. But where many an action flick with recognizable stars evaporates once it’s over, the echo left by non-pro thesps in scripter-helmer-editor Amat Escalante’s feature debut lingers on to agreeably haunting effect. Diego (Cirilo Recio) and his second wife Blanca (Laura Saldana) live in a modest apartment. Balding, slightly cross-eyed and paunchy, Diego is nothing to look at and his customary expression is one of shell-shocked fatigue. But Blanca loves him with a carnal jealousy worthy of the insipid evening soap operas they watch together while eating junk food on their ratty sofa. Blanca works in a fast food joint and Diego is a door guard at a municipal building. Apparently uninterested in — or incapable of — conversation, the spouses say little. When they do speak, it’s in terse direct reference to sleep, food or sex.

DECEMBER
Ha-Glula, David Perlov, Israel, 1972

A visually beautiful burlesque fantasy about a fountain-of-youth pill and its effects on Getz, a down-and-out Tel Aviv night-club singer. After taking this much sought after pill, Getz becomes the epitome of youthful energy, and therefore a teen idol, a symbol of beauty and youth, up to the cathartic ending of the movie. The film brings together a cast of highly acclaimed Israeli theatre actors, with an original soundtrack and memorable musical moments written by the composer Yohanan Zarai. An experimental comedy whose facile construction masks a complex technicak and aesthetic tour de force, combining the playfulness and irreverence of the Dadaists with the existentialism and social criticism of the new wave.’d like also to mention that the scriptwriter, NIsim Aloni, was the 2nd most important playwright in Isreali theatre, second only to the late Hanoch Levin.