XXII. The City of Lost Children

La Cité des enfants perdus
1995
Marc Caro & Jean-Pierre Jeunet

“The most astounding visuals of 1995, 1996 and maybe 1982. I loved it!”
(Terry Gilliam)

Caro and Jeunet are the incredibly talented, twisted duo behind 1991’s Delicatessen, and this film is likewise set in some retro-futuristic universe: its characters garbed in ’40s frocks and smocks; its gizmos a combination of Jules Verne and Rube Goldberg; its evil army of cyclops equipped with sophisticated lenses that allow them to see in the dark. And boy it is dark: The city of the title is a gloomy harbor burg, where vermin scurry down dank cobblestone alleys, foghorns belch into the night and children suddenly, mysteriously disappear.
(Steven Rea, Inquirer Movie Critic)

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XXI. Das Boot

1981
Wolfgang Petersen

Already a 2nd film situated during II. World War period we are going to watch. This time not a Life Boat, but a submarine – Das Boot . A story based on the actual experiences of photographer Lothar-Guenther Buchheim who chronicled his wartime adventures in a best selling semi-autobiographical novel published in 1973. In addition to the insights into submarine warfare provided in his novel, many of Buchheim’s photos of the interior of a German U-boat proved invaluable in recreating the look of life on the submarine.
The film centers on the dramatic shifts that occur on board a U-boat patrolling the North Atlantic in 1941 as experienced by the submarine’s strong-willed Captain and his crew. The gloomy, doom-filled ambiance of Das Boot, in which every battle seems like the crew’s last, was backed up by historical fact. Of the 40,000 members of German U-boat crews who served during WWII, only 10,000 survived.
(Based on article by Felicia Feaster)

It was the most expensive German film ever made and was nominated for six Oscars. As one critic said: “The only thing that was missing from the film was the stink of unwashed men, cooked food, diesel oil, mould and fear”.
(The Guardian)

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XX. The Wild Blue Yonder

2005
Werner Herzog
The film .. “defies easy categorisation. It can be described simply as an experimental film or, more specifically, an experimental found footage film. It can also be called a multimedia collage. Alternatively, it can be classed as a poetic, fantastic “documentary”. This is because it combines non-fiction codes and conventions with an impossible narrative while also bringing together otherworldly archival imagery and found footage with rapturous, non-diegetic music. The result is a film with hypnotic power which immerses the spectator in a sublime world of cinematic time and space. As Brad Prager has suggested, “The Wild Blue Yonder is intended to be a mesmerising ecstasy” (1). At the same time, and as I will discuss in more detail shortly, one of the reasons The Wild Blue Yonder is hard to classify is because in addition to being aesthetically spellbinding, its narrative also achieves a particular kind of distancing effect. However one may wish to try and categorise it, The Wild Blue Yonder is the most unconventional and challenging work Herzog has hitherto made in the new millennium.”
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IXX. Lifeboat

1944
Alfred Hitchcock

”After their ship is sunk in the Atlantic by Germans, eight people are stranded in a lifeboat, among them a glamorous journalist (Tallulah Bankhead), a tough seaman (John Hodiak), a nurse (Mary Anderson) and an injured sailor (William Bendix). Their problems are further compounded when they pick up a ninth passenger – the Nazi captain from the U-boat that torpedoed them. With its powerful interplay of suspense and emotion, this legendary classic is a microcosm of humanity, revealing the subtleties of man’s strengths and frailties under extraordinary duress.”
(20th Century Fox)

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XVII. – XVIII. Empire Me

Der Staat bin ich!
2011
Paul Poet

..Handmade utopias – a filmic search for the worldwide phenomenon of the micronation movement. Do-it-yourself states that have distanced themselves from the economic and political mainstreaming of globalization. A road movie covering land, water and the wildest realms of the imagination. Simultaneously creative documentary and pulsating cultural portrait, the film traces a new “unplugged” generation – their motives, their anxieties and their dreams. A film that shows how this generation realizes its escapist fantasies in new economic and political forms and how they collide with oppressive everyday realities…
(Paul Poet)

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XVI. The Deep (Djúpið)

2012
Baltasar Kormakur

…screened in order to cool down in the recent tropical weather…

Baltasar Kormákur’s drama trails its fingertips in a true-life story. In 1984, a fishing boat sank off the coast of Iceland and the local community was alerted to this disaster only when the sole survivor, Gudlaugur “Gulli” Fridthórsson, staggered dripping and shivering into town. Incredibly, he had swum back through icy seas in six hours. How did he cheat hypothermia? Scientists pondered what appeared to be a freakishly dense layer of heat-retentive body-fat, yet the mystery was never entirely solved. As portrayed by Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Gulli is shy, plump, unassuming: he whiled away the time in the water by thinking of all the life-debts he wanted to repay. Intriguing drama, not great Hollywood narrative.

Film awarded by Oscar & Academy Awards.

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XV. The African Queen

1951
By John Huston

Drawing on a C. S. Forester, starring Humphrey Bogart as Charlie Allnut, the grease-stained, unshaven captain of the African Queen, a small steam launch plying the river trade of German East Africa in 1914. Katherine Hepburn, her hair tied back and her neck held straight in a high Victorian collar, would be Rose Sayer, the spinster sister of a pompous English missionary (Robert Morley) doing his best to bring the blessings of Methodism to a small village. When German troops destroy the village and drive her brother into fatal shock, the fastidious Rose has no choice but to throw in with the gin-soaked Charlie, joining him on the sputtering boat to make their way downriver to Lake Tanganyika, where a German gunship awaits them.

Film was awarded by Oscar & Academy Award.

Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn aboard the African Queen. Photo courtesy of United Artists.

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XIV. Rum Runners

1971
Robert Enrico
Starring stars Brigitte Bardot and Lino Ventura

In the prohibition years, the ‘rumrunners’ travel through the Caribbean Sea with the forbidden liquor barely escaping the ship patrols. While on the run, one of the bootleggers falls in love with an actress on a movie set.

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XIII. Castaway on the Moon

2009
By Hey-jun Lee

Awards winning offbeat drama from South Korea witnesses the intersection of two eccentric lives.
Kim is a down-and-outer who makes a suicide bid by leaping into the dark, still currents of the Han River; in lieu of dying, however, he comes to and discovers that he is lying on a strange piece of ground, covered in sand. Meanwhile, in one of the apartments alongside the river, a woman named Kim suffers from intense chronic depression and agoraphobia so severe that it has confined her to a lonely room for years. With her messy, unkempt appearance and the same dirty clothing that she has worn forever, she resembles a castaway on a desert island. As the male Kim takes up residence on the island opposite female Kim’s apartment, and experiences greater contentment and peace than he has ever known before, the female Kim catches a glimpse of him through her binoculars and feels so moved by his complacency and apparent happiness that she decides to leave her apartment for the first time in ages and connect with her new neighbor.

Moonlight Morning

white wine
Elderflower cordial
Soda water
Cherry Schnapps – 20ml per drink
Lime
Lemon
My own invention. I didn’t recorded the proportions. Can be pre mixed in jug easily.

XII. Easter Egg Surpsise

2003 Gore Verbinski

OK … after spending half an hour by trying to write intellectually sound explanation of why on Earth we are showing this film on Easter Monday – I’m giving up and I must simply admit that..I never seen Pirates of the Caribbean before and then ..well ..it’s spring and there is this Jonny Depp thing.., you know… But there is also Keira Knightley in the film and yes let’s call it The Night of a Film Decadence (which we will balance the next screening by much more conceptually profound film!)

Cocktail – Bumboo

2 oz Navy Rum (or amber rum)

1 oz Chilled Water , Coconut or tropical fruit juice

2 Sugar Cubes (brown or cane sugar)

Sprinkle Cinnamon

Sprinkle Nutmeg

Combine all ingredients and stir. Bumboo doesn’t take ice so it is served only slightly cooled. But if you want you can add ice, the modern preference if for drinks to contain ice.