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Showcasing contemporary world cinema
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As many as 47 films will be unspooled in the World Cinema - Information section of the Seventh IFFK
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The International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK-2002), to be held here from March 29 to April 5, will screen some of the best contemporary films from all over the world. The following are some of them:
Latitude Zero
Brazil
Director: Toni Venturi
Lena, who is pregnant from the man who left her, Colonel Mattos, has decided to close Dama de Ouro (Golden Lady), a bar on an almost deserted highway near an open pit mine. The arrival of Vilela Colonel Mattos surprises and initially disgusts her; but deep down it rekindles the last glimmer of hope within her. He seduces her. And disappears with all her savings...
Domesticas O Filmemaids
Brazil
Director: Fernando Meirelles and Nando Olival Pismo
A comedy centering on maids. This is the story of Cida, Roxanne, Quit Thetaria, Raimunda and Creo. Each has a dream.
Letter To America
Bulgaria
Director: Iglika Triffonova
Life passes like a shadow...Ivan can only remember the first line of an old folksong once believed to be capable of resurrecting the dead. The young man used to sing with his best friend, Kamen, who now lies between life and death in a U.S. hospital. If only he could remember the song. With a camcorder Kamen had given him, Ivan begins to put together a video letter on the people he meets. But none of them knows that particular song. He comes to realise that only in the pure mountain air can it be heard...
A Passage to Ottawa
Canada
Director: Gaurav Seth
About a love triangle between a 10-year-old Indian boy recently moved to Ottawa, his 17-year-old girl cousin (also of Indian descent) and a 30-year-old black man. But this isn't about sexual love, at least not between the man and boy. Instead, the boy is looking for a hero, someone to take back home to India to look after his ailing mother...
Mile Zero
Canada
Director: Andrew Currie
The most frightening and beautiful place is the human heart. Derek Ridley is a very loving father, but his emotional fragility makes him feel unworthy of himself. When his marriage fails, he makes reckless attempts to get his family back, eventually hatching a desperate plan to take his young son to the Rocky Mountains. Initially, the adventure represents an exciting and cathartic sense of freedom for father and son, but as the narrative moves between the past and the present, the stakes become high...
Danny in the Sky
Canada
Director: Denis Langlois
In a world where the appearance of success is all that counts, beauty can be a tool to get what you want or a weapon that can backfire. Danny is a young man looking for love, the son of a gay dad and a top model who died of an overdose. Danny wants to be a part of the society that values luxury and glamour. He becomes a model, much against his dad's wishes...
The Road Home
China
Director: Zhang Yimou
The film tells a simple, but touching love story: ZhaoDi, a young, beautiful and intelligent girl falls for Luo, a young, good-natured teacher. She is the first girl in the Shiliba village to have chosen her future partner on her own. However, their happiness is shattered when an unexpected tragedy befalls them: Luo is categorized as a Rightist for no reason...
Suzhou River
China
Director: Lou Ye
This tale portrays the Suzhou river through Shanghai as a Chinese Styx in which forgotten stories and mysteries are revealed. Marda, a motorcycle courier, becomes obsessed with a beautiful young girl, Moudan, but loses her in abotched kidnap attempt to gain money from her wealthy father. Moudan jumps into the murky waters of the Suzhou River and is lost forever. Marda is sentenced for three years, but upon his return he meets Meimei,a look-alike of Moudan. He is convinced that she is his lost love Moudan and begins to court her. A videographer who is in love with Meimei, arranges for Mardar to be beaten up, forcing Mardar to leave town. Later, the videographer receives a note from Mardar, stating that he has found the real Moudan working in a shop in the suburbs... Reminiscent of `Vertigo', with its haunting lyricism, `Suzhou River' carefully blends the mood and style of classic filmmaking styles into a unique vision to contemporary Asian cinema.
The Captive
France
Director: Chantal Akerman
Ariane lives with Simon in a posh Paris apartment. He keeps her under surveillance, accompanies her wherever she goes and questions her endlessly.Yet against all odds, Ariane manages to find a mental and physical space of her own. She is free. Meanwhile, Simon suffers and takes pleasure, conscious of the fact that even in moments of physical intimacy, which temporarily appease him, he thinks he fully possesses Ariane. But she continues to elude him.
Bread and Tulips
Italy
Director: Silvio Soldini
About a woman's search for self-fulfilment. Rosalba, a bored housewife living on the Adriatic coast, is on holiday with her family. During the tour, she is left behind at a rest stop while the tour bus hurries to its next destination. Furious, she decides to hitchhike home to punish her indifferent husband Mimmo and their two sons.
Super 8 Stories
Italy
Director: Emir Kusturica
A concert movie with a difference, `Super 8 Stories' is a breathless and exhilarating behind-the-scenes look by Emir Kusturica at his own band, The No Smoking Orchestra. Founded in Sarajevo 20 years ago, they immediately became a cult hit, playing a hard-to-classify genre called `Balkan Punk'.
Placido Rizzotto
Italy
Director: Pasquale Scimeca
As a young boy, Rizzotto helplessly watched as the local carabiniere took his father away. As a young man, a partisan fighting the Nazis, Rizzotto watched, powerless, as fellow fighters were hanged. It was during this period that Rizzotto came to the forefront. Postwar Sicily has become a hive of corruption: the mafia has undermined the Unions and now set out to claim the land of men killed in vendetta. Rizzotto organizes the workers to resist tyranny, urging them to occupy the land and challenge the local powers. But when Rizzotto falls in love with Lia, the film turns into tragedy with Shakespearean overtones.
The Price of Milk
New Zealand
Director: Harry Sinclair
Rob and Lucinda are lovers living a bucolic life on a remote farm. Rob is nearly as enamoured of his milk cows as he is of his vivacious girlfriend. They are happy in their insular world until, Drosphilia, a supposed friend of Lucinda, tricks her into alienating Rob and thus pushing him into her own eager arms. Then arrives `Auntie', a Maori spiritualist and `den mother' of a gaggle of indigenous goons. Auntie pulls a fast one on poor Lucinda by forcing her to trade all of Rob's prized cows for Lucinda and Rob's own stolen quilt.
Cabin Fever
Norway
Director: Mana J. Hoel
An extended family is happily on its way to a nostalgic Christmas at a rented cabin in the mountains. The cabin becomes cramped, however, when mom and dad and four grown-up children with their respective families, a dog and in-laws from Poland squeeze inside the frozen cabin walls in 30-below-zero weather.
The Greatest Thing
Norway
Director: Thomas Robsahm
The film is based on one of the famous 19th-century Norwegian novels -- Bjrnstjerne Bjrnson's `The Fisherman's Daughter' -- and pursues a theme that made his contemporary Henrik Ibsen world famous. It pursues the theme of self-realisation and the discovery of avocation. Contrary to Ibsen's darkly uncompromising vision, however, this is an irreverent comedy, fast-moving and full of charm, which at the same time makes spectacular use of a dramatic Norwegian scenery- creating a truly romantic fable. The story is set around 1860 and centres on the fatherless and fearless young Petra.
In a cross between romantic infatuation and struggle for freedom, she suddenly finds herself engaged to three of her home town's most eligible young men...
Cool and Crazy
Norway
Director: Knut Erik Jensen
Facing the ferocious Barent Sea -- practically with an uninterrupted view to the North Pole -- lies the small fishing village of Berlev Rhog. With `Cool and Crazy', one of Norway's most experienced and renowned feature film directors, is bringing to the screen a world he knows and loves. And he does it with irreverence and wit.
Odd Little Man
Norway
Director: Stein Leikanger
Young Oddemann sees and hears things that adults have stopped noticing. This ability results in him trying to find Jesus. Many visitations of Jesus had been reported in the 1930s, and Oddemann sees no reason whyhe shouldn't also be able to catch a glimpse of Our Saviour...
Life As a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease
Poland
Director: Krzysztof Zanussi
The title of this film, taken from graffiti on a wall near director Krzysztof Zanussi's home, provides ironic commentary on its subject: a doctor questioning his beliefs when he is confronted with terminal illness. Tomasz is first seen working as the doctor on the set of a French movie production about the life of Saint Bernard. After his work is finished, he returns to Warsaw, where he discovers that he has cancer. Tomasz's only hope is an expensive operation in Paris, and he is forced to ask his ex-wife Anna -- now remarried to a yuppie -- money. Anna writes him a check, but when he goes to Paris for the operation, Tomasz is informed that his condition has become inoperable. Facing imminent death, he begins to question the beliefs he has held all his life and, with a sense of fatalistic liberation, starts to experiment with both his own life and those of others.
I am Going Home
Portugal
Director: Manoel de Oliviera
Gilbert Valence is a theatre actor. Thanks to his talent and long career, he gets the most important parts every actor dreams of. One night after the show, tragedy strikes him. His agent and old friend George tells him his wife, daughter and son-in-law have been killed in a car crash. Time passes by and life returns to normality. His agent offers him the main part in a TV film. The theme touches on drugs, sex and violence. Gilbert feels angry. He has accepted a film, the subject of which disgusts him. The day an American director proposes to start shooting `Ulysses', adapted from Joyce's book, he accepts the part with enthusiasm. In the studio, with the lighting and scenery in place, the director suggests a rehearsal. Gilbert Valence hesitates, has memory lapses. But there is nothing to worry about. They will continue tomorrow. However, next day while shooting, the old actor feels the world slipping away. He cannot face it. The text evades him. He calmly says, `I'm going home.... '
Beijing Bicycle
China/Taiwan
Director: Wang Xiaoshuai
Guei has left his village behind and has come to the city with great expectations. It takes some time, however, before he finds himself a job as a bicycle courier, earning ten Yuan for each trip. Should he manage to collect 600 Yuan, he would be in a position to buy a silver mountain bike...
The Photograph
Turkey
The film is set against the backdrop of the 15-year Kurd struggle against the Turkish army for independence. Faruk and Ali meet on the bus. They are of the same age, but have very different aims: Faruk is going to do his military service in the Turkish army, while Ali is on his way to the mountains to join the Kurdish rebels.
Runaway
U. K.
Director: Kim Longinotto
The stories of five girls in a Teheran safe house. They show incredible courage and resourcefulness inspite of living in intolerable conditions. The film explores their experience of male dominance, their longing for respect and freedom, and their hopes for a brighter future.
The Warrior
U. K
Director: Asif Kapadia
A timeless story of an epic journey from the deserts of Rajasthan to the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas. The story follows Lafcadia, head of a small bank of warriors. He is employed by a tyrannical lord.
The Warriors are ordered to wipe out a village that has delayed its payment. The warriors proceed to raze the rustic village to the ground. In the midst of the slaughter, Lafcadia has a mystical encounter with a young girl. Lafcadia drops his sword and vows never to kill again.
Deciding to escape his violent life, he sets off with his young son, Katiba, for his native village in the mountains.
The House of Guavas
Vietnam
Director Dang Nhat Minh
Hoa is a single man in his fifties who regularly poses as a model for art students.
Since Hoa fell from a guava tree as a child, he has been mentally ill; his mental development is that of a child.
He has not been affected by the changes around him...
Mechanism
Yugoslavia
Director: Djordje Milosavljevic
A young schoolteacher is heading for a distant village where she has been assigned her first job, after waiting for six years...
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