2001-2010

Faust I und II. By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Arena Treptow, Berlin. 16/17 December 2000.

It took Peter Stein more than ten years to realize his life-long dream of staging both parts of Goethe’s tragedy in an unabridged version. He finally succeeded in raising sufficient funds to hire an ensemble and, most importantly, to engage Bruno Ganz for the part of Faust. They had worked together before; early in both their careers Ganz played Tasso in Stein’s famous production at the Bremen Municipal Theatre in 1969 and Peer Gynt and the Prince of Homburg at the Berliner Schaubühne in 1971 and 1974 respectively. However, even though casting was settled, a series of disasters still seemed to haunt the production. Read More »

Synopsis:
A matchstick girl who was frozen after death 200 years ago (for failing to sell any matchsticks), becomes reborn in this movie which pays homage to computer games. Working at a Chinese restaurant, Ju (played by Kim Hyeonseong) is a game maniac who suffers from unrequited love with Hui-mi (Im Eungyeong), who works part-time at a game room next door. One day, he meets a little matchstick girl of the same countenance as Hui-mi, and buys from her a gas lighter where he finds a phone number. When he calls the number, he comes upon the question: “Will you please log in the game ‘Resurrection of the Little Match Girl?'” From that time on, Ju enters into the world of virtual reality with a view to save the girl and win her love, which is by no means an easy job.Read More »

Quote:
This documentary shows how different young people try to realize their dreams or become famous through the film industry. One of the main characters of this documentary is named Wang, a young man from the countryside, aged 28. He comes to Beijing out of a love for the cinema; however, all he can do every day is line up outside the gate of a film studio in the hope of landing a job as an extra, getting 30 yuan for one day! During his stay in Beijing he writes a film script based on his own experience in the city as an extra. He thinks his play presents the darkness and desperation of survival in China. Then he wants to find an investor or a director who can produce his play as an “underground film”, because in his opinion many Chinese directors are successful on the international stage this way.Read More »

Quote:
Wilson Joel is a man in trouble. There’s a searing pain in his gut that he can’t tolerate and a dazed quietness to his struggle as he tries to maintain his equilibrium. Wilson is attempting to move on from the sudden and inexplicable suicide of his wife. His mother-in-law is there for him, but her sympathies turn quickly. He has an employer that seems to want to help him, and a workmate who wants him for herself. But nothing and no one can give Wilson solace; so, he seeks oblivion. It is not the usual alcohol or drugs. Wilson inhales fumes from gasoline cans and model airplane fuel and finds temporary salvation in the company of remote-control model enthusiasts. However, nothing that provides him relief really lasts.Read More »

Quote:
Set in a South Korean orphanage circa 1975 and featuring a concentrated, thoroughly convincing perf by preteen Kim Sae-ron, “A Brand New Life” is an admirably un-manipulative drama about the impermanence of relationships and the resilience of kids in the face of it. Drawing on her own childhood experience as an orphan living with Catholic nuns in Seoul, first-time writer-director Ounie Lecomte has made a film that’s emotionally and aesthetically involving in almost every shot. Only an imperfect DV-to-35mm transfer minimizes the impact of a picture that remains intimately and movingly focused on a bereft 9-year-old girl’s p.o.v.Read More »

Synopsis:
Zeki Demirkubuz plays the lead character Ahmet who wants to make a film about Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’. He falls into a deep depression, loses interest in the film and life, pushes those who love him away and cannot complete the film.Read More »

Review from The New York Times, published October 2, 2009
Mike Hale wrote:
“Intimate Enemies” is a movie you’ve seen before, when it was set on the Apache reservation or in the Vietnamese jungle. This time the naïve lieutenant, the jaded sergeant, the suicidal mission with no purpose — all the components of the restless-natives combat movie — are applied to the war in Algeria in the late 1950s.Read More »

After almost the whole family decimated by soldiers of the Roman Empire, the noble Germanus is captured as a slave. Humiliated and tortured by the mighty of Rome, he is obliged to endure the most terrible trials. In the bloody combat that wages as a gladiator in the Roman arenas, Germanus ends up losing his only brother, who dies in the hands of the cruel lakes. But Germanus will not give up and now will have to use all his spirit of struggle and leadership to command the masses against oppression towards freedom.Read More »

About the performing body and how it affects viscerally the people who confronts it, looks at it and participates in the transcendental experience that is its primary affect. The ceremonial and meditative are the common responses to the weeklong series of performances that took place in November 2005 in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. From an art event to a social phenomenon, the seven performances became the talk of the town because it created among the visitors a sense of sublimation like prayer. The film attempts to reveal the mechanisms of this transcendental experience by just showing the performer’s body living the events inscribed in each pieces with details that outline the body fragility, versatility, tenacity and unlimited endurance.
—Babette MangolteRead More »