SCFZ

please hold the line - pavel cuzuioc (2020)

goodbye to language: ukrainian, romanian, moldovan & bulgarian style!

love these kind of unrushed, wry euro docs - beautifully filmed gentle absurdities without (much) contempt for participants (unlike the georgian film the dazzling light of sunset that i watched yesterday)

ukraine seemed the tensest (with fresh eyes) even with adorable kropotkin nut, but when did bulgaria become the cool cat out of those four? (maybe just cuz of all the seaside shots plus the memory of that super hot villain in the tv show i watched last year)

also discovered that this is on netflix (someone really needs to do a guide to the decent films hidden on there, they never show up for me) along with the belgian classic seagulls die in the harbour! netflix is so random.

Roses Bloom on the Moorland (Hans H. König, 1952) - Deeply nightmarish rough around the edges Heimat film, Fährmann Maria type beat.

i ganked that one from yr download list but didn't watch it yet ^ instead i watched a very fun jekyll & hyde tv adaptaion directed by renoir

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1500 ... x_Eri_t64w

he even introduces the film xD

[img]https://i.imgur.com/LDPwtAQ.png[\img]

jean-louis barrault as the mad doctor

it's [/img]

see?? omg that made me laugh so hard.

i even have to search for emoji online to paste here this is a nightmare

this is a war, baby - yurii pupirin (2017)

available for free march 12th
https://dafilms.com/program/1170-jihlav ... forUkraine

i suppose this is balance for all the bad publicity the farcical russian army is getting at the minute. the ukrainian side is farcical too. although i am not conditioned enough to atrocity and constant death to find it that amusing right now.

(but someone watch it and explain what the v on the tank was doing at the beginning as it was made to sound like a ukrainian tank that blew itself up but i thought the russians used v (as well as z etc)??? no wonder everyone is shooting at themselves)

also alas, the tractors are not always victorious

RIP glorious ukrainian tractor

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1501 ... B-Hjwsm6qg

i watched chronicle of the years of fire: extremely stylized giving me more emotional distance. but not enough :'(

seen letter from an unknown woman recently, real good stuff, going to watch more ophuls imminently

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhl8HF9hAqI I saw this more than a month ago but i highly recommend. One of the best Nigerian films. Deeply experiential; p1 an Illiad, p2 the Odyssey

^ looks insane, thanks!

myself, i have just watched and loved dreams of ice - ignacio agüero (1993) - a ruizian, chris markerish, delpeut's forbidden quest-y type mystery nautical tale, but using the actual footage shot of the collecting of an antarctic iceberg for chile to display in the 1992 world fair in seville....devour this kind of thing, ridiculously underwatched, thanks greennui for suggesting it







and google tells me it was really real! (cuz the film is so dreamy i wasn't quite sure)

i got sidetracked

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1502 ... Y-YhPo6G8Q

this was pretty good, if long - lots of split screens. this seems pretty early vietnam revision? or no. ashby's coming home was 1978...

now i want to watch battleship potemkin...

has anyone seen the batman yet

i was thinking about it but it's 3 hours long???

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1503 ... 5rDAIpPJKA

instead i had a mini monica film festival. l'avventura was one of my first experiences with arthouse cinema. it was frustrating. on rewatch, still frustrating. then i watched red desert. monica didn't deserve this and i am glad she escaped antonioni to appear in comedy and cult films. always an icon: RIP monica (last month)

enjoyed The Batman, partially it's better than Nolan's batman movie but 3 hour is really unnecessary..

i'm having a mini-jouvet fest with a couple of pabst's french films. mademoiselle docteur (1937) is a bit confused. dita parlo is a glamourous german spy in a ring that includes (greek) jouvet and viviane romance but sees the error of her ways after meet cute with french officer pierre fresnay. next i will check out le drame de shanghai (1938), curious if louis will be cast as asian...

i do agree it's partially better than nolan's but i'm not a fan of nolan to begin with and all his movies are just too played out now (maybe i've got recency bias with this new batman or i'm just annoyed at everything surrounding nolan and it's made me think worse of him). don't really love the new one but i think pattinson is very nice.

l'avventura on the other hand i love

i love ofrene talking to ofrene

i've gone off-theme to deep-dive the money's-worth out of my fast-fading dafilms subscription and i think this is the most beautiful film i have seen in a long time, not just the images, but the spirit (in all senses) is documentary as flitting, flowing dream (if anyone can track down the director's latest - broca's aphasia - i'd be most grateful)

flow - su ming-yen (2018)

https://dafilms.com/film/12977-flow

also: night box (paula gaitán, 2015)

ben russell takes stephen dwoskin thru hell (nightclubs were never fun, even as a student, even with drugs. tuck me up with a cocoa at 10 past 9pm and abandon this heaving horror)

total complement to current mood, ie a window on everyday life - & another sweet short from dafilms - about the power of dreams from reading books being enough to rouse the statues from their stony slumber (very cute too, eg narrator reading passage from steinbeck's cannery row: "there were no automobiles visible" precisely as the only car in the shot moves across the screen)

caryatid row (andreas wutz, 2008)

retreating to my film noir comfort zone - watched world for ransom (aldrich 1954) w the great dan duryea, a kind of prequel to kiss me deadly about the kidnapping of a nuclear scientist. pretty good - i think the female lead was supposed to be a lesbian, which was cut - would've been perfect

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1506 ... Vl7KwPtfXQ

then i watched los tallos amargos (ayala 1956) - most twisted noir i've seen in a while! goes overboard in all kinds of directions but a very fun watch

https://twitter.com/rbgscfz/status/1507 ... Vl7KwPtfXQ

i'll get back to 2009 now hopefully...

I've been putting off Tallos Amargos, sounds now like a must--see.

YES

Gritt (2021, Itonje Søimer Guttormsen)



Gritt is one of the most uncomfortable viewing experiences I have ever had. It may, at least to some people seem like a critique, but there where moments when I genuinely had to pause the film, the unease was simply too powerful. What is impressive is that the unnerving nature of the film does not come from any kind of extreme content, but rather the way pain and agony seeps through the screen as our protagonist spirals further and further, safekeeping herself with pretentions upon pretentions but always out of her depth. There is desperation of self and self-expression, of finding some kind of value, of accomplishing something, and as she claws at this possibility in any way she can, the flesh wounds are felt.

It could be tempting to brand Gritt, both the protagonist and the film as another depiction of a suffering artist, but that is not quite the case. It is rather the depiction of the suffering of not being an artist. She tells herself, the people, even us, a narrative. A narrative of her own thoughts on the world, her "projects", her ambitions, but it is clear that she is not just out of her depth but that she just might not be able to find any form of self-expression. When faced with working artists she is confused by the theories and knowledge they possess, quickly attempting to absorb it, and often parroting it later, with a clear undercut of not really getting any of it. Her internal monologues showcase not just pretention, but a false image of herself, and how desperately she needs this image to function at all. She deceives others, deceives herself and gets into more and more painful situations and confrontations as she attempts to keep everything afloat. 

To cut it short, Gritt has despairing and desperate energy that is rarely seen and a cringe/unnerving factor comparable to Dogme and Ostlund. A large part of it is the strong central performance by Birgitte Larsen, not to mention an intriguing supporting cast. Conversations frequently take the forefront, and it is intriguing to watch Gritt desperately or reactively readjusting her views, persona and talking points based on just what it is she wants to achieve, be it some form of assistance or to simply appear that she has it all together. The filmmaking of Itonje Søimer Guttormsen, is quite intriguing for a first time feature director. She is not afraid to mix different levels of visual quality and expressions that allow us to feel just how uncertain Gritt's inner world is, visually showing how it is shaking and crumbling. An incredible work! 9/10

Trying to fill in my Peter Bogdanovich gaps, finally got around to Noises Off, which seems like a very late entry in the kind of comedy that doesn't get made anymore. There is a ridiculous amount of talent in the cast, both from a wide array of TV's finest and the Deathtrap reunion I never knew i needed. It's all somewhat compromised by the fact that the material is so natural for the stage and just less, so for film. Still, a comedy that actually made me laugh, which is something else that doesn't get made anymore.

Taming the Garden (2021, Salomé Jashi)



How do you tell the story of the richest man in Georgia buying gigantic trees from all across the country, employing what could be hundreds of people working to extract them, spending millions on infrastructure, creating new roads, paying poor people thousands for each tree and leaving a path of destruction affecting the lives and memories of likely thousands of people if not more?

There are so many ways this story could have been documented. In many ways it is downright explosive. It is therefore very interesting to see just how quiet and contemplative Taming the Garden is. Salomé Jashi chooses to let her camera focus on the impact on the landscape, the work that goes into moving each tree and as a result creates a meditation on wealth, power, poverty, history and nature - not to mention artificiality.

Along the way we do meet people, from the workers to the people affected. Some cry, some laugh, some are happy for the money they can put in their pockets, some are happy for the sudden road, some cry over the desolation around them and the history that is taken. The film itself let's them speak, albeit briefly, but in that, capturing a very broad perspective and refraining from judging individuals.

The greatest strength of Taming the Garden is how it captures the oddly unnatural images, visions that almost border on surrealism. It can not be called a comedy, but it is hard to get around the fact it manages to focus in and captures the oddness and bizarrity of the task at hand. The opening image of fishermen glancing up and seeing a tree travelling past them, by sea, at a distance. The endless degrees of preparation to move a tree. The diver checks the exact depth of the water for kilometres to ensure that the transport will be safe. The relish found it the dig that suddenly turns into a duck pond after it rands, and, of course, enormous trees, with ant-like humans walking around them, ready to be transported to their new owner.

The ending itself is also remarkably interesting, and, without saying a word, poses so many questions.
A remarkable work. 8.5/10

selected lactobacillus strain shirota - yonesaku kobayashi (1965)

OMG matt berry did the voice over, could listen to him say yoghurt all day

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Yh5H4GVLBQ