Dream (Sapnas) by Kim Ki-duk

Odagiri plays Jin, an artist who sees himself in a dream causing a car crash. What he discovers, however, is that his dream is not a mere creation of his brain - all the details he witnessed while sleeping turn out to be true. Or that's what viewers are supposed to assume, given the quirky plot turns provided by director Kim, who never shies away from purposeful ambiguity and ambivalence. Jin encounters a woman named Ran (Lee Na-young), a character who has plenty of grievances, especially concerning her shattered relationship with her ex-boyfriend. Strange as it may be, what Jin believes he has done in his dream is what Ran has done in reality. Although the car accident happens in Jin's dream, the same incident plays out in Ran's life, with police seeing her as the prime suspect. The key proposition of the movie is that the two main characters are connected through dreams in a way that blurs reality and fantasy. A butterfly emerges as the core image symbolizing the significance of dreams. In fact, this metaphor comes from a well-known ancient Chinese thinker, and its implication is rather straightforward: A person may dream about his life and discover that it's just a dream when he wakes up, but how can he be sure about the possibility that what appears as reality is also another dream? Kim's presentation of the dream's implications, however, is far from straightforward. The subplots are utterly confusing. Jin used to have a girlfriend, but the relationship is now over. But he finds himself dreaming about his former girlfriend and he vaguely senses that he still loves her. While Jin is struggling in his dreams, Ran is visiting her former boyfriend, not in her dream but while sleeping, because she is a sleepwalker. She hates the man deeply and when she realizes what she has done, she gets mad at Jin, the man whose dream goes in lockstep with her nightly visits. To resolve the situation, Jin and Ran attempt to do the almost impossible: stay awake all the time. The assumption is that if Jin does not sleep, Ran does not have to walk around in her sleep. Jin can also sleep without his much-dreaded dream that generates real events when Ran is awake. Their struggle to stay awake is, as some of director Kim's fans might correctly predict, depicted in a gruesome manner. Self-inflicted torture abounds, which will make the audience squirm. The movie's dramatic intensity accelerates at a precarious pace when the two characters' former lovers, played by Park Ji-ah and Kim Tae-hyun, join a four-way shouting match, trying to reverse what has already happened. At this point, it is no longer possible to identify where reality starts and fantasy ends. All the conflicting elements get mixed up, while the characters go through an enormous amount of pain and suffering. One hint regarding Kim's message is the peculiar existence of Jin. Japanese actor Odagiri plays the role in Japanese, while all the other characters speak in Korean. Strangely enough, Jin communicates perfectly with other Koreans, even though he continues to speak in Japanese. His otherworldly identity that transcends the language barrier is certainly unrealistic, but Kim leaves more questions than answers about his new cinematic dreamland that is so desolate.

http://www.koreanmovie.com/

ZIFT (2008) -- ŽGUTAS

Moth is freed on parole after spending time in prison on wrongful conviction of murder. Jailed shortly before the Bulgarian communist coup of 1944, he now finds himself in a new and alien world - the totalitarian Sofia of the 60s. His first night of freedom draws the map of a diabolical city full of decaying neighborhoods, gloomy streets and a bizarre parade of characters.
"Zift" is a genre mixture of neo-noir and sots-art. The story unfolds in one night. Moth is freed on parole after spending time in prison on wrongful conviction of murder. Jailed shortly before the Bulgarian communist coup of 1944, he now finds himself in a new and alien world - the totalitarian Sofia of the 60s. All hell breaks loose as soon as Moth walks out of jail. He tricks the bloodhounds of the communist state. He spends his first night of freedom in a breathtaking chase with time, trying to avoid fate, as he gets closer and closer to his ultimate demise. His frantic flight draws the map of a diabolical totalitarian city -- decaying neighborhoods and gloomy streets, the bathhouse, the city canal, the hospital, the cathedral, the pompous works of communist architecture centered around the Mausoleum, smoky joints, bars, and finally -- the graveyard. In the pursuit of truth, Moth runs into a bizarre parade of characters - agents, medics, barflies, outcasts, gravediggers and other species of the asphalt jungle. The action thickens through avalanching variety of twists and turns, sudden revelations, flashbacks, lies laid bare, hallucinations, and sensual encounters with the former love. Finally, the story ends inside the gravediggers' trailer where all secrets are revealed. Written by Vladislav Todorov.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zift

"Pasaulis yra didelis, ir išsigelbėjimas slypi už kampo“

(„Svetat e golyam i spasenie debne otvsyakade“)

Rašytojo Iljos Trojanovo autobiografinis romanas įkvėpė režisierių S. Komandarevą sukurti kino kūrinį apie Nardus. Vieno seniausių pasaulyje stalo žaidimų taisyklės ir filosofija palaipsniui tampa filmo herojaus Alekso neįtikėtinos odisėjos metafora, o žaidimo metu vartojamas specifinis žargonas ir nepakartojama Balkanų regiono kavinių atmosfera suteikia smagų humoristinį toną. Dėl prastų gyvenimo sąlygų Alekso šeima paliko gimtąją Bulgariją ir surado prieglobstį Vokietijoje. Kai politinis klimatas šioje šalyje pasikeitė, jie vėl pasileido į ilgą ir pavojingą kelionę. Autoavarijoje liko gyvas tik Aleksas, bet jis prarado atmintį. Tada darbo imasi Nardų karaliumi pakrikštytas jaunuolio senelis, kuris mėgina parodyti Aleksui kelią į gimtąjį kraštą.

www.skalvija.lt

***

The World is Big and Salvation Lurks Around the Corner is the story of Alex, who, with the help of his charismatic grandfather, Bai Dan, embarks on a journey with tandem and backgammon in search of his real self. Bulgaria, 1980. Clouds are gathering over Alex's serene childhood in the idyllic Socialist society of a provincial town. His father, Vasko, gets himself into trouble with the regime. The militia want him to spy on Alex's grandfather, Bai Dan. He is the undisputed King of the dice, and in the cafe frequented by backgammon players he publicly tells biting political jokes. Vasko refuses. He, his wife Yana, and the young Alex emigrate to Germany. However, the family breaks up there. Germany, 2006. Alex and his parents, now older, are together again for the first time, on their way to Bulgaria. In the small provincial town, Bai Dan and his wife are feverishly preparing for their arrival. But they have an accident on the road: Yana and Vasko are dead, Alex ends up in hospital. Bai Dan goes off to Germany. Alex does not recognise his grandfather because he is now suffering from amnesia as a result of the accident. The medical team rate his chances of getting better as minimal. Bai Dan teaches his grandson backgammon. The ancient game restores Alex to life. Bai Dan drags Alex out of hospital and they set off on the road. On this journey back to Bulgaria, which is also a journey back to the past, Alex gets his memory back, and with it, the will to live.

http://www.lux-prize.eu/films_details/svetat/index_en.htm

Sudiev, Šeršėliafam ir Jacques Demy

Jacques Demy (1931 – 1990) prancūzų naujosios bangos režisierius. Abejingas Alain Resnais formalizmui ir Jean-Luc Godard politikavimui, Demy kūrė fantazijas, savo siela artimas François Truffaut istorijoms, žavėdamasis miuziklais, pasakomis ir Holivudo aukso amžiumi. Jį pakirto AIDS: apie tai Agnes Varda, jo žmona, pasakoja savo "Pliažuose".

O kas mums? Ogi tas, kad esame pažeidžiami ir kvaili, kai manome, kad mums taip negali atsitikti.

Dar niekad nemačiau tokio trapaus kino. Būtent ši savybė yra unikali Jacques Demy, kurią jautriai užfiksavo Agnes Varda.

Ačiū, "Skalvija"!

Jacquot de Nantes (Agnes Varda)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WhMLBIvoqE

Jacquot Demy is a little boy at the end of the thirties. His father owns a garage and his mother is a hairdresser. The whole family lives happily and likes to sing and to go to the movies. Jacquot is fascinated by every kind of show (theatre, cinema, puppets). He buys a camera to shoot his first amateur film... An evocation of French cineast Jacques Demy's childhood and vocation for the cinema and the musicals. (Yepok)
Agnes Varda's 1991 tribute to her late husband, Jacques Demy--Varda's fellow pioneer in the French New Wave movement of the 1950s and early 1960s--is a moving combination of reenacted scenes from Demy's fanciful childhood, clips from his movies (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Donkey Skin), and filmed interviews with him shortly before he passed away. Varda's efforts lead to a touching and evocative portrait of a man who saw, even as a boy, no distinction between his imagination and the more magical traditions of theater and film. The cast of unknown actors portraying Demy and other people in reconstructions of his memories are very good, and the interesting tension between the function of these scenes as storytelling and their inclusion in Varda's larger biographical essay instantly recalls the intensely personal nature of Demy's own lush, ambitious experiments behind the camera. (Tom Keogh, Amazon.com)
Agnès Varda's film is a graceful, affecting tribute to her husband, the filmmaker Jacques Demy, who died (of leukemia, at age fifty-nine) in 1990. Documentary footage shows Demy in the last year of his life, reminiscing about his childhood and adolescence in the coastal town of Nantes. His liver-spotted hands caress the cheap cameras with which he shot his first movies-most of them crude but imaginative animated shorts with paper-cutout characters. Varda fleshes out her husband's memories with dramatized episodes from his early life, and uses clips from his mature films-"Lola" (1961) and "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964) are the best known-to demonstrate the relationship between the mundane experiences of his youth and the ravishing romantic art he created as an adult. The film's elegiac, reflective rhythm is seductive and very moving. Varda conveys the joy of young Jacques's learning, with primitive means, to tell stories on film, and gives us evidence, too, of how fully the movies we know him by expressed his dreamy, passionate nature. This picture celebrates its subject by treating Demy's biography as an instance of a rare continuity between life and movie art-as a miraculous, ephemeral convergence, like "Lola." In French. (Terrence Rafferty, Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker)

LABAI REKOMENDUOJU!!!! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!

Tarptautinis moterų filmų festivalis/Agnès Varda retrospektyva

http://www.agnesvarda.com/
„Žako iš Nanto“ („Jacquot de Nantes“)

Agnes Varda, remdamasi vyro prisiminimais ir ištraukomis iš jo filmų, sukūrė biografinį filmą apie laimingą Žako vaikystę - atsiminimus, įvykius, žmones, kurie vėliau atgijo jo filmuose, ir aistrą kinui. LABAI GRAŽU. LYG ATĖJĘ IŠ SVAJONIŲ IR PASAKŲ....

„Agnesės paplūdimiai“ („Les Plages d'Agnes“)

“Atvėręs žmones, juose rastum gamtovaizdžius, atvėręs mane – rastum paplūdimius”. Grįždama į savo gyvenimo paplūdimius, A. Varda kuria dokumentinį filmą-autoportretą. Su humoru, emocingai ji dalijasi atsiminimais apie savo patirtį dirbant fotografe, vėliau tapus režisiere, apie gyvenimą su režisieriumi Žaku Demy, feministinius užmojus, keliones į Kubą, Kiniją ir JAV, kitus darbus ir šeimą. “Tai bent užmojis – kurti filmą autoportretą būnant beveik 80-ties. Ši mintis man atėjo vieną rytą Noirmoutier paplūdimyje, kai suvokiau kiek daug kitų paplūdimių paveikė mano gyvenimą. Norėdama papasakoti – draugams, šeimai ir kitiems - apie savo darbus bei kai kuriuos gyvenimo įvykius, juos pasirinkau kaip pasakojimą jungiančią giją.“

"Žako Demy pasaulis"

Sukūrusi vaidybinį filmą apie Žako vaikystę („Žako iš Nanto“), Agnes Varda panoro sukurti filmą, apie Žaką Demy – kino kūrėją. Šiame filme ji vėl pasitelkia jo prisiminimus bei dokumentus, tačiau daug kur kliaunasi jo draugų, aktorių, su kuriais dirbo, taip pat jo gerbėjų, kurių jis nepažinojo, tačiau kurie neabejotinai paliko žymę jo gyvenime, pasakojimais.

http://www.skalvija.lt/