Week 18

Week 18

Thursday 30/4

Waltz With Bashir (2008)


One night at a bar, an old friend tells director Ari Folman about a recurring nightmare in which he is chased by 26 vicious dogs. Every night, the same number of beasts. The two men conclude that there’s a connection to their Israeli Army mission in the first Lebanon War of the early eighties. Ari is surprised that he can’t remember a thing anymore about that period of his life. Intrigued by this riddle, he decides to meet and interview old friends and comrades around the world. He needs to discover the truth about that time and about himself. As Ari delves deeper and deeper into the mystery, his memory begins to creep up in surreal images


Sunday 3/5

Man on Wire (2008)

On August 7th 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between New York's twin towers, then the worlds tallest buildings. After nearly an hour dancing on the wire, he was arrested, taken for psychological evaluation, and brought to jail before he was finally released. Following six and a half years of dreaming of the towers, Petit spent eight months in New York City planning the execution of the coup. Aided by a team of friends and accomplices, Petit was faced with numerous extraordinary challenges: he had to find a way to bypass the WTCs security; smuggle the heavy steel cable and rigging equipment into the towers; pass the wire between the two rooftops; anchor the wire and tension it to withstand the winds and the swaying of the buildings. The rigging was done by night in complete secrecy. At 7:15 AM, Philippe took his first step on the high wire 1,350 feet above the sidewalks of Manhattan James Marshs documentary brings Petits extraordinary adventure to life through the testimony of Philippe himself, and some of the co-conspirators who helped him create the unique and magnificent spectacle that became known as the artistic crime of the century.

Week 17

Week 17


Thursday 23/4

California Dreamin' (Nesfarsit) (2007)

Winner of the prestigious Cannes award Un Certain Regard in 2007, Cristian Nemescus comedy is based on a true story: a NATO train transporting military equipment is stopped in the middle of nowhere by an overzealous chief of a Romanian train station. Set against the backdrop of the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the film explores with humor and gritty realism the impact that the arrival of the American soldiers led by Captain Jones has on the small village community. A cinematic tour de force not to be missed!


Sunday 26/4

Times and Winds (2006)

Here is an utterly involving movie about childhood, by turns mesmeric and shocking; it is as addictive as a soap opera, and mysterious as a dream.

Bes Vakit, or Times and Winds, is the fourth feature from the 48-year-old writer-director Reha Erdem, who has emerged alongside film-makers Nuri Bilge Ceylan and Fatih Akin as a Turkish director for whom film-making is an authentic art form - and his movie recalls the work of Angelopoulos or Kiarostami. This does not, incidentally, prevent it from being completely gripping.

It is set in a mountainous, austerely beautiful region of north-eastern Turkey. Three children in their early teens have much to endure, not merely the harshness of their families' day-to-day lives, gouging a living from the unrewarding soil, but a new, yet harsher reality. As membership of the adult world becomes imminent, an awful truth dawns for them all about their status. They are learning what it means to be second best, what it means to be a woman in a man's world, or to be the son who is not his father's favourite. Nascent sexual longing and the pain of a breakable heart are made a thousand times worse as the facts about their own parents' sexual lives come into focus, leading to confusion and mortification.

whole review

Week 16

Week 16

Thursday 16/4

Happiness (1998)

When a young woman rejects her current overweight suitor in a restaurant, he unexpectedly places a curse on her. The film then moves on to her sisters. One is a happily married woman with a psychiatrist husband and three kids. Unfortunately the husband develops an unnatural fascination for his 11 year old son's male classmates, fantasizes about mass killing in a park, and masturbates to teen magazines. One of his patients has an unrequited fascination for the third sister. Meanwhile the apparently stable 40 year marriage of the sister's parents suddenly unravels when he decides he has had enough and wants to live a hermit's life in Florida. Obviously, the whole movie is slightly warped in its viewpoint and certainly presents abnormal relationships among all of its parties.


Sunday 19/4

Nothing Is Private (2007)

Against the backdrop of the first Gulf War, Jasira Maroun is 13, physically well developed but naïve and unable to say no. As puberty arrives, her mother sends her from Syracuse to Houston to her curt, up-tight, Lebanese-born father. Over the next few months, Jasira must navigate her father's strict indifference, her discovery of sexual pleasure, the casual racism of a neighbor boy and her classmates, the sexual advances of the boy's father, the proffered friendship of a pregnant neighbor, and her attraction to Thomas, an African-American classmate whom her father forbids her to see. Things happen to her, but can she take responsibility and control, or is tragedy inevitable?

Week 15

Thursday 9/4 - A Swedish Love story/En kärlekshistoria (1970), 115 min.


Roy Andersson's feature film debut is a sunny, optimistic work that has drawn comparison to early films by Ingmar Bergman. Two adolescents meet and fall in love during the peak of an idyllic Swedish summer. Oblivious to social boundaries, they innocently create their own milieu, expecting little from the adults around them.




Sunday 12/4 - Involuntary/De ofrivilliga (2008), 98 min.


It's almost summer in Sweden and minor indiscretions and misbehavior abound. Leffe likes to show off for his friends and play salacious pranks, especially when he's drinking. Meanwhile, a righteous grade-school teacher doesn't know where to draw the line: she insists her fellow educators need a bit of instruction. Then there are two young teenage girls who like to pose for sexy photos and to party, but one night in a park, one of them is found passed out drunk by a complete stranger.

Week 14

Thursday - Milk
Sunday - Mystic River