The Good, the Unknown and the Forgotten

By: kuxa kanema

FILMS AVAILABLE ON MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL.
FILM NIRVANA

MY CHANNEL IS NOW COMPLETE
I hope you have and continue to enjoy the films

The aim of this channel is not to rip companies off, but to allow some people to be able to see lost or rare films that they might not be able to watch. None of the films are available to watch legally on DVD or streaming in the United Kingdom or most parts of the world. If one of these films becomes available to rent or buy in the uk (and I hope they do) I will remove the film from the channel. FILMS ARE MEANT TO BE SEEN and the 2/3’s or more of world cinema which is imprisoned because comapanies wish to only release products with maximum potential for sale need to be freed.

Dwarves Among Giants: Cinema of Europe

Unamed Film Naomi Uman, Ukraine, 2008
This project is the result of the filmmaker’s attempt to investigate issues of immigration by becoming an immigrant herself. Naomi Uman returned to the land her great grandparents left in 1906. She moved to Ukraine, without speaking the language or knowing anyone. She moved near the city of Uman, to a small rural village where people live as they did 100 years ago.

Podorozhni, Igor Strembitsky, Ukraine, 2005
A ten minute look around the grounds and patients within some sort of home for the mentally challenged.

Brudeferden i Hardanger, Rasmus Breistein, Norway, 1926
The film Brudeferden i Hardanger (“Bridal procession in Hardanger”) is considered one of the major Norwegian film triumphs of the 1920s. It was directed by Rasmus Breistein, and is widely regarded as a national romantic classic, for its scenery and depiction of the painting with the same name that long has hung in the National Gallery. The painting is one of the most famous results of the cooperation of Adolph Tidemand and Hans Gude.

Aizliegta Zona, Herz Frank, Latvia, 1975
This Herz Frank’s documentary is influenced by his work in the evening papers. Many of his journalistic reports became material for his future films. “Restricted Area” is one of those movies. As a newspaper correspondent, Frank went to the courts, followed the criminal chronicle – as a lawyer he was especially interested in it. In 1963 he made a photo essay in Cesis colony for juvenile delinquents and published it in the newspaper. Restricted Area was shot on the same spot eleven years later

Attilas74, Mihalis Kakogiannis, Cyprus, 1975
Attila ’74: The Rape of Cyprus is an award-winning 1974 documentary film by Michael Cacoyannis about the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 It was filmed on location in Cyprus and Greece in the immediate aftermath of the two Turkish invasions and subsequent occupation of approximately the northern third of the island. Cacoyannis chronicles the events of 1974 in Cyprus with rare interviews of President Makarios of the Republic, Nikos Sampson – the man the Greek junta imposed as leader after their attempted coup, and many Greek Cypriot victims of the Turkish invasion.

Treasures From the Deep: Asian Cinema

Tsogt Taij, T Khurlee, Mongolia, 1945
A very rare and classic Mongolian film from 1945 but it’s difficult to find detailed info about it.

Mikreh Isha, Jacques Katmor, Israel, 1969
This psychedelic film is a, one of a kind gem from the late 60’s by Jacques Katmor, leader of an Israeli avantguard group, “the 3d eye”.
A man who works in publicity meets a woman modeling and together they spend a day in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The model leads him to coffee houses and sexual parties, while the man takes her to a sculpturer’s workshop so that he’ll freeze her shape in cast. She’s trying to launch him into the constant flow and complexities of time while he’s trying to freeze her shape and set its Idea for future generations… A unique, one of a kind film which tried (and managed) to deviate from the general currencies of Israeli cinema of its time, influenced by European cinematic modernism and by the French New Wave, especially from Godard

Big Durian, Amir Muhammad, Malaysia, 2003
Amir Muhammads film The Big Durian mixes eyewitness accounts which are irreverently performed by actors and sometimes performed by the witnesses themselves, ‘playing themselves’. The witnesses tell of a massacre which took place in Kuala Lumpur, when a soldier freaked out and started shooting people in a shopping district.

Bo Ba Bu, Ali Khamrayev, Uzbekistan, 1998
A rare film to come out of Uzbekistan, Bo Ba Bu is a visual work with very little dialogue. The communication is through body language and guttural sounds. One day, a shepherd named Bo finds a badly hurt woman in the desert. He takes her to the sheep farm that he runs with his younger brother Bu. The woman, whom the brothers name Ba, seems to have lost the power of speech. She makes no effort to communicate with the brothers, who soon begin to feel possessive and jealous about their new acquisition. The film’s beautiful landscape of merciless desert implies a continuous fight for survival, particularly when all must be done according to rituals decided a long time before.

Jorn Donner

Black on White, Jorn Donner, Finland, 1968
A supposedly happily married family man willfully engages in an affair with his beautiful secretary. His free-spirited employee wants nothing more from her boss than sex, opting for a relationship on her own terms without the ties to a long-time commitment. While he drifts further away from his wife and family, the man gets caught up in his feelings for the secretary while she asks for no more than a steady job and free love with no strings attached.

Anna, Jorn Donner, Finland, 1970
Anna (Harriet Andersson) is a 40-year-old anesthesiologist who takes a working vacation with her teenage daughter (Maarit Hyttinen) and their maid (Pertti Melasniemi). She turns down her lover’s request to marry because she believes the union will not maintain their status as equals. Next door to the trio lives a boozy ex-politician (Papani Perttu) and his teenage son (Tapio Rautavaara). The maid and the neighbor boy engage in a passionate affair while Anna reflects on her middle age and examines her changing values in regards to life, love and her career.

Images of Finland, Jorn Donner, Finland, 1971
Images of Finland (1970) was a documentary which focused on people living on the margins of the society, poor, and politically active workers.

Nine Ways To Approach Finland, Jorn Donner, Finland, 1982
Jörn Donner paints a portrait of Finland’s capital by presenting various individuals inhabiting it, interspersed with his own reminiscences and thoughts. Everything is viewed through his dry, sarcastic humour.

Ulrich Seidl

Mit Verlust ist zu Rechnen, Ulrich Seidl, Austria, 1992
Idiosyncratic director Ulrich Seidl (Dog Days, Jesus, You Know) helmed this unique biographical study of an Austrian man named Sep Paur. A widower for over 12 months, Sep suddenly runs out of the frozen foods that his wife left behind just prior to her death. Forced to fend for himself for the first time in years, Sep begins screening potential candidates for a mate, but turns the women down one by one, reasoning that they are only interested in his money. He finally lands on a Czechoslovakian widow named Paula who appeals to him on many levels (and requires regular trips across the Austro-Czechoslovakian border for regular rendez-vous). For a time, everything seems perfect. Sep doesn’t count, however, on Paula’s straightforward rejection of him – which springs from her disinterest in marrying a man simply so that she can work as his maidservant and cook.

Der Busenfreund, Ulrich Seidl, Austria, 1997
Main character of this movie is Rene Rupnik, a former math teacher. He is forty years old and lives together with his mother in a desolate block of flats. Ever since his early youth women with big breasts have fascinated him, because they symbolise a kind of earth mother to him. He has never had an especially close relationship with his own mother; she was too ‘bony’ for him. Object of Rene’s fantasy is the actress Senta Berger, to him everything a woman should be. Standing by the blackboard and explaining the mathematical laws of sine and cosine (‘sinus’ is bosom in Latin), Rene sings the praises of the female curves and those of Santa Berger in particular. Filmmaker Ulrich Seidl let the former teacher speak freely about his obsessions and desires, intercutting his monologues with scenes from the protagonist’s day-to-day life.

Animal Love, Ulrich Seidl, Austria, 1995
The love between humans and their pets takes a darker turn in this Austrian documentary that is as disturbing as it is provocative. While not exactly delving into actual bestiality, filmmaker Ulrich Seidl takes viewers upsettingly close as he examines the reasons why some people are able to be more intimate with their dogs than with other people. There is something grotesque and decidedly unsympathetic about the way Seidl chooses to portray his lonely subjects and their pets. Some of the relationships are maternal, some romantic, and some almost sexual.

Jesus, Du Weisst, Ulrich Seidl, Austria, 2003
Documentary filmmaker Ulrich Seidl offers a provocative look at both Christianity and its followers by examining a handful of true believers through their prayers in this film. Jesus, Du Weisst observes six people — mostly Catholics — as they kneel in church and pray for guidance. Rather than offer a detailed look at their personal lives, Seidl allows us to learn about these people as they share their needs and concerns with the Lord through prayer, and we watch some of the subjects as their faith manifests itself in their daily lives.

New Mexican Cinema

Sangre, Amat Ascalante, 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.

La Santa Muerte, Eve Aridjis, Mexico, 2007
In Mexico there is a cult that is rapidly growing- the cult of Saint Death. This female grim reaper, considered a saint by followers but Satanic by the Catholic Church, is worshiped by people whose lives are filled with danger and/or violence- criminals, gang members, transvestites, sick people, drug addicts, and families living in rough neighborhoods. “La Santa Muerte” examines the origins of the cult and takes us on a tour of the altars, jails, and neighborhoods in Mexico where the saint’s most devoted followers can be found

She Dreamt, He Dreamt, Marco Castado, Mexico, 2007
She Dreamt, We Dreamt is a stop motion animation film based on a real story of love, jealousy, hatred and reconciliation.

Jacinta, Karla Castaneda, Mexico, 2008
“When life becomes nothing more than memories, a solitary elderly woman decides to weave her own destiny.”

Ver Llover, Elisa Miller, Mexico, 2006
This short tells us the story about a young couple living in a small town without men (cause they are working in the US) and how difficult live is in there.

Down To the Bone, Rene Castillo, Mexico, 2001
A beautiful dark tale featuring some impressive animation from this Mexican director. It tells the story of a man who awakes to the horror of being buried alive. Swallowed up by the ground, he finally lands in what appears to be an old music hall – populated by skeletons. His tension is clearly palpable through his expressive face and continuous beads of sweat. But the horror turns to beauty thanks to a mesmerising love song.

Aleksandr Sokurov

Whispering Pages Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia, 1994
This Russian-German co-production represents abstract filmmaking at its purist. Literary themes are presented in a hallucinatory manner as it presents images of grim buildings, street beggars and a series of labyrinthine passages. The film contains minimal dialog. It was filmed in black and white with only a hint of color.

Second Circle*Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia, 1990
This film opens Sokurov’s trilogy that includes Krug Vtoroy (The Second Circle), Kamen (The Stone) and Tikhiye Stranitsy (Whispering Pages). Krug Vtoroy is about the absence of connections between people and the mechanical insertion of once-important rituals into their lives. In the story, a young man (Petr Alexandrov) shares a dingy apartment with his father, who has had the poor judgement to die on a weekend. Because of this, the son has to keep his father’s body in the house, since undertakers don’t work on weekends. This gives him an opportunity to consider his father’s death and the human situation at close hand.

Lonely Voice of Man Aleksandr Sokurov, USSR, 1987
This is the first feature film directed by Alexander Sokurov, who is widely regarded as a spiritual heir of director Andrei Tarkovsky. Completed in 1979, the film wasn’t released until 1987 when it received a Bronze Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival. The film is based on a few stories by Russian writer Andrei Platonov, who was not a member of the official Soviet pantheon at the time, so maybe this is the reason why the film had difficulties with its distribution. After the end of the Russian Civil War, Red Army soldier Nikita Firsov returns to his hometown. There he meets Lyuba, whom he has known since childhood. Lyuba lives alone, since her mother has died and her brother has gone somewhere with the Red Army. Nikita begins to visit her frequently. He is in love with Lyuba but never tells her. When he falls sick, Lyuba brings him to her house and takes good care of him. They get married, but their marriage is never consummated; it is Nikita’s fault, and, remorseful, he leaves town. He wanders a lot and almost stops talking to people. A sudden meeting with his father — who tells him that Lyuba has been missing him so terribly that she even attempted to drown herself — makes him change his mind, and he returns to Lyuba, whom he loves so much.

Mournful Unconcern, Aleksandr Sokurov, USSR, 1987
The action in this lavishly produced film takes place at an oddly ark-shaped mansion during World War I, and in spirit (although not in story) it reflects the play which inspired it, the ferociously antiwar Heartbreak House by George Bernard Shaw. A large group of family and friends have gathered at this country house to dance, drink, and converse. Their conversation, in particular, is adorned with erudite literary references and quotations. Despite their apparent refinement, their preoccupations are simple: sex and violence. Disquieting images break the tranquility of the vacationers’ inappropriate idyll: some of these include documentary footage of starving African children, images (both real and re-enacted) of George Bernard Shaw going about his daily life, and a corpse coming to life on an autopsy table, only to cheapen that miracle by scolding a group of women. The music used in the film ironically points to its disturbing message and is uniformly anachronistic.

New Fench Cinema

Un Lac, Philippe Grandrieux, France, 2008
The story takes place in a country about which we know nothing: a country of snow and dense forests somewhere in the North. A family lives in an isolated house near a lake. Alexi, the brother, is a young man with pure heart. A woodcutter. An ecstatic, prey to epileptic fits, he is entirely opened to the nature that surrounds him. Alexi is terribly close to his younger sister, Hege. Their blind mother, their father and their little brother are the silent witnesses to their overwhelming love.

Le Peau Trouee, Julien Samani, France, 2004
Five fishermen set off from the coast of Ireland aboard the Mirador to do battle with a sea monster: the porbeagle shark. Thus begins a long journey out to sea, rocked by the drone of the engine: the waiting, the monotony, brief words between taciturn seamen… Until the film suddenly changes pace and explodes into violence. Baited, harpooned then hauled on board, the sharks die in a convulsive blood bath. The extreme and the ordinary mingle in a masterful composition, in which the characters attain an almost mythical dimension.

Porn Theatre, Jacques Nolot, France, 2002
This film follows the goings on of porn theater attendees in Paris. While the interaction between the characters is touching, and their openness with one another seems genuine, the viewer cannot help but feel unnerved by the lack of sexual scruples of the audience members. Simultaneously, the director puts us in the position of voyeurs, but occasionally switches perspectives to make us think we are in the audience with the actors. This poking at the fourth wall helps make one wonder about what is going on in the theater in which we are sitting.

Le Peur, Petit Chasseur, Laurent Achard, France, 2004
A house in the country, one November day. In a corner of the garden, a child waits in silence.

Cindy the Doll Is Mine, Bertrand Bonello, France, 2005
A tribute to photographer Cindy Sherman, who mostly shoots series of self portraits in various costumes, saying about them: “I feel I’m anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren’t self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear.”

Cesar Joao Monteiro

Fragmentos de um Filme-Esmola, Joao Cesar Monteiro, Portugal, 1972
Maria works in a German umbrella factory as the foreman of the production sector. João Lucas has given up on living a normal life and practically lives in bed, in the midst of green plants. His father expressly desired that his son film this eccentric daily life in 8 mm format.
Maria’s wages are dilapidated to the last penny by this amateur, monstrous, family movie production. “It is perhaps the only rage-filled Portuguese film. The formal depuration is extreme and corresponds to an equally extreme thematic depuration, if it makes any sense to separate the one from the other in a film, above and beyond limits like these. All that is asked of the actors is that they be actors, which is the most difficult thing to ask, since it means not giving them anything in return.

A Flor do Mar Joao Cesar Monteiro, Portugal, 1986
“À Flor do Mar” is something more than few words which have been written as a condensed statement.The truth is that there is hardly any story in the film.What we really see are numerous moods and mood swings of various characters which have no bearing on this film’s beginning,middle or end.By showing an isolated house,a beach and a seashore Joao Cesar Monteiro has revealed some of the most precious hidden talents of Portuguese actress Teresa Villaverde.

SilvestreJoao Cesar Monteiro, Portugal, 1982
Director Joao Cesar Monteiro has posed his actors in front of painted backdrops to act out the two 15th-c. fables that form the basis for this theatrical-literary film. Because of its static style, as though moving from one literary illustration to the other, the film does achieve some sense of life many centuries ago (assuming, as we do, that life then was not at the same frenetic pace as in the modern world). ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Veredas, Portugal, Joao Cesar Monteiro, 1978
A poetic journey in the heart of Portugal. They were two. A man and a woman that met and traveled down from the Tras-os-Montes to the sea. Legends and steep rocks, faces and sounds… In the film, the chant of a country’s eight century long history is passed on.

Lost Continent: Africa

Man of Ashes, Tunisia, Nouri Bouzid, 1986
The Tunisian Man of Ashes spotlights Imad Malaal in the role of a terrified bridegroom-to-be. Malaal’s aversion to women can be traced back to his youth, when he and his best friend Khaled Ksouri are molested by their male employer. Unable to discuss this violation with their tradition-bound families, Malaal and Ksouri decide to overcome their sexual insecurities by visiting a prostitute. The experience liberates one of the men — while driving the other to commit murder.

Africa I Will Fleece You, Cameroon, Jean Marie Teno, 1993
This documentary of repressive political realities in Cameroon begins with the 1990 publication of an open letter to President Biya calling for a national conference – and the immediate arrest of the letter’s author and publisher. The narration then examines the nation’s colonial history, beginning with the first German missionary in 1901, the establishment of schools, French occupation following World War I, the paucity of books written by and published by Cameroonians, and the repression of the CPU, a leftist organization of the 1950s and 1960s. Cameroon and its people are the lark, its feathers plucked first by colonialism and then by native strongmen: ‘Alouette, je te plumerai.’

MAPANTSULA, South Africa, Oliver Schmitz, 1988
Mapantsula tells the story of Panic, a petty gangster who inevitably becomes caught up in the growing anti-apartheid struggle and has to choose between individual gain and a united stand against the system.

Kuxa Kanema: Birth of Cinema, Margarida Cardoso, Mozambique, Portugal, 2003
The first cultural act of the nascent Mozambique Government after independence in 1975 was to create the National Institute of Cinema (INC). The new president Samora Machel had a strong awareness of the power of the image, and understood he needed to use this power to build a socialist nation. INC’s goal was to film the people, and to deliver these images back to the people.Reflecting the country’s commitment to independence and socialism, the history of the INC and the films it produced cannot be disassociated from the movement embodied by Samora Machel and FRELIMO (Mozambique Liberation Front). Footage from the films – found by filmmaker Margarida Cardoso in an abandoned, burnt out building – show Mozambique’s trajectory from great hope to great disillusionment. Weaving these images together with interviews of the people who produced them, KUXA KANEMA constructs a history of the birth and death of local cinema, and the birth and death of an ideology. Directors, screenwriters, technicians return to the INC to view the footage, and discuss their industry as a unique testimonial to the country, its struggles and wars. Today, the People’s Republic of Mozambique is simply the Republic of Mozambique. Samora Machel’s death marked the end of Mozambique’s cinema (the current government prefers television). There is nothing left of the INC. The forgotten images that captured the first eleven years of independency – the years of the socialist revolution – are rotting, taking with them both the history of a period, and the history of hope.

New Indonesian Cinema

DEAD TIME: KALA, Indonesia Joko Anwar, 2007
In an unnamed nation in an unspecified period of time, a new law which is intended give more peace to the people by strictly upholding morality only ends up justifying people to take matters into their own hands. New organizations who label themselves “the guardian of moral values” emerge and will easily attack somebody they consider immoral. Citizens of the country are divided into two groups: those that grow more violent and those who hope that the myth about the birth of a person who will lead the nation toward the light will soon come true.

Blind Pig Who Wants To Fly, Indonesia, Edwin, 2008
Filmmaker Edwin casts a darkly satirical eye on the uneasy relationship between Muslims and the Chinese in Indonesia in this episodic black comedy. Pork is a staple of the Chinese diet, but it’s forbidden to Muslims, and as a blind pig becomes a recurring motif in this film, it becomes a symbol of the cultural gulf between these two sides of contemporary Indonesia.

The Photograph, Nan Tiveni Achnas, Indonesia, 2007
A young karaoke bar hostess vows to fulfill the last wishes of the terminally ill photographer who took her in following a harrowing experience in which she was gang raped by a group of drunken customers in The Photograph. Sita is a 25-year-old bar hostess who also moonlights as a prostitute. One day, after Sita is gang raped and beaten by a violent group of customers, kindly Chinese-Indonesian photographer Johan comes to her aid. Though Johan is twice Sita’s age, an unlikely bond forms between the pair when the traveling photographer invites the young woman to move in with him. Upon realizing that she is unable to return to her position as a bar hostess, Sita offers to become Johan’s personal servant in exchange for room and board.

Of Love And Eggs,, Garin Nugroho, Indonesia, 2006
Set against the backdrop of a small market in Jakarta, director Garin Nugroho’s intimate drama explores issues of family, faith, and romance during the Muslim holiday of Lebaran. As a young boy who works in a stall selling duck eggs rebels against his employers by crushing and staling the fragile delicacies, a mysterious and beautiful newcomer to the neighborhood captures his attentions as no other girl has ever managed to do. Later, as the taciturn girl sets out in search of her absent mother’s prayer mat, the older men at the local mosque try in vain to educate their distracted young charges.

Unheard Voices: Cinema of Latin America and the Caribbean

Courage of the People , Jorge Sanjines, Bolivia, 1971
This Italian-made film is directed by the highly political Bolivian director Jorge Sanjines, whose earlier film Blood of the Condor caused an uproar in his native country while winning awards elsewhere. This film recounts the actions of the Bolivian government to suppress labor organizing by miners from 1942 until the massacre on the Night of San Juan in 1967. Here Sanjines displays no sympathy for the government’s actions and indicates his belief that it consistently acted in response to U.S. interests without any concern for the justice of the situation. This dramatic film is shot in the actual mines of the story, and the majority of the cast is composed of miners.

Oriana Fina Torres, Venezuela, 1985
In this interesting cinematic tour of a woman’s memory (winner of the 1985 Cannes Camera d’Or Award), Marie is a young Venezuelan who has been living in France and returns back home to liquidate her late aunt Oriana’s hacienda. As Marie moves at a slow pace through the rooms of the hacienda, closed doors to chambers of memory in her mind begin to open. She recalls her adolescence spent in this house with her reclusive aunt, a woman who never left the premises. As Marie begins to remember events from that era from the perspective of an adult, she realizes why her aunt shut herself away.

Divine Horsemen: the Living Gods of Haiti, United States, Maya Deren, 1985
This intimate ethnographic study of Voudoun dances and rituals was shot by Maya Deren during her years in Haiti (1947-1951); she never edited the footage, so this “finished” version was made by Teiji Ito and Cherel Ito after Deren’s death. The possession rites of the Rada, Petra, and Congo sects are featured along with Rara and Mardi Gras celebrations.

Smile Orange Trevor D Rhone, Jamaica, 1976
Smile Orange is about Ringo, a picaresque hero who works at a tourist hotel, cons the tourists, sleeps with their wives and daughters, doctors the crabs for the crab races that are part of the hotel’s slam-bang entertainment and imparts tactics and a kind of gallows philosophy to a younger colleague. “If you’re a black man and won’t play a part you’re going to starve to death,” he counsels his busboy disciple, while giving him lessons in how to be suave and use deodorants. As Ringo — he played the same role in the extremely successful reggae film “The Harder They Come”—Carl Bradshaw makes a funny and rather noble swindler. He has, not courage but equanimity—that is, grace under pressure under a hot sun. The film makes fun of the lumpiest and palest set of tourists ever to carry plastic shoulder bags. It makes fun of an upwardly mobile hotel manager, married to a lecherous blonde. It makes fun of the blacks’ own version of the anti-postcolonial struggle: If you can’t beat them, scalp them.

JOAQUIM PEDRO DE ANDRADE

Garrincha, Brazil, 1962
In 1963, de Andrade was invited by producer Luiz Carlos Barreto to direct the short feature, Garrincha – Alegria do povo (Garrincha – Joy of the People). Both a biographical documentary about eccentric Brazilian soccer star Manuel Francisco dos Santos, known as Garrincha (“little bird”), and an essay-film on the national obsession with soccer, de Andrade used the production as an opportunity to employ many of the direct cinema techniques he’d learned abroad. The film is a stylistic tour-de-force, certainly one of the most compelling films ever made about soccer, and totally unlike anything de Andrade had done before.

Guerra Conjugal, Brazil, 1975
In another attempt to work within a popular and acceptable model under the military régime, de Andrade made Guerra Conjugal,his own satirical take on the pornochanchada, the popular Brazilian sex comedies of the 1970s. Financed by the state film institution Embrafilme, the script culled from 16 different works by short story author Dalton Trevisan to create three intercut storylines: the mutual animosity of an elderly couple simmering to a boil, a lascivious lawyer’s increasingly risky extramarital affairs and a young man’s excursion through the diversity of female pleasures.

Cinema Novo, Brzail, Germany 1967
Documentary celebrating the Cinema Novo movement in Brazil. The film follows de Andrade talking and filming many of his friends and film makers such as Pereira Dos Santos, Diegues and Glauber Rocha. It is a fascinating document focusing on a little known film movement and the film itself is a fine example of the cinema Novo style.

Couro de Gato, Brazil, 1961
One of de Andrade’s first films, this charming short film tells the story of a group of boys hunting cats to sell to a man who uses their skin to make tamborines. The film is so slight but affecting, with the relationship of a boy and a cat he stole. The boy knows the cat will die in the hands of the tamborine man but you can see he desperately needs money for his family. Forget City of God this film exercises more emotional strength in twelve minutes than most films can in two hours.

O Homem do Pao Brasil Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Brazil, 1982
This film was inspired by writings and the life of Oswald de Andrade, the driving force behind the Brazilian modernist movement of the 1920s, whose “Manifesto Antropófago” had been a key influence on Joaquim Pedro. In the film, Joaquim Pedro provides almost no cultural context for the viewer not already fluently versed in the details of Brazilian history and the modernist movement. Even an astute and educated Brazilian viewer is likely to miss many of the references, as characters are simply introduced without being established and clear narrative trajectory is difficult to discern. The film employs an untraditional collage-like approach similar to that of Todd Haynes’ film about Bob Dylan, I’m Not There. (2007). Reality is abstracted to the extreme and the diegetic world of the film becomes a fantastical one characterized by symbolism and allegory.

NEW GERMAN CINEMA

Wolfsburg Germany, Christian Petzold 2003
Writer/director Christian Petzold’s drama Wolfsburg details how one decision can destroy a life. One day while on a drive, Philipp (Benno Fürmann) becomes involved in a fight with his fiancée, Katja (Antje Westermann). While he is distracted, he runs into a boy. Instead of stopping, he continues home. Although the couple momentarily salvages their rocky relationship, the boy dies. Laura (Nina Hoss), the victim’s mother, attempts to track down the man responsible for her son’s death. Eventually she and Philipp meet, but they are unaware of their link. They begin a relationship that lasts until the truth is revealed.

Windows On Monday Ulrich Kohler, Germany 2006
Köhler’s second film, Windows on Monday (2005) is the story of an attempt to escape family life. Nina (Isabelle Menke) for no explicit reason decides to go awol from her duties as a mother and wife and finds herself in an eery hotel populated by strange people like a former tennis star, actually played by the 1970s tennis enfant terrible Ilie Nastase. In this scene as in others Köhler, who admits to Thai master Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s influence, successfully walks a very fine line between subtly comic absurdism and stern realism

Vacation Thomas Arslan, Germany, 2006
Thomas Arslan’s latest outlines the strained composition of a family and the disintegration of a marriage, set in a luminous Brandenburg summer. The film is confined: the story takes place almost exclusively on the grounds of the mother’s country house and the cinematic language speaks only static shots and long takes. Just at the very end of the film does one see the whole family together. Arslan’s feat reveals the shifting constellations of family members in individual conversations and encounters: the grandmother is tender and wise while alone with granddaughter Laura, cold when Laura’s sister Sophie enters, and bitchy in scenes with her daughter Anna. The story’s tragic irony is the incongruity between the stability of each character’s identity in his or her own mind and the constantly changing roles each actually inhabits.

Sommer 04, Stefan Krohmer, Germany, 2006
At 40, Miriam radiates serene beauty and tranquility, a confidence and self-assurance as vast as the sea close to her summer home. There are no taboos in the polished, urbane life she shares with her partner André and their 15-year-old son Nils; there is understanding and tolerance. If Nils invites his 12-year-old girlfriend Livia to spend the holidays with them, fine. But when the brazenly sensual Livia begins flirting with an older man, Bill, Miriam feels it is her responsibility to stop the questionable relationship. But as she does so, it is she herself who falls for the shy and charmingly insecure Bill. Miriam forges ahead, seducing him, seeing him secretly. But it is Livia that Bill loves, not Miriam. And suddenly the vast horizons of her life vanish in a fog of jealousy and rejection – emotions that prove to be far less controllable than she thought.

ANDRZEJ WAJDA

Roly Poly, Poland, 1968
A short film adapted from a short story by Stanislaw Lem. The story of a racing car driver who undergoes so many transplants that it can no longer be determined which people have contributed to his make-up.

Ceramics From Ilza , Andrzej Wajda, Poland, 1951
Very early Wajda short documentary about pottery in Ilza. It is filmed silent, with an outside narrator, who tells story of Ilza and pottery with a considerable amount of propaganda.

Everything For Sale, Poland, 1969
Inspired by the tragic death of the great Polish actor Zbigniew Cybulski, this Andrzej Wajda film focuses on the behind-the-scenes lives of a director and his actors when they are disrupted by the mysterious murder of their leading man. It is, in director Wajda’s words, “a story about the people who make films – the directors and the actors.” Film fiction mixes with reality as some of the actors play themselves. Everything For Sale can also be viewed as a glimpse into the way in which Wajda deals with his past and with his friendship with Cybuski..

Samson, Poland, 1961
While attending the university in Warsaw, Jakub Gold, a young Jewish man, accidentally kills a fellow student in a brawl. After serving some time in prison, he is released at the outset of WWII. Soon, he is imprisoned again, this time behind the wall of the Warsaw Ghetto, along with hundreds of other Jews. Jakub escapes the ghetto only to find himself trapped in a different way. A Jew in a non-Jewish world , he is haunted by the fear of being captured. Based on the novel by Kazimierz Brandys.

Landscape After Battle, Poland, 1970
Film opens with the mad rush of haphazard freedom as the concentration camps are liberated. Men are trying to grab food, change clothes, bury their tormentors they find alive. Then they are herded into other camps as the Allies try to devise policy to control the situation. A young poet who cannot quite find himself in this new situation, meets a headstrong Jewish young girl who wants him to run off with her, to the West. He cannot cope with her growing demands for affection, while still harboring the hatred for the Germans and disdain for his fellow men who quickly revert to petty enmities.

ALAN CLARKE

Contact, United Kingdom, 1985
A precursor to Clarke’s Elephant. The film told in Bressonian fashion follows a group of British soldiers fighting in the hills of Ireland against the IRA. Very little is said and no judgments are made.

Christine, United Kingdom, 1987
The life a teenage heroin addict.

Penda’s Fen, United Kingdom, 1974
Unlike any other Clarke film. It centres around an adopted boy who is brought up by a vicar and his wife. The boy is deeply troubled by the conflict between his religion and his homosexuality. The boys’ visions of christ and and homosexual desire caused great stir when it was aired on televsion in the seventies.

Road, United Kingdom,1987
A one hour film based on a play by Jim Cartwright. The film stars a young Jane Horrocks and David Thewlis and is set ina deprived Northern english town and charts the disillusion and frustration of its inhabitants. Highly stylised this is less Ken Loach and more Fassbinder and Dennis Potter combined.

SEIJUN SUZUKI

Yumeji, Japan, 1991
The final film in his acclaimed Taisho trilogy, maverick filmmaker Seijun Suzuki directs his bizarre, hallucinatory tale about the tortured inner world of famed 1920s painter Yumeji Takehisa.

Detective Bureau Agency 2-3, Japan, 1963
Japanese director Seijun Suzuki solidified his growing cult following with this offbeat adaptation of Haruhiko Ooyabu’s crime novel. Jo Shishido stars as Det. Tajima, a smug investigator who nabs a pair of criminal gangs with flamboyant aplomb while the police remain baffled. Suzuki treats the rather hoary plotline as an excuse for dark-humored camp, and young audiences were delighted with his irreverent approach, which made him one of the few distinctive names in the ’60s assembly-line of Nikkatsu Studios.

Hishu Monogatari, Japan, Seijun Suzuki, 1977
A young model discovers the dark side of fame in this grim tale fom cult film director Seijun Suzuki (Tokyo Drifter). When the lovely Reiko (Yoko Shiraki) begins posing for a golfing fashion magazine, her sexy, unique look ~~-a skimpy bathing suit and a nine iron -~~ draws tons of attention from new fans. Soon enough, one of these devoted followers develops an obsession with Reiko, and begins to blackmail and threaten her.

Fighting Elegy, Japan, Seijun Suzuki, 1966
Fighting Elegy stands apart from the rest of his Nikkatsu films, and it’s obvious that Suzuki engaged with the material at a much more personal level than usual. Suzuki was forty-three years old when he made Fighting Elegy, his penultimate film for Nikkatsu, but it was — and remains — a wonderfully youthful movie. A subversively funny account of the making of a model fascist, it goes where no film before had gone in search of comic insights into the adolescent male mind. It’s set in the mid-1930s, at the precise moment when militarism consolidated its grip on the imagination of young Japanese men — a moment, therefore, that fuelled the country’s imperialist ambitions in East Asia and ultimately led to the Pacific War. To look back at that time from 1966 was to raise unresolved issues of nationalism and Japanese identity, issues still as relevant to many young people as to those of Suzuki’s generation who had been conscripted to fight.