The Battleship Potemkin

1926 / 75 minutes / Soviet Union / Silent film/Russian intertitles


Directed by Sergei Eisenstein

Written by Nina Agadzhanova.,Nikolai Aseyev,
Sergei Eisenstein,Sergei Tretyakov

Cinematography Eduard Tisse

The Battleship Potemkin, a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein presents a dramatised version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their oppressive officers of the Tsarist regime.
The Battleship Potemkin has been called one of the most influential propaganda films of all time, and was named the greatest film of all time at the World's Fair at Brussels, Belgium, in 1958.
The movie revolves around an uprising on board the Battleship Potemkin (Bronenoset Potemkin) in 1905. Conditions on the ship are unbearable, which in turn incites revolutionary fervor among the sailors, most notably within the character of Vakulinchik. After the ship's doctor declares rancid meat safe to eat, the sailors buy provisions at the canteen in a show of protest. The Admiral then orders all those who ate the borsch made with the meat to step under the cannons in a show of loyalty. Those who do not are covered under a tarp and ordered shot. Vakulinchik then implores his shipmates to rise up against those who oppress them, namely the officers of the ship. All the officers are killed and the ship is liberated. During the uprising, Vakulinchik dies. His body his placed on the docks in the Odessa harbor as a symbol of the revolution. The citizens of Odessa rally around his body and join the Potemkin in their revolt. Cossaks then come, in one of the most famous scenes of the film, and slaughter the helpless citizens on the steps leading to the harbor, effectively ending the revolt in Odessa. A fleet of battleships then comes to destroy the Potemkin.
The film is composed of five episodes:
"Men and Maggots" (Люди и черви), in which the sailors protest at having to eat rotten meat;
"Drama at the Harbour" (Драма на тендре), in which the sailors mutiny and their leader, Vakulynchuk, is killed;
"A Dead Man Calls for Justice" (Мёртвый взывает) in which Vakulinchuk's body is mourned over by the people of Odessa;
"The Odessa Staircase" (Одесская лестница), in which Tsarist soldiers massacre the Odessans; and
"The Rendez-Vous with a Squadron" (Встреча с эскадрой), in which the squadron ends up joining the sailors' side.

Viva Zapata!
1952/ 113 minutes/ English/Spanish


Directed by Elia Kazan
Written by John Steinbeck
Starring Marlon Brando/Jean Peters/Anthony Quinn
Music by Alex North
Cinematography Joseph MacDonald
Editing by Barbara McLean

Viva Zapata! is a 1952 biographical film directed by Elia Kazan. The screenplay was written by John Steinbeck, using as a guide Edgcomb Pinchon's book, 'Zapata the Unconquerable', a fact that is not credited in the titles of the film. It is a fictionalized account of the life of Mexican Revolutionary Emiliano Zapata from his peasant upbringing, through his rise to power in the early 1900s, to his death. To give the film as authentic a feel as possible, Kazan and producer Darryl F. Zanuck studied the numerous photographs that were taken during the revolutionary years, the period between 1909 and 1919 when Zapata led the fight to restore land taken from the people during the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. Kazan was especially impressed with the Agustin Casasola collection of photographs and he attempted to duplicate their visual style in the film. Kazan also acknowledged the influence of Roberto Rosselini's Paisan.
Plot

Zapata (Marlon Brando) is part of a delegation sent to complain about injustices to corrupt longtime President Porfirio Díaz (Fay Roope), but Díaz condescendingly dismisses their concerns. As a result, Zapata is driven to open rebellion, along with his brother Eufemio (Anthony Quinn). He in the south and Pancho Villa (Alan Reed) in the north unite under the leadership of naive reformer Francisco Madero (Harold Gordon).
Díaz is finally toppled and Madero takes his place, but Zapata is dismayed to find that nothing is changed. The new regime is no less corrupt and self-serving than the one it replaced. His own brother sets himself up as a petty dictator, taking what he wants without regard for the law. The ineffectual but well-meaning Madero puts his trust in treacherous General Victoriano Huerta (Frank Silvera). Huerta first takes Madero captive and then has him murdered. Zapata himself is lured into an ambush and killed.
Zapata is depicted in the film as an incorruptible rebel leader. He is guided by his desire to return the land to the peasants, who have been robbed, while forsaking his personal interest. Steinbeck meditates in the film on power, military and political, which corrupts men. Zapata excepted.


Awards
Anthony Quinn won the 1952 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
The film was also nominated for:
• Best Actor in a Leading Role - Marlon Brando
• Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - John Steinbeck
• Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White - Lyle R. Wheeler, Leland Fuller, Thomas Little, Claude E. Carpenter
• Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture - Alex North
At the 1952 Cannes Film Festival, Brando won for Best Actor, while Elia Kazan was nominated for the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film.

Bolivia

2002/ 75 minutes/ B&W/Argentina/Netherlands/Spanish

Directed by Israel Adrián Caetano
Written by: Screenplay:Israel Adrián Caetano
Story:Romina Lafranchini
Starring: Freddy Flores/Enrique Liporace/Rosa Sánchez
Music by: Los Kjarkas
Cinematography: Julián Apezteguia

Bolivia (2001) is an Argentine and Dutch drama film directed by Israel Adrián Caetano, his first feature-length film. The screenplay is written by Caetano, based upon the Romina Lafranchini story, about his wife. The motion picture features Freddy Flores and Rosa Sánchez, among others.
The film was photographed in "gritty" 16mm black-and-white, and was shot by cinematographer Julián Apezteguia./ Bolivia was filmed entirely in Buenos Aires.


Plot
The mostly plot-free film is confined to a café-bar in the lower-middle class Buenos Aires suburb of Villa Crespo, with few trips outside.
It tells the story of Freddy (Freddy Flores), a Bolivian with a gentle disposition, who, after Americans burn down the coca fields where he is employed, loses his job. With little work opportunities in Bolivia, he leaves his wife and three daughters and travels to Argentina to search for employment as an undocumented worker. He hopes to make money and later return to his family.
He lands a job as a grill cook in a seedy Villa Crespo café where the brutish owner (Enrique Liporace) is happy to skirt Argentinian immigrant laws in order to secure cheap labor.
It is in this café that Freddy meets the characters who affect his life: Rosa (Rosa Sánchez), a waitress of Paraguayan/Argentine descent, and an outsider by virtue of her mixed heritage; Héctor (Héctor Anglada), a traveling salesman from the province of Córdoba who's gay; a porteño taxi driver (Oscar Bertea), and one of the driver's buddies.
Freddy also has to deal with various Argentine café patrons who view all Paraguayans and Bolivians with disdain due to their ethnicity.

The motion picture was financed partly by the Rotterdam International Film Festival's Hubert Bals Fund and the INCAA (Instituto Nacional de Cine y Artes Audiovisuales de la Argentina).
The filming was a stop-and-go production and required three years of discontinuous shooting. It was shot on different days and at different times. According to director Caetano, he was never able to film for more than three days at a time.


Basis of film
Caetano said, "When writing the script, what interested me was the story; the issue of racism was not very present. However, it is inevitable that when addressing those characters and setting the story in that particular social strata, there is a series of themes that appear on their own and impose themselves."
Caetano believes that, "The film’s main theme is the collision among people of the same social class, they are workers about to be left out of any class at all, and thus they are intolerant towards one another. Basically, they are trapped in a situation they can not escape."

Come and See

1985/146 minutes/Soviet Union
/Russian/German/Belarusian

Directed by:Elem Klimov
Written by:Ales Adamovich /Elem Klimov
Starring:Aleksei Kravchenko/Olga Mironova
Music by:Oleg Yanchenko
Cinematography:Alexei Rodionov
Editing by:Valeriya Belova

Come and See , directed by Elem Klimov, is a 1985 Soviet war movie and psychological horror drama about and occurring during the Nazi German occupation of the Belarussian SSR, in 1943. Aleksei Kravchenko and Olga Mironova star as the protagonists Florya and Glasha. The screenplay is by Ales Adamovich and Elem Klimov


Plot summary
Come and See begins with two Belorussian boys digging in a sand field looking for abandoned rifles, in order to be permitted membership of the Soviet partisan forces, while an old farmer warns them not to dig. One of the boys, Florya (or "Florian," in certain translations), finds an SVT-40. The next day, partisans arrive at his house and take Florya with them, to the dismay of his mother who fears that the loss of her son, like his father before him, will lessen her and her daughters chances of survival. The partisans converge in a forest and prepare to confront the Nazis, but the partisan commander orders Florya to remain behind at the camp in reserve; disappointed, Florya walks into the forest, weeping, and comes across Glasha, a girl in love with the commander who has also been left behind. Suddenly, German aeroplanes appear and begin to drop German parachutists, and the camp comes under heavy artillery fire.

Florya goes temporarily deaf from the explosions and, after hiding out in the forest, returns to his home village with Glasha. He does not find his family at home but his sisters dolls are lined up on the floor and the house is overrun by flies. When they sit down to eat the still warm dinner from the oven, Glasha vomits. Denying what they both suspect, Florya decides that they must be hiding on an nearby island across a bog. As they run from the village, Glasha turns and sees a huge pile of bodies stacked behind Florya's house. When they get to the island after painstakingly wading through the bog, they meet a large number of other villagers who fled the Nazis, including the old man who warned Florya not to dig, now doused in gasoline and burnt by the Nazis. Florya finally understands that his family did not survive.

He and three resistance fighters leave to find food for the starving villagers, and find the SS engaged in anti-Partisan and Einsatzgruppen killing activities. The food store is too well defended to be raided and two of their number are blown up after Florya mistakenly leads them through a minefield. At dusk, they sneak up to an occupied town and manage to steal a cow from a Nazi-collaborating farmer, but as they flee across the fields they are shot at and both Florya's companion and the cow are killed.

The next morning, Florya, unable to move the dead cow, finds a horse and cart and decides to take that back to the villagers for food. The owner of the horse attempts to stop him but, shortly after, they hear the sound of the approaching mass of German soldiers. The farmer helps Florya hide his partisan jacket and rifle in the field and takes him to his village of Perekhody, where they hurriedly discuss a fake identity for him. The Nazis move into the village and herd everyone to a wooden church, locking them all inside. A German officer announces to the terrified people that any of them will be allowed to climb out of the barn through a side window, as long as they leave their children behind. No one moves, but Florya takes up their offer and climbs out. Shortly after, a woman attempts to climb out with her child but she is dragged away by her hair and the toddler is thrown back through the window. Grenades are thrown into the church, which is then set on fire and shot at; Florya watches the inferno of burning Belorussian peasants while the Nazis stand and applaud, taking photographs and laughing. The woman who escaped the church is put into a moving truck with a group of soldiers and repeatedly raped.

As the Germans leave the burning village they are ambushed by the partisans, who slaughter most of them and capture a small number, including their commander. Florya recovers his rifle and jacket and brings a cannister of gasoline to burn the German and Belorussian collaborator prisoners. The main collaborator, insisting that they are not to blame for the slaughter, translates the words of German commander, who claims to be a good man and a doting grandfather. Another German officer is disgusted by his commander's cowardice and tells the partisans that they, as an inferior race and communist sympathisers, will eventually be exterminated. The prisoners are all doused with petrol, but the crowd shoot them down before they can be set on fire. As the partisans leave, Florya notices a portrait of Adolf Hitler in a puddle and shoots it. After each shot, there is sequence of montages that play in reverse and regress in time: corpses at a concentration camp; Hitler congratulating a German boy; 1930s Nazi party congresses, images of Hitler's combat service in World War I, images of Hitler as a schoolboy; and finally a picture of the infant Adolf in his mother's lap. After each sequence, Florya shoots the picture — yet he does not fire the last shot at the baby Hitler.

In the final scene Florya catches up with and blends in with his partisan comrades marching through the woods. They are seen marching away into the dark of the trees; afterwards, the camera rises to the sky.

THE GROUNDWORK/KALIYORUKKAM
(MALAYALAM/46 MINS/2007)
DIR: S SUNIL
Cast And Crew


Starring: Thushara , Abhilash , Sreelal , Uma ,
Sreerag , Sruthi , VS Anil Kumar , Anitha
Directed by S Sunil
Produced by Kannapuram Panchayath
Story S Sunil
Screenplay S Sunil , VS Anil Kumar
Cinematography P Pratap
Music John P Varky
Lyrics DV Sreedharan
Editing Byju Kurup
Art Direction Prasanth Padiyoor
Audiography T Krishnanunni

Kaliyorukkam,’ a 46-minute film produced by the Kannapuram grama panchayat with the co-operation of Kerala State Film Development Corporation and people’s participation has a simple theme. It tells the story about a group of children who found that they don't have a playground during the summer vacations as it had been acquired for a commercial purpose. Undaunted, the children prepare a playground, which they eventually lose to their village elders who appropriate it for themselves - again for games.

'Kaliyorukkam' won the state award for the best children's film for 2007 .

One of the significant features of the film is that it is an attempt by a panchayat. And the film celebrates the 'local' in more than one way. All the actors are school-going students from the locality, who are totally at home within the film and the narrative. The visual compositions of the film very sensitively capture the 'locale' – the different terrains of the region, the landscapes, and the various moods created by the dense foliage and waterscapes in varying light shades. The children in the film speak in their own everyday language: they use the local dialect that is not sanitized to appease a pan-Kerala audience. Most refreshingly, the film never pontificates or forces the children to mouth banalities. And it is this affirmation and celebration of the local – physical and cultural – that gives Sunil's Kaliyorukkam its charming quality. One hopes the film will prepare the ground for more such initiatives.

Strike
1925/82 min./ Soviet Union/ Silent film/Russian inter titles

Directed by Sergei Eisenstein
Written by Grigori Aleksandrov/Ilya Kravchunovsky/
Sergei M. Eisenstein/Valeryan Pletnyov
Cinematography Eduard Tisse

Strike is a 1925 silent film made in the Soviet Union by Sergei Eisenstein. It was Eisenstein's first full-length feature film, and he would go on to make The Battleship Potemkin later that year. It was acted by the Proletcult Theatre, and composed of six parts. It was in turn, intended to be one part of a seven-part series, entitled Towards Dictatorship (of the proletariat), that was left unfinished. Eisenstein's influential essay, Montage of Attractions was written between Strike's production and premiere. The film depicts a strike by the workers of a factory in pre-revolutionary Russia, and their subsequent suppression. The film is most famous for a sequence near the end in which the violent putting down of the strike is cross-cut with footage of cattle being slaughtered, although there are several other points in the movie where animals are used as metaphors for the conditions of various individuals. Another theme in the film is collectivism in opposition to individualism which was viewed as a convention of western film. Collective efforts and collectivization of characters were central to both Strike and Battleship Potemkin.

Plot summary
The film opens with a quote from Vladimir Lenin.

At the factory all is quiet
Using typography, the word "но" (but) is added to the title of the chapter which then animates and dissolves into a an image of machinery in motion. The administration is spying on the workers, reviewing a list of agents with vivid code names. Vignettes are shown of them. Conditions are tense with agitators and bolsheviks planning a strike prior to the catalytic event.
Reason to strike
A micrometer is stolen, with a value of 25 rubles or 3 weeks pay. A worker, Yakov, is accused of the theft and subsequently hangs himself. Fighting ensues and work stops. The workers leave the milling room running and resistance is met at the foundry. The strikers throw rocks and loose metal through the foundry windows. Then locked within the gates of the complex, the crowd confronts the office. They force open the gates and seize a manager carting him off in a wheel barrow dumping them down a hill into the water. The crowd disperses.

The factory dies down
The chapter begins with footage of ducklings, kittens, piglets, and geese. A child then wakes his father for work ironically with no work to do, they laugh and frolic. The factory is shown vacant and still with birds moving in. The children act out what their fathers had done, wheelbarrowing a goat in a mob. The owner is frustrated by orders arriving and the frozen plant. Demands are formulated: an 8 hour work day, fair treatment by the administration, 30% wage increases, and a 6 hour day for minors. The shareholders get involved with the director and read the demands. They discuss dismissively while smoking cigars and having drinks. Presumably on the orders of the shareholders, the police raid the workers, and they sit down to protest. At their meeting the shareholders use the demand letter as a rag to clean up a spill,and a lemon squeezer metaphorically represents the pressure the stockholders intend to apply to the strikers.

The strike draws out

Cover of the DVDScenes are shown of a lines forming at a store which is closed, and a baby needing food. A fight occurs at a home between a man and a woman, subsequently she leaves. Another man rummages through his home for goods to sell at a flea market, upsetting his family. A posted letter publicly shows the administrators rejection of the demands. Using a hidden camera in a pocket watch, a spy named "Owl" photographs someone stealing the letter. The pictures are transferred to another spy. The man is beaten, captured, and beaten again.

Provocation and debacle
The scene opens with dead cats dangling from a structure. A character is introduced, "King" whose throne is made of a derelict automobile amidst rubbish, and who leads a community that lives in enormous barrels buried with only their top openings above ground. After a deal with a tsarist police agent, "King" hires a few provocateurs from among his community to set fire, raze, and loot a liquor store. A crowd gathers at the fire and the alarm is sounded. The crowd leaves to avoid being provoked but are set upon by the firemen with their hoses regardless.

Liquidation
The governor sends in the military. A child walks under the soldiers' horses and his mother goes under to get him and is struck. Rioting commences, and the crowd is chased off through a series of gates and barriers heading to the forge, then their apartments. The crowd is chased and whipped on the balconies. A policeman raises and drops a child from the balcony, killing it. The workers are driven into a field by the army and shot en masse. this is shown with alternating footage of the slaughtering of a cow.

RUSSIAN FILM FESTIVAL

9 rota/The 9th Company (2005)
139 min /Finland | Russia | Ukraine /:Russian 
Director: Fyodor Bondarchuk
Writer:Yuriy Korotkov (writer)

 
Cast:Fyodor Bondarchuk ... Khokhol 

 Aleksey Chadov ... Vorobey 

 Mikhail Yevlanov ... Ryaba 

 Ivan Kokorin ... Chugun 

 Artyom Mikhalkov ... Stas

  
The film is based on a true story of the 9th company during the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan in the 1980's. Young Soviet Army recruits are sent from a boot camp into the middle of the war in Afghanistan. The action is not like a boot camp at all. It is very bloody and dirty. The 9th company is defending the hill 3234. They are hopelessly calling for help. But help never comes. "This is war, you kill, or get killed", says the 9-th company leader Khohol (Bondarchuk). They believed that they served their country. But two years later that country ceased to exist.
Fyodor Sergeevich Bondarchuk
Fyodor Sergeevich Bondarchuk was born on May 9, 1967, in Moscow, Russia. He was brought up in a family of filmmakers, and was no stranger to this profession. His father, Sergei Bondarchuk, was an internationally acclaimed film actor and an Academy Award-winning director.

From 1985 - 1987, and from 1989 - 1991 Fyodor Bondarchuk studied at the Russian State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK), and graduated from the class of Yuri Ozerov as a film director. At the same time he founded the production company "Art Pictures Group" together with his friend, Stepan Mikhalkov. He has been making a variety of projects, ranging from music and advertising videos to feature films. He also has been working as an actor and VJ on Russian TV. In 2003 he won TEFI Award for his work on television, and also received many other awards for his music videos and films.

Fyodor Bondarchuk is a popular TV show host, his show about cinema world has been released weekly on the CTC TV in Russia. He is currently residing in Moscow, Russia.


Papa (2004)

94 min /:Russia/:Russian

 Director:Vladimir Mashkov

Writers:Aleksandr Galich (novel),Vladimir Mashkov (writer).

Vladimir Mashkov ... Abraham Schwartz 

 Egor Beroev ... David Schwartz 

 Andrei Rozendent ... David Schwartz, 12 Years 

 Olga Krasko ... Tanya

Based on A. Galych's play "Matrosskaya Tishina", "Papa" tells a story of a Jewish father who dreamed of seeing his son perform on a stage in front of huge audiences, he dreamed of seeing him as the greatest violinist of his time. To achieve the goal he taught his son Dodik how to play the violin from the yearly age. When Dodik grew up he left the small town he and his father lived in to study in the Moscow Conservatory leaving his past behind. But one day he has to choose either to loose his father or everything he has achieved


  
 
  
Peregon/Transit (2006)

140 min /Russia/English | Russian
 writer-director Aleksandr Rogozhkin

 Cast:Aleksei Serebryakov as Captain Yurchenko 
Daniil Strakhov as Captain Lisnevsky 
Anastasiya Nemolyayeva as Irina Zareva 
Svetlana Stroganova as Valentina

 
Transit (Russian: Peregon) is a 2006 film from prolific Russian writer-director Aleksandr Rogozhkin, which was presented at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Several of his past films have screened there, including Life with an Idiot and the Chechen war drama Check Point (Blokpost), for which he won the Best Director Prize in 1998. Transit is a story set on a secret military transit base in the remote Chukotka region, where planes from allied forces came in from Alaska, including quite a few with female pilots, which of course attracted the attention of the mostly male Russian crew at the base.

The stars of the film include famous Russian actors such as Aleksey Serebryakov, Daniil Strakhov, and Anastasya Nemolyaeva.


Plot summary
A group of American pilots from Alaska ferry Airacobra fighter planes across the ocean on Lend-lease. The orderly course of life is disrupted when it becomes clear that the American pilots are attractive and charming young women. The feelings of the Russian young men collide into barriers of culture and language resulting in a host of awkward, funny, and sometimes tragic situations.

It is the story of Russians, Americans, and natives of the Far North. It is the story of man and woman in war. Love and death are squeezed between the hills as human fates are destroyed and born.


Alexander Rogozhkin ( born October 3, 1949 in Leningrad) is a Russian film director. Abroad, he is most famous for his acclaimed 2002 film The Cuckoo (Kukushka), which won the Golden Eagle Award for Best Picture. He also directed the very popular Russian-language screwball comedies Peculiarities of National Hunt and Peculiarities of National Fishing, among other works.

Rogozhkin's latest film, Transit (Peregon), was released in 2006. It is a "wartime tragicomedy" about the relationship between Soviet soldiers in the Far Eastern outpost in Chukotka and the American female pilots who bring them U.S.-made airplanes from Alaska through the lend-lease program. As in The Cuckoo, Rogozhkin cast a number of amateur actors for Peregon.

 

 

 
 
  
The Vanished Empire/ Ischeznuvshaya imperiya (2008)
105 min/Russia/Russian

Directed by : Karen SHAKHNAZAROV  
Writing credits : Sergei ROKOTOV
Cinematography : Shandor BERKESHI 
   
Cast:Egor BARANOVSKY Stepan Molodzov 
Armen DZHIGARKHANYAN 
Vladimir ILIN Ivan KUPREENKO 
Aleksandr LYAPIN ) ...Serguei Narbekov 
Lidia MILUZINA (Лидия МИЛЮЗИНА) ...Liouda Beletskaya 
Olga TUMAIKINA  
 
synopsis
The film events take place in Moscow in the 1970-s. The plot is based on the classical love triangle: two youths and a girl. They are students of the same institute of higher education, live in a large country without suspecting that soon it will vanish from all the maps of our planet. This film narrates about love, youth, and the country named the Soviet Union.

Karen Georgievich Shakhnazarov
Karen Georgievich Shakhnazarov (born 8 July 1952, Krasnodar, Soviet Union) is a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. He became the Director General of the Mosfilm studios in 1998.

Shakhnazarov is the son of a prominent politician of Armenian descent, Georgy Shakhnazarov.

Since 2005 he has been a member of the Public Chamber of Russia

Agony 1981

Directed by Elem Klimov 
Produced by Elem Klimov 
Written by Semyon Lungin, Ilya Nusinov 
Starring
 Alexei Petrenko, Alisa Freindlich, Velta Line, Anatoly Romashin 
Music by Alfred Shnitke 
Cinematography Leonid Kalashnikov 
Editing by Valeria Belova 
Running time 151 minutes  

 (Russian Агония, translit. Agoniya; U.S. theatrical/dvd title Rasputin) is a film by Elem Klimov, made in c.1973-75 and finally released in the West in 1982 (USA and Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact countries 1985) after protracted resistance from Soviet authorities. The film is notable for its rich, sometimes baroque style, its sumptuous recreation of episodes from the final year of Imperial Russia and the psychological portraits of Grigori Rasputin and the Imperial family. '

The production of the film doesn't appear to have suffered any obstruction and the resources were lavish, as evidenced by the scenography and photography, but once finished the film was declared unsuitable for release; the reasons were evidently to do with the way the imperial family is portrayed. In this film Nicholas II is shown as weak and indecisive, rather than brutal, and this did not square with the way the period had been retold in Soviet historiography and schoolbooks. Furthermore, the Bolsheviks make no appearance at all in the film though it takes place during the final months of the empire, when the state was drifting toward revolution. This is historically truthful; the Bolsheviks had a very low level of activity in Russia during the First World War, most of their leaders were abroad or in prison and at the time they made no real, organized contribution to the unrest until after Lenin had returned in April 1917, by which time the Tsar had already been deposed. This was something Soviet history would not recognize; instead Lenin would be portrayed as the wise general of the upheaval from the start, and the Bolsheviks as the mass party of the working classes. Finally, the prominence of sexuality and sectarian religion in the film were hard to stomach for Soviet censors.
So the film went unshown until 1981, when it was screened at the Venice Film Festival and attracted very favourable reviews. Released in western Europe in 1982 it was hailed as one of the most original Soviet films of the 1970s. In Soviet Russia it was screened only in 1985, at the dawn of the Glasnost era. The versions released in the 1980s, and later on dvd, differ somewhat in length and the final voice-over newsreel shots of the 1917 revolution may have been tacked on as a bow to Soviet authorities; ending it with the bleak burial of Rasputin would appear to have been more logical. The original mid-seventies cut does not seem to have survived, and it is unclear how much was rewritten or possibly reshot after 1975.
The storyline of the film follows the final months of 1916 up to the murder of Rasputin; some events have been telescoped into this time though they really happened earlier during the war. Rasputin's effect on people around him is shown as almost hypnotic, and the film avoids taking a moral stance towards him - breaking not only with Soviet history but alo with how he was regarded by people near the court at the time, some of whom regarded him as a debilitating figure who disgraced the monarchy and hampered the war effort.

NO COUNTRY FOR OLDMEN

No Country for Old Men/ 2007

122 min. / United States / English-Spanish

Directed by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
Written by Novel:Cormac McCarthy
Screenplay:Joel Coen andEthan Coen

Starring Tommy Lee Jones/Javier Bardem/Josh Brolin/Woody Harrelson
Kelly Macdonald /Music by Carter Burwell
Cinematography Roger Deakins
Editing by Roderick Jaynes

No Country for Old Men is a 2007 crime thriller film adapted for the screen and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, and Josh Brolin. Adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name No Country for Old Men tells the story of a botched drug deal and the ensuing cat-and-mouse drama, as three men crisscross each other's paths in the desert landscape of 1980 West Texas. The film examines the themes of fate and circumstance the Coen brothers have previously explored in Blood Simple and Fargo.
No Country for Old Men has been highly praised by critics. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called it "as good a film as the Coen brothers...have ever made." Guardian journalist John Patterson said the film proved "that the Coens' technical abilities, and their feel for a landscape-based Western classicism reminiscent of Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah, are matched by few living directors." The film was honored with numerous awards, garnering three British Academy of Film awards, two Golden Globes, and four Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director (Joel and Ethan Coen), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (Javier Bardem).

Synopsis:
It is 1980. In a West Texas police station, Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) uses the handcuffs around his wrists to garrote the deputy who had arrested him. He steals a squad car and intercepts a random motorist. He kills the motorist using a compressed air gun then steals his car.Somewhere else in the desert, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) stumbles across the carnage of a drug deal gone bad. Mexican criminals and pit bulls lie dead on the ground; only a mortally wounded driver remains alive. The driver asks for water but instead Llewelyn follows the trail of one of the criminals who had gotten away. Llewelyn tracks him to a tree where the criminal died. He finds a satchel filled with two million dollars. He takes the money and returns home to his wife, Carla Jean (Kelly McDonald) who is irritated that he has been gone all day and refuses to tell her where he found the guns and money he had brought home. That night, Llewelyn feels guilty for not giving the wounded driver water and resolves to take him a jug. He arrives around dawn and discovers that the driver has been shot and killed. More gunmen appear, disable his truck and fire on him, hitting him in the shoulder. They chase him to a river bank where Llewelyn tries to swim away. The gunmen's pit bull leaps in to the water after him. Reaching a far shore, Llewelyn is barely able to shoot and kill the dog before it is upon him. Realizing he is facing some dangerous individuals, he tends his wounds then sends Carla Jean to stay with her mother in Odessa while he travels separately with the money.At a service station, Chigurh becomes suspicious when the elderly clerk (Gene Jones) asks him if he's from Dallas. Chigurh flips a coin to decide whether or not to kill the clerk. The clerk correctly guesses that the coin came up heads. Chigurh gives the man the coin and tells him not to mix it with any other coins. Later that night, two well dressed men take Chigurh to the site of the failed drug deal. After he takes the VID tag from Llewelyn's truck and examines the corpses, the well dressed men give him a tracking device that he can use to find the satchel of money, which has a transponder in it. Chigurh then kills them.Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) and Deputy Wendell (Garret Dillehunt) find the motorist's burning car. They then follow another trail to the drug deal site. Ed Tom recognizes Llewelyn's disabled truck. He and Wendell perform a preliminary examination of the scene then decide to call in the federal authorities. Ed Tom is disturbed by what he sees.Chigurh uses the VID tag to find out Llewelyn's address. He uses the air gun to break in to Llewelyn and Carla Jean's trailer. He tries to intimidate the trailer park manager into revealing Llewelyn's place of employment but has to settle for a phone bill that reveals the couple make a lot of calls to Odessa, TX. Llewelyn gets a room at a motel and hides the satchel of money in the air ducts. He then purchases tent poles and shotgun at a local sporting goods store, which he fashions into a hook and sawed-off shotgun. He then rents another room behind the first room. Later that night when returning to the motel he sees the Mexicans' truck in front of his first room. He goes to his second room and begins to retrieve the money using the tent-pole hook to pull it through the air duct. Meanwhile, Chigurh happens past the motel and the tracking device goes off. He rents a room, determines which room has the satchel and uses his air gun to break into the room. He finds three Mexicans and kills them with a high powered rifle with a silencer. Meanwhile, Llewelyn has escaped with the money.In Dallas, the businessman who hired Chigurh (Stephen Root) is upset about the violence Chigurh is causing. He hires Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson) to neutralize Chigurh and get the money back.Chigurh tracks Llewelyn to a small border town, where Llewelyn has rented another room. Chigurh kills the desk clerk then finds Llewelyn's room. Llewelyn shoots at him with his sawed off shotgun and escapes through the window. Chigurh chases him and kills another driver who has stopped to help Llewelyn, causing an accident. Llewelyn uses the confusion to shoot Chigurh, forcing him to retreat. Wounded, Llewelyn hides the money along the banks of the Rio Grande then crosses into Mexico and pays some people to take him to a hospital.Ed Tom continues to be disturbed by what he saw in the desert and the apparently deteriorating state of morals in the world. He goes to visit Carla Jean in Odessa and asks her to put him in touch with Llewelyn. Almost absent mindedly, he tells her how a local farmer was nearly killed by an animal he was trying to slaughter, and how slaughterhouses now used compressed air guns to kill cattle immediately. In the border town, Chigurh steals medical supplies and, in a motel room, cleans his wounds.Carter visits Llewelyn in the Mexican hospital and suggests that he just hand over the money so Carter can protect him. Llewelyn refuses and Carter tells him which hotel he is staying. On the way back across the border, Carter sees the satchel from the bridge. Back at his hotel, the same one at which Llewelyn was staying, Carter is confronted by Chigurh. Carter pleads for his life but when Llewelyn calls Chigurh kills him. Chigurh tells Llewlyn that if he brings him the money, he won't kill his wife (though Llewelyn's life is forfeit). Llewelyn tells Chigurh he will kill him then hangs up. He calls Carla Jean and tells her to meet him in El Paso. Chigurh goes to Dallas and kills the businessman for hiring not only Carter but the other Mexicans well.The Mexicans have been watching Carla Jean in Odessa. They follow her and her mother (Beth Grant) to the airport. One of the Mexicans helps Carla Jean's mother who tells him she and Carla Jean are going to El Paso. In the airport, Carla Jean calls Ed Tom and tells him which motel Llewelyn is staying in El Paso. Ed Tom drives there but discovers that the Mexicans have beat him there and killed Llewelyn. All Ed Tom can do is comfort Carla Jean when she arrives. Later that night, Ed Tom and the local sheriff (Rodger Boyce) have coffee and bemoan the declining morals of American society. Afterwards, Ed Tom returns to the motel and nearly misses being killed by Chigurh who had been searching the room for the satchel of money.Ed Tom visits his uncle, Ellis (Barry Corbin) to tell him he's retiring because he is too disturbed by the violence he's seen. Ellis tells him he's being vain and relates the story about how Ed Tom's grandfather had died: shot by outlaws, he bled to death on his front porch as they watched. Meanwhile, Chigurh visits Carla Jean, who has just buried her mother. She understands why he's there but still finds it meaningless. Chigurh flips a coin but Carla Jean refuses to play his game. After killing her, Chigurh drives away. His car is struck by another car and he suffers a compound fracture. He buys a shirt from a boy to use as a sling then walks away.At home, Ed Tom tells his wife (Tess Harper) about a dream he had. In it, he was horseback riding with his long-deceased father. It was cold and his father rode ahead to prepare a fire for them.-----

THE NEAUTYFUL COUNTRY

The Beautiful Country ( 2004)
125 min. / U.S.A / Vietnamese, English, Mandarin, Cantonese

Directed by Hans Petter Moland
Written by Sabina Murray
Starring Damien Nguyen/Bai Ling/Tim Roth/Nick Nolte/Temuera Morrison
Music by Zbigniew Preisner
Cinematography Stuart Dryburgh
Editing by Wibecke Rønseth

The Beautiful Country is a 2004 Vietnam-related drama film set in 1990. It is directed by Hans Petter Moland and starring Damien Nguyen, Nick Nolte, Bai Ling, Chau Thi Kim Xuan, Tim Roth, Anh Thu, Temuera Morrison and John Hussey. The screenplay was written by Sabina Murray, a writer who teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst's MFA Program for Poets & Writers.


Plot summary
The film tells the story of a Binh, a "bui doi" Vietnamese boy (fathered by an American soldier during the Vietnam War). After a life of prejudice and servitude, Binh decides to leave his tiny Vietnamese village and search for his mother in Saigon. Binh finds his mother, Mai, and discovers he has a younger brother, energetic and precocious Tam. Mai is employed by Mrs. Hoa, the cruel mistress of a great house. After getting a job at the house with his mother, Binh discovers that she is sexually harassed constantly by Mrs. Hoa's son.

While dusting with his mother, Binh lifts a red glass statue of Buddha, a precious family heirloom, to allow his mother to dust. As Binh lifts the statue to see it glow in the sun, the mistress walks in and charges Binh, calling him a thief. As Binh tries to keep the Buddha safe in his arms, the mistress slips on a wet patch of the floor, falling to her death. Binh and his mother quickly escape the house back to their apartment. They frantically pack the belongings of Binh and Tam. His mother gives them American money, the address of Binh's American father, and passage on a boat.

Binh and Tam both make it onto a boat bound for the United States, but a storm knocks them off course and instead takes them to Malaysia. Stuck in a refugee camp, Binh and Tam adapt to their new circumstances and meet Ling, a Chinese prostitute whose passage to America was also detoured to Malaysia. Binh and Ling seem to develop feelings for each other, kissing after Ling sings a ballad in Mandarin and dances for him.

Ling had been selling sexual favors for some time (though she dreams of a life as a singer) and had managed to buy herself, Binh, and Tam's way out of the refugee complex and onto a barge captained by the British Captain Oh. During the voyage Binh, Ling, and Tam suffer under shortages of food and rationing of fresh water. A gambling game (two contenders shout off American brand names in succession) threatens the other passengers by unfairly winning their food, water, and money. Several people succumb to the conditions, as does little Tam. A heartbroken Binh and Ling give him a funeral at sea.

The immigrants finally reach the United States, but are quickly rushed into transport trucks, bound for Chinatown in New York City. Binh works at a Chinese restaurant as a delivery boy and Ling works in a Chinatown cabaret, though she still keeps prostitution as her main source of income. Ling eventually meets a wealthy businessman to support her. Binh's feelings for Ling go unanswered. Binh sends a letter explaining Tam's death to his mother, along with all the money he had saved thus far.

Binh finds out (over a poker game with his friends) that Vietnamese children born to American fathers are allowed free airplane passage to the United States and granted citizenship. Angry because he didn't have to lose his brother, he promptly leaves his job and hitch hikes toward Austin, Texas, meeting amputee Vietnam War veterans and a Hispanic family along the way. Upon reaching the address Binh finds a woman, his father's ex-wife. His father had relocated after their divorce, working as a handyman at a ranch in Sweetwater, Texas. Binh is finally confronted with his father, blinded after opening a crate filled with explosives he thought was beer during the war. While Binh doesn't confess that he's his son, his father realizes it and the film ends with Binh and his father joking and laughing as he cuts his father's haira

WORLD THEATER DAY CELEBRATIONS

The Cochin Film Society will share the stage with Orthic Creative Center for the World Theatre Day celebrations at Orthic Creative Center on March 27 , 6 pm followed by screening of Oscar award-winning short films.
The films are This Charming Man (2002), Gridlock (2001) and I’ll Wait for the Next One…(2002).
This Charming Man is a 30-minute-long Danish film directed by Martin Strange-Hansen and it won the Academy Award for best short subject.
It has Lars Hansen, an immigrant, going through a series of mix-ups after officials confuse his papers with El Hassan and his attempts to woo teacher at the job training centre.
Hansen disguises himself as Hassan, because if the student did not turn up, the teacher would lose her job. He tries to woo the teacher Ida as Hansen, but her sympathies are with Hassan. More confusions follow.
The seven-minute-long Dutch film, directed by Dirk Belien, Gridlock is about the decision by a young executive, all worked up at the traffic gridlock on Antwerp motorway, to use his brand new mobile phone and irreversible changes that happen to his life after that.
The film is based on an old joke in which the man calls up home, only to be told by his daughter that mummy is in the bedroom with Uncle Wim. Both the caller and the girl know there is no Uncle Wim in the family.
The even shorter, four-minute-long, French film I’ll Wait for the Next One… is about a man waiting for his luck in dating at a subway train station.
The film is directed by Phillippe Orriendy.
The films will be screened at Orthic Creative Centre, Karikkamuri, at 6 p.m.