The second part, Film and History, Ethics and Society examines the role of history in the shaping of national identity as reflected in Central European cinema, creating a sense of impotence against the tide of history that, in turn, manifest as forms of escapism, whether through the romanticization of heritage epics (such as Andrzej Wajda's Pan Tadeusz), elements of surrealism (such as Wojciech Has's The Saragossa Manuscript and Juraj Jakubisko's The Deserter and the Nomads), or magical realism (such as Jerzy Kawalerowicz's Mother Joan of the Angels and Pharaoh). In each case, the encounters with history are rooted in personal - rather than collective - memory:

The people of Central Europe look at history from a specific angle: they come from small countries which are usually powerless to make developmental decisions, yet need to react to whatever political shifts and advances occur (usually at the instigation of a neighboring great European power). So the stories told here are not so much those of people heroically influencing the course of history but of those who cannot do much more but stand by and witness events; they are stories of the vulnerable and the powerless, the small and the weak, the pawns and the underdogs. The actions of these protagonists are marked by the overpowering consciousness of their own limitations.

...The key concern of East Central European cinema is the interplay between historical and social processes and the personal experience of these processes. It is within this relationship, tilted towards the individual, where most identity issues and existential insecurities are played out. The never ending identity quest is often accompanied by an underlying frustration; there is an ongoing friction between objective historical events and their critical appropriation that limits the range of choices available to the individual. This is part of an eternally unresolved process of identification where all subjective moves are ultimately determined by the dialectical interplay with history.

Iordanova further examines the toll of "historical burden" through a survey of postwar trümmerfilms (films of the ruins) such as Wolfgang Staudte's The Murderers Are Among Us (East Germany), Géza von Radványi's Somewhere in Europe (Hungary), and Aleksandr Ford's Five Boys from Barska Street (Poland), as well as Andzej Wajda's war trilogy (A Generation, Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds), which are thematically connected by a sense of tragic inevitability as ordinary soldiers fighting on the losing side of the war. Conversely, Iordanova cites Andrej Munk's Eroica and its ne'er-do-well, accidental hero as a foil to the trümmerfilm paradigm, underscoring the arbitrariness of siding with history. Similarly, Miklós Jancsó's The Round Up and The Red and the White also reflect this dynamic in the ambiguous framing of partisans and collaborators, the victors and the vanquished.

In the chapter State Socialist Modernity: The Urban and the Rural, Iordanova argues that the conventional images of dour protagonists, mundane problems, and bleak industrial landscapes that characterize East Central European cinema are acts of subversion that would serve as fertile creative grounds for such seminal film movements as the Czechoslovakian New Wave and the Polish Cinema of Moral Concern:

Well aware of the excesses and dangers of totalitarianism, filmmakers saw the making of 'apolitical' films as a matter of priority. The films that they opted for would often be about disturbances of intimate relationships rather than heroic confrontations or class struggles; they would focus ordinary everyday life and thus, in the context of imposed excessive politicization of the personal domain, deliver a covert political statement.

Asymmetrical Feel (Amore asimetrico, 1990) and As People (Come persone, 1995) reflect a newfound maturity, distance, and restlessness in Ferrara's work. Vacillating between disparate modern art forms, in particular, cubism and graphic arts, Ferrara abandons the simple, flat space, line drawings of her early films to create more voluptuous and geometric forms. It is interesting to note that in the use of a violin adaptation of Recuerdos de Alhambra (traditionally, a guitar piece) in As People in lieu of seemingly random pop music that had accompanied her early films, Ferrara incorporates a more deliberate, tensile dimension to her work in this period, supplanting the brashness of her earlier films with a more introspective tone.

Almost Nothing (Quasi niente, 1997) represents Ferrara's adoption of oil paints on film, marking a transition from black and white to color, and also from singular lines to filled spaces. The shift towards volume, gradation, and texture is also reflected in Five Rooms (Cinque stanze, 1999) and The Match (La partita, 2002), where dimensionality is created through isolated framing that compartmentalize movement within the context of larger, overarching spaces (a house floor plan in Five Rooms, and spectators and players in The Match). Ferrara further experiments with faceting and layered compositions in her collage approach to the most recent film in the program, News (2006). Intriguingly, Ferrara's mixed media approach to News is also an integration of old (paper) and new (cel), combining found object (newspaper clippings) with hand-painted illustrations that insightfully convey the complex issues behind terse, often sensationalized newspaper headlines.

The chapter, The Creation of Modern Space analyzes the complex role of spaces as a reflection of social and cultural transition. In this respect, the father's alternating role as both authoritarian figure in his home and office subordinate willing to make a fool of himself for his boss's benefit in Yasujiro Ozu's I Was Born But... reflects what Wada-Marciano describes as the public's unresolved negotiation with the process of modernization. Wada-Marciano further explores the social dichotomy through the bifurcation of geographic space itself, in this case, Tokyo's post-earthquake, transitional landscape that embodies what sociologist Yoshimi Shun'ya classifies as kakyo kukan (hometown space) and mirai kukan (future space) urban spaces.

Citing the stories of the visiting provincial mother in Ozu's The Only Son, the bus driver's encounter with a Tokyo-bound country girl in Hiroshi Shimizu's Mr. Thank You, and an industrialist's decision to stay with his new rural family instead of returning to Tokyo (and his legitimate family) in Mikio Naruse's Wife! Be Like a Rose!, Wada-Marciano illustrates the idealization and nostalgia for a distant, irretrievable home evoked in these colliding images of tradition and modernity. Another manifestation of negotiated space is in the integrated setting of Yokohama harbor as a gateway to the outside world in such films as Yasujiro Shimazu's First Steps Ashore, Hiroshi Shimizu's Japanese Girls at the Harbor, and Mikio Naruse's Everynight Dreams to represent the alien other, whether through overt notions of foreignness as criminal element and economic marginalization, or ethnic and cultural assimilation (Wada-Marciano astutely points out that the characters Henry and Dora in Japanese Girls at the Harbor represent a mixed race - and by implication, culturally diluted - population, and were portrayed by Eurasian actors, Ureo Egawa and Yukiko Inoue).

The negotiation between domestic and social spaces in I Was Born But... also leads to the broader examination of the urban white collar workers and the amorphously defined middle-class that constituted the predominant audience for these films and popularized the shoshimin eiga (middle-class) genre. In the chapter, Vernacular Meanings of Genre: The Middle-Class Film, Wada-Marciano expounds on the idea of hometown by highlighting the studio system's ancillary creation of an interconnected, virtual "extended family" in the recurring casting of the studio actors who would appear in various roles across several film productions. Wada-Marciano further provides a comprehensive discussion of I Was Born But... within the context of audience identification by analyzing the sons' rebellion through the prism of ambiguous social roles in the face of a new, emerging urban middle-class, where society has paradoxically embraced modern ideals of equal economic opportunity through hard work, even as it reinforces archaic models of hierarchy:

The middle-class genre film suggests the antinomy between Japanese modernity and rising nationalism in the 1930s, in the sense of a Japanese national subject's split between the call to modernize and the contradictory longings for the mythic cohesion of the past. The idea of 'the middle class' at the center of the genre worked to mitigate long-standing differences in social strata and in the particularities of Japan's interwar social transformation; the collective image of the middle-class served as a national identity for the modern subject. The middle class that emerged in interwar Japan referred less to a reconfigured labor force than to a new citizenry of a modern social transformation.

In Imaging Modern Girls in the Japanese Woman's Film, Wada-Marciano proposes that the image of the moga has been shaped by modernity and nationalism in the absence of assimilating Western liberalism - in essence, reinforcing the distinction between modernization and Westernization. This distinction is revealed in such moga themed films such as Ozu's Woman of Tokyo, where the perceived scandal is implied in the sister, Chikako's (Okada Yoshiko) involvement with a left-wing organization rather than created by a morally transgressive act, a politicization that could not be explicitly stated because of government censorship and an imposed ban of socially progressive, tendency films since the early 1930s:

In a further reading of Chikako's sacrifice, the film deploys another parallel in an act of whispering that occurs as the film reveals Chikako's moonlighting. The scandal is revealed to Harue by Kinoshita; first he states, 'Chikako seems to be working as a barmaid after her daytime job... The rumor involves not only that... '; then he whispers the rest to Harue, although the information is not shared with the audience. At this point we might imagine Chikako is involved in prostitution or something worse. More whispering occurs in a later sequence, when Harue reveals the rumor to Ryoichi. She says, 'What would you do if your sister was not who you think she is?' Then she whispers to Ryoichi, and again, the film conceals the information from the audience. Ryoichi replies, 'What are you talking about? It's too ridiculous!' Harue continues, 'That's not all. Your sister has disgracefully become a barmaid.' This information, as delivered, effectively undercuts the possibility that Chikako's suspected disgrace involves prostitution, but leads the audience towards another possibility - that of Chikako's involvement with a Communist political group. The film encourages such a political inference by embedding details of a hidden social progressive narrative, as in an earlier scene of the police officer's inquiry at Chikako's office and later in a headline announcing the arrest of a criminal organization.

The idea of Japanese modernity as a convergence of social discourse and national policy also forms the critical framework in the chapter, The Japanese Modern in Film Style, which distills the essential themes from the previous chapters into an analysis of Yasujiro Shimazu's Our Neighbor, Miss Yae within the varied contexts of modernist filmmaking (shooting the soon-to-be divorced, older sister Kyoko through old-fashioned, shinpa styled framing to emphasize the visual disjunction), urban spaces (images of the Ginza shopping district from a moving car that convey progression in its conflation of absolute and relative motion), athletics (after-school baseball practice), and nationalism (Yae-chan's family's relocation to Korea as part of Japan's expansionist campaign during the Fifteen Years' War).

But Xiaofei's notes also prove to be transcriptions of her own imperfect reality: living with an aimless, trouble-prone boyfriend, Deng Gang whose only motivation in life seem to be gambling and drinking with friends (even as he boasts of being rich and important someday), estranged from her father (Liu Huibin) who had left years earlier to find work in Xinjiang, and goaded by her well-intentioned mother (Chen Xigui) to use her good looks to find a more marriage prospect-worthy suitor. In this respect, the running joke on Xiaofei's resemblance to actress Zhang Ziyi not only serves as comic relief, but also reinforces her role as a surrogate identity - the anonymous face of a marginalized working class and its idealization. This intersection between personal and professional, private and public spheres is also suggested in Xiaofei's earlier disclosure that she had applied for the job opening based on the employment agency's recommendation that is subsequently paralleled in her mother's (Chen Xigui) matchmaking attempts to introduce her to a wealthy businessman (despite still being involved with Deng Gang) - both reflecting a position of disempowerment and acquiescence towards her own future. Similarly, the incisive juxtaposition of a benzene accident at a Zigong chemical factory (made ironic by earlier broadcasts of the industry's commitment to environmental responsibility) against a kitchen fire in a neighborhood mahjong parlor also creates a sense of chaos and dislocation, illustrating the role of impersonal industries as manufacturers of artificial, uprooted communities - the residential evacuation of nearby districts as a result of windswept toxic fumes (leaving them to camp out in cramped tunnels, literally tripping over people in order to move ahead), that is contrasted against images of patrons hauling buckets of water to stamp out the blaze. Culminating with a long shot of Xiaofei's friend circling in and out of view (in a shot that evokes the poetic bicycle sequence in Jia's Unknown Pleasures) to offer her a ride home, the framing of a nearly indistinguishable Xiaofei against a vast, empty landscape becomes a paradoxical metaphor for erasure and persistence.

In the essay, Reading Hollywood in/and Spanish Cinema: From Trade Wars to Transculturation, Kathleen M. Vernon proposes that the inscription of Hollywood films in Spanish cinema - the use of excerpted scenes and placement of iconic American images in such films as Luis García Berlanga's Bienvenido, Mr. Marshall (that emulate Hollywood western and film noir aesthetics) and Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive (James Whale's Frankenstein), goes beyond simple pop culture reference and instead, conveys oppositional subtext that allude to the isolationism and xenophobia that marked Franco-era Spain, as well as the US government's enabling political climate against a shared Communist threat that reinforced the dysfunction. Vernon further examines the role of these inscriptions within Pedro Almodóvar's cinema that function, not only as tongue in cheek homage, but also reinforce the idea of illusive history as the country was undergoing a radical transformation to democracy (which culminated in the election of the socialist party, PSOE, that would remain in power until 1996). To this end, Vernon argues that What Have I Done to Deserve This? represents Almodóvar's most politically referential work, framing Bud Stamper's (Warren Beatty) dream of returning to a simpler life in Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass within the context of Franco's parochial policies:

Finally, in an ultimate irony, the character's flight from the city at the end of ¿Qué hecho yo? though it marks the apparent fulfillment of their shared dream, reenacts the conclusion of the founding film of Spanish neorealism, José Antonio Nieves Conde's Surcos (Furrows, 1950). Hailed as the 'first glance at reality in a cinema of paper-maché', for its treatment of the problem of the rural exodus to the cities, in the hands of Falangist Nieves Conde, it also served as a cautionary tale regarding the moral corruption and destruction of family structures that awaited new immigrants to the city.

...Far from the instance of the postmodern denial of history through pastiche, as in Fredric Jameson's account of the mode, through its juxtaposition in filmic intertexts, the ironic American pastoral Splendor with the Spanish cautionary tale Surcos, ¿Qué hecho yo? casts suspicion on the workings of the cinematic imaginary. The longing for return is revealed as a return to the past of Francoism, a past Almodóvar's films disavow even as they actively re-evaluate its hold over the present.

The idea of a post-Franco reframing of official history also serves as a basis for Marsha Kinder's examination of Spanish documentary filmmaking, Documenting the National and Its Subversion in a Democratic Spain. Tracing the origins of what Kinder characterizes as the distinctive "Spanish inflection" of contemporary documentaries, Kinder cites Luis Buñuel's Land Without Bread and Carlos Saura's Cuenca as early examples of subverted documentaries that sought to create historical record even as they underscore the inexactness and malleability of such representation. The complex nature of historical reconstruction is also illustrated in two Civil War-themed documentaries, Jaime Camino's La vieja memoria and Gonzalo Herralde's Raza, el espíritu de Franco, which, as Kinder proposes, "not only provide an archival record of popular memory, ...but they also perform a historical and ideological analysis of this material."

Kinder further examines two noteworthy, 1990s transition-era documentaries, José Luis Guerín's Innisfree and Víctor Erice's El sol de membrillo as examples of highly regionalized documentaries that, nevertheless, reflect the impossibility of mediated representation:

Erice's film is preoccupied with the serial performance of self-representation, which (no matter how narcissistic) must inevitably be historicized. The film demonstrates that no matter what subject you are documenting (on canvas or on celluloid, on paper or video), you are still representing yourself and your medium and bearing witness to the historical and cultural moment that shaped your subjectivity. Like Innisfree, both López's painting and Erice's filmmaking capture the traces of what is perceived and remembered.

Roland B. Tolentino's essay, Nations, Nationalisms, and Los últimos de Filipinas: An Imperialist Desire for Colonialist Nostalgia, in some ways, expounds on Kinder's thesis on cultural inscription - in particular, the systematic refiguring of cultural identity under Franco. By placing Antonio Román's film in the context of Franco's nationalist agenda, Tolentino proposes that the film's revisionism reflects Spain's campaign to rehabilitate its postwar isolation by invoking the shared colonial history of allied Europe, reframing the handover of the Philippines to the US as a geopolitical strategy rather than a defeat that marked the end of the Spanish empire. Moreover, by examining the integral role of religion in colonialism (in its moral rationalization of enlightened mandate) as reflected in the film, Tolentino presents an insightful parallel to Franco's regime, which drew support from the Catholic church.

The troop's isolation in the Philippines is analogous to the isolation of the Francoist regime from other nations. The value of defending the empire to death is the latent hegemonic nationalist call. In the construction of the national ego ideal, the film narrative glorifies the 'conversion of the historical massacre into a religious sacrifice, one that is focused on the 'fetishization of virility and sacrifice.' Catholic orthodoxy is entwined with militaristic adventurism.

It is interesting to note that while Tolentino discusses Spanish colonial influence through its increasingly marginalized role in contemporary Filipino culture (which has been increasingly supplanted by American imperialism), the ideology behind the colonialist nostalgia of Los últimos de Filipinas with respect to Spanish society - the film's intended audience - is only indirectly broached in the essay, alluded in a comment on Catalan speakers and Basque nationalists' (apparently) tempered response to the film. Indeed, inasmuch as cultural erasure reflects the legacy of colonialism, it also represents a motivation for Franco's social policy, where the assertion of regional identity is seen as a threat to national unity.

The role of regional identity in the national discourse is further explored in Jaume Martí-Olivella's Regendering Spain's Political Bodies: Nationality and Gender in the Films of Pilar Miró and Arantxa Lazcano. Examining the parallels between Pilar Miró's El pájaro de felicidad) and Arantxa Lazcano's Urte ilunak, Martí-Olivella proposes that both films redefine the notion of center and margin through their non-dominant, alternative points of view. This occupation of shared space is illustrated in the use of interchanging language in both films (enabled by the standardized use of subtitles in the original language), creating an environment where multilingual dialogue is part of the cultural norm:

What is the reality that these two films try to 'normalize'? It is the reality of a shared political space, Spain, that still resists being reimagined and thus represented as a plurinational, multicultural, and heteroglossic community... They underline a common goal to reimagine the different languages and cultures of Spain as an essential richness rather than a constant source of national struggle.

Vithanage incisively parallels religious themes of cycle, enlightenment, and renewal within the context of endemic poverty in order to expose the dysfunctional institutions that help perpetuate the inhumanity (and unnaturality) of the protracted civil war. In retrospect, Bandara's expressed hopes of providing a better life for his family by becoming a soldier reflects the villagers' sense of despair as well, where young men from the provinces (such as Sunanda's suitor, Somay), unable to eke out a decent living through farming, increasingly see the military as the only means to improve their circumstances which, in turn, indirectly serve to perpetuate a conflict that fosters destabilization (in one episode, the government authorizes the addition of a bus stop in the village in memory of Bandara, linking the seemingly noble pursuit of socioeconomic development with politically-motivated appeasement). This interrelation is further implied in the military's contingency death benefits that preclude independent investigation, where acceptance of payment represents a tacit compensation for silence and complicity. Framed against Wannihami's defiance, the breaking of the seal (and consequently, the metaphoric covenant with these exploitive institutions) is also a humble act of enlightenment - a search for truth in the face of isolation, adversity, and dispossession.

Vithanage poses this idea of personal history as collective consciousness in Suwisal and Piyumi's intersecting fates after a twenty year separation, integrally linking the leftist movements of the late 1960s embraced by student radicals with the ongoing civil war. The duality is illustrated in an episode in which Suwisal and a friend reminisce about their involvement in an organized protest in 1969 that initially seems to reinforce, then negate their commitment to social justice, rationalizing that the ideal outcome would be for Piyumi to be found guilty without ever recognizing her former employer, thus avoiding any potential scandal. Their conversation reframes an earlier flashback in which university student Suwisal returns to the country and decides to briefly join the farmers in their harvest in between studies (a naïve attempt at worker solidarity that is reinforced in a shot of him removing his sandals to walk barefoot behind cattle). But his egalitarian gesture proves to be hollow. In a subsequent encounter, Suwisal, having already taken advantage of the trusting Piyumi, offers her a handful of money in lieu of undying devotion, and later ignores her pleas for help after discovering that she is pregnant. This interconnection between past transgression and present unrest is similarly suggested in Suwisal's return trips to the family mansion after a long absence, initially in his visit home to work on a Marxist thesis away from the chaos of campus protests (and brief his disinterested aunt on how his activism intersects with a global social revolution), and subsequently, to recuperate from the emotional toll of the trial, and is once again confronted with his own impotence after a group of tenant farmers ask for his help in finding their missing sons who have been rounded and disappeared in the waging of the protracted conflict.

At each juncture, Suwisal's actions prove to be in opposition: retreating to privilege amid calls for solidarity, and conforming to majority opinion in order to bring swift, if unjust, closure to a tainted past. Visually, Vithanage illustrates the disjunction through narrative ellipses that not only interweave past and present, but also between indeterminate presents that reflect Suwisal - and by extension, the country's - unreconciled conscience. Similar to Ritwik Ghatak, Vithanage also integrates dissonant, yet naturalistic soundscapes to reinforce rupture and conflict, most notably in the prefiguring sound of a crying woman at the empty mansion that is repeated in a subsequent, similarly dissociated shot of Suwisal taking a shower, and in the amplified sound of dust sheets being removed from furniture that reflects the implicit violence of his deeply buried transgression and the turmoil caused by its revelation. Closing with the shot of Piyumi walking away into the horizon, her haunting image becomes - like Suwisal's (and a nation's) process of redemption - a reflection of a shared uncertainty and broken humanity.

Set during Uruguay's transition to democracy after years of military dictatorship, its repressive legacy is still evident in the arbitrary inspections by guards who patrol the porous border between Brazil and Uruguay - a constant, looming threat that is embodied by the intimidating, mobile customs agent Meleyo (Nelson Lence) who, near the beginning of the film, chases a group of returning cyclists from across the hills in his off-road truck before crushing the entire contents of a rider's parcel and confiscating a bottle of rum from Beto's friend, Valvulina (Mario Silva) in retaliation for attempting to running away. Already eking out a meager existence by running grocery orders from local shops to neighboring stores in Brazil, Beto's livelihood is further strained when he is blacklisted by shopkeepers after an afternoon of carousing (propelled, in part, by guards confiscating his groceries after discovering alkaline batteries that had been smuggled, without his knowledge, by a shopkeeper). But salvation seems at hand with the arrival of the pope along with the thousands of pilgrims expected to make the journey into town for the occasion, and villagers have already begun to stake their concessions spots along the route, where they hope to peddle their wares - assorted refreshments, balloons, and commemorative banners - before a generous (and hungry) crowd. Meanwhile, pope fever has also spread to Beto's household, with him eager to earn enough money for a motorcycle that can outrun the customs agents (and prevent further injury to his already hobbled knee), his wife, Carmen (Virginia Méndez) fretting over having enough money to send their teenaged daughter, Silvia (Virginia Ruiz) to a vocational school, and Sylvia, in turn, dreaming of a more glamorous career in journalism, perhaps inspired by the media frenzy surrounding the papal visit that have turned ordinary villagers into perennial television news fixtures.

Interweaving archival footage from street reports and excerpts from the papal visit within the fictional story of Beto's search for a better life, Charlone and Fernández create an ambiguity between truth and fiction that reflect the film's underlying social realism. By presenting the villagers' plight as a series of inequitable encounters - whether by corrupt border guards, shopkeepers (who deduct fees for confiscated items), the media (who sensationalize events in order to create news and boost viewership), and even the church (in an ironic episode, Valvulina's wife, Teresa [Rosario Dos Santos] buys a souvenir medallion from a member of the pope's entourage, even as her vended snacks remained unsold) - the filmmakers reinforce the idea that enabled institutions collectively lead to entrenched marginalization and poverty. It is this sense of collusive exploitation that is implied in Beto's impotent act of protest, implicating both the media and the church in their hollow calls for benediction, as well as the consumerist society (as symbolized by a television that was purchased on installment) that conceals its own degraded status under artificial tokens of privilege.

Behind the Rainbow (Jihan El-Tahri, 2009)
Wed Apr 8: *8pm; Mon Apr 13: *2:50pm

The Fighting Spirit (George Amponsah, 2007) screening with
Siki, Ring Wrestler (Mamadou Niang, 1993)
Fri Apr 10: 1pm; Sun Apr 12: *5:15pm

Filmmakers Against Racism:
Congo My Foot (Okepne Ojang, 2008)
Martine and Thandeka (Xoliswa Sithole, 2008)
The Burning Man - Ernesto Alfabeto Nhamuave (Adze Ugah, 2008)
Baraka (Omelga Mthiyane and Riaan Hendricks, 2008)
Fri Apr 10: *10pm; Sun Apr 12: *12:30pm

From A Whisper (Wanuri Kahiu, 2008)
Sat Apr 11: *3:00pm; Tue Apr 14: 7:00pm

The Importance of Being Elegant (George Amponsah, 2004)
Thu Apr 9: 2:15; Sat Apr 11: 10pm

In My Genes (Lupita Nyong’o, 2009)
Sun Apr 12: *9:15; Tues Apr 14: 5pm

Jerusalema (Ralph Ziman, 2008)
Fri Apr 10: *7:15pm; Tues Apr 14: *9:00pm

Killer Necklace (Judy Kibinge, 2009) screening with
Area Boys (Omelihu Nwanguma, 2008)
Thu Apr 9:* 9pm; Mon Apr 13: *10:00pm

Kinshasa Palace (Jose Laplaine, 2006)
Wed Apr 8: 1:45pm; Mon Apr 13: 5:30pm

Paris or Nothing (Josephine Ndagnou, 2008)
Wed Apr 8: 3:30pm; Mon Apr 13: 7:30pm

The Prodigal Son (Kurt Orderson, 2008) screening with
Bronx Princess (Yoni Brook and Musa Syeed, 2008) and
African Booty Scratcher (Nikyatu Jusu, 2008)
Fri Apr 10: 3pm; Sun Apr 12: *2:40pm

Sacred Places (Jean-Marie Téno, 2009)
Wed Apr 8: *6:00pm; Sat Apr 11: *1pm

Sex, Okra and Salted Butter (Mahamat Saleh Haroun, 2008)
Fri Apr 10: *5:10pm; Sun Apr 12: *7:20pm

Triomf (Michael Raeburn, 2008)
Thu Apr 9: *6:15pm; Mon Apr 13: 12:30pm

Wrestling Grounds (Cheick Ndiaye, 2006)
Thu Apr 9: 4pm; Sat Apr 11: *7:35pm

Yandé Codou, The Griot of Senghor (Angèle Diabang Brener, 2008) screening with
Nora (Alla Kovgan and David Hinton, 2008) and
Coming of Age (Judy Kibinge, 2008)
Sat Apr 11: *5:15pm; Tue Apr 14: 2:40pm

*African directors and guest speakers will be present during the festival.

Having won the cash prize of 290 euros for the past two contests (which promptly went to pay for tuition at a correspondence school and subsequently, dental treatment), Norma reveals that she is planning to buy her young daughter a Christmas present if she wins this year's contest, having continued to maintain the ruse (albeit tenuously) for the past three years that she has gone far away to work. The ruse of a pesky, overseas job also proves convenient for Argentinean national, Adalberto "Beto" Usoli, explaining to his beloved elderly grandmother that his extended absence and infrequent (and spotty reception) calls home are the result of working aboard a cruise ship. Accused of embezzling 3,000 euros from his employer, Beto moved to Spain in order to be closer to his Barcelonian lover, and is petitioning to resolve his case in the Spanish court system, fearing a lengthy separation from his partner if he is extradited back to Argentina. Following one's heart proves to be Lithuanian immigrant and counterfeiter, Rudolf Schlessinger's Achilles heel as well, having violated the terms of his weekend furlough in order to spend more time with an attractive young woman he had just met, and has been handed down an additional sentence for the impulsive act, delaying his upcoming parole. Beto's limbo within the Spanish court system is also echoed in the indefinite imprisonment of a young woman, Patricia Ávarez, the eldest of twelve children who is serving an open ended sentence for drug possession, and in the plight of Arturo Jiménez, a Madrileño of gypsy descent and devoted family man who has been detained for over two years at the Valdemoro Men's Prison awaiting a court date on drug trafficking charges.

The wide reach of the drug trade also casts its shadow on recovering addict and self-admitted black sheep of the family, Estefanía Maestre (who, like the young, unemployed couple in José Luis Guerín's En Construcción, hails from the working class port town of El Chino) who has found a measure of stability in her life with her fiancé Cristian (and who, in turn, is serving ten years for wounding his former girlfriend's lover in a jealous rage) and is eager to move on, but must wait until they both serve out their sentences. Another is José Antonio Gardoqui, the gravel-voiced, former drummer of a popular 80s band called "Burning" who once robbed banks to feed his habit, and his girlfriend and fellow inmate, Fortu, who tried to save her addicted children from the streets (ultimately, in vain) by buying drugs for them. In each story, Bosch illustrates an underlying pattern of marginalization and underprivilege - poverty, under-education, racism, alienation, and despair - that binds each contestant's search for happiness and normalcy. As in Ramos's films, the absence of an overarching commentary creates a sense of intimacy between subject and viewer. However, while Ramos reinforces the image of entrenched hierarchical structures in interactions with authorities, Bosch collapses these structures by filming solely from the perspective of the inmates, enabling their figurative self-expression through heartfelt song renditions and articulated personal aspirations that capture the humanity beneath their marginalized lives, and the quotidian moments of grace that reaffirm their dignity.

The line-up for this year's Rendez-vous with French Cinema has been announced, and with the back to back programming with Film Comment Selects, it looks as though I'll have to make some tough planning choices on which films to catch on an extended weekend. Suffice it to say...help!

OPENING NIGHT

Paris 36 / Faubourg 36 (Christophe Barratier, 2008)
Alice Tully Hall: Thu Mar 5: 8:00pm

U.S. PREMIERE

35 Shots of Rum / 35 Rhums Claire Denis, 2008)
Film Society of Lincoln Center: Fri Mar 13: 1:30pm
FSLC: Fri Mar 13: 6:15pm
FSLC: Sun Mar 15: 8:00pm
IFC Center: Thu Mar 12: 7:00pm

Mesrine Part 1 / Mesrine, L’instinct de mort (Jean-François Richet, 2008)
FSLC: Tue Mar 10: 6:15pm
FSLC: Sat Mar 14: 1:30pm

Mesrine Part 2 / Mesrine, L’ennemi public n° 1 (Jean-François Richet, 2008)
FSLC: Wed Mar 11: 6:00pm
FSLC: Sat Mar 14: 3:50pm

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

The Apprentice / L’apprenti (Samuel Collardey, 2008)
FSLC: Wed Mar 11: 3:45pm
FSLC: Thu Mar 12: 8:45pm
IFC: Mon Mar 9: 7:00pm

Bellamy (Claude Chabrol, 2009)
FSLC: Thu Mar 12: 3:45pm
FSLC: Sat Mar 14: 9:10pm
FSLC: Sun Mar 15: 1:00pm
IFC: Fri Mar 6: 9:30pm

Change of Plans / Le code a changé (Danièle Thompson, 2009)
FSLC: Fri Mar 6: 6:20pm
FSLC: Sun Mar 8: 8:45pm
FSLC: Mon Mar 9: 3:30pm
IFC: Sat Mar 7: 7:00pm

Eden Is West / Eden à l’ouest (Costa-Gavras, 2009)
FSLC: Sat Mar 7: 9:00pm
FSLC: Wed Mar 11: 1:30pm
IFC: Sun Mar 8: 4:00pm

The Joy of Singing / Le Plaisir de chanter (Ilan Duran Cohen, 2008)
FSLC: Sun Mar 8: 3:30pm
FSLC: Tue Mar 10: 1:00pm
IFC: Wed Mar 11: 7:00pm

The Other One / L’Autre (Patrick Mario Bernard and Pierre Trividic, 2008)
FSLC: Wed Mar 11: 9:00pm
FSLC: Sun Mar 15: 5:30pm
IFC: Tue Mar 10: 7:00pm

Stella (Sylvie Verheyde, 2008)
FSLC: Thu Mar 12: 1:00pm
FSLC: Thu Mar 12: 6:15pm
IFC: Wed Mar 11: 9:30pm

Villa Amalia (Benoît Jacquot, 2009)
FSLC: Fri Mar 13: 8:45pm
FSLC: Sat Mar 14: 6:45pm
IFC: Thu Mar 12: 9:30pm

NEW YORK PREMIERE
The Beaches of Agnès / Les Plages d’Agnès (Agnès Varda, 2008)
FSLC: Sat Mar 7: 1:30pm
FSLC: Mon Mar 9: 8:45pm

The Girl from Monaco / La Fille de Monaco (Anne Fontaine, 2008)
FSLC: Fri Mar 6: 1:00pm
FSLC: Sat Mar 7: 6:35pm
IFC: Sun Mar 8: 1:30pm

Séraphine (Martin Provost, 2008)
FSLC: Fri Mar 6: 8:45pm
FSLC: Sun Mar 8: 12:30pm
IFC: Sat Mar 7: 4:00pm

Versailles (Pierre Schoeller, 2008)
FSLC: Fri Mar 6: 3:30pm
FSLC: Sun Mar 8: 6:00pm
IFC: Sat Mar 7: 1:30pm

With a Little Help from Myself / Aide-toi, le ciel t’aidera (François Dupeyron, 2008)
FSLC: Sat Mar 7: 4:10pm
FSLC: Mon Mar 9: 1:00pm
FLSC: Mon Mar 9: 6:15pm
IFC: Fri Mar 6: 7:00pm

WORLD PREMIERE
The Girl on the Train / La Fille du RER (André Téchiné, 2009)
FSLC: Tue Mar 10: 3:30pm
FSLC: Tue Mar 10: 9:10pm
IFC: Sun Mar 8: 6:45pm

TOUT COURT: NEW FRENCH SHORTS
France, 2008; 90m
Baby (Bébé, Clément Michel); New Skin (Peau neuve, Clara Elalouf); Good Night Malik (Bonne nuit Malik, Bruno Danan); The Fire, The Blood, The Stars (Le feu, le sang, les étoiles, Caroline Deruas); My Little Brother from the Moon (Mon petit frère est de la lune, Frédéric Philibert); and My Name Is Dominic (Tous les enfants s’appellent Dominique, Nicolas Silhol).
FSLC: Fri Mar 13: 4:00pm
FSLC: Sun Mar 15: 3:15pm

The 2009 Film Comment Selects line-up has been announced, and I'm happy to see Philippe Garrel's The Frontier of Dawn and Michael Almereyda's new film, Paradise in the program. The series runs from February 20 to March 5, 2009.

OPENING NIGHT
Paradise (Michael Almereyda, 2009)
Fri Feb 20: 6:30pm

CLOSING NIGHT
The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2008)
Thu Mar 5: 7:00pm

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A l’aventure (Jean-Claude Brisseau, 2009)
Sat Feb 28: 9:15pm
Wed Mar 4: 4:00pm

Adam Resurrected (Paul Schrader, 2008)
Tue Mar 3: 9:00pm

Better Things (Duane Hopkins, 2008)
Mon Mar 2: 6:30pm
Tue Mar 3: 4:30pm

The Chaser / Chugyeogja (Na Hong-jin, 2008)
Sat Feb 21: 6:00pm
Sat Feb 28: 1:30pm

The Frontier of Dawn / La frontière de l’aube (Philippe Garrel, 2008)
Sun Feb 22: 7:00pm

Jerichow (Christian Petzold, 2008)
Fri Feb 27: 8:45pm
Mon Mar 2: 4:30pm

Lake Tahoe (Fernando Eimbcke, 2008)
Fri Feb 27: 7:00pm

The Mugger / El Asaltante (Pablo Fendrik, 2007)
Fri Feb 20: 9:15pm
Sun Feb 22: 1:00pm

Revanche (Götz Spielmann, 2008)
Tue Feb 24: 8:30pm
Sat Feb 28: 6:45pm

The Tiger’s Tail (John Boorman, 2006)
Sat Feb 21: 1:30pm and 8:30pm

A Week Alone / Una semana solos (Celina Murga, 2007)
Mon Mar 2: 8:30pm
Tue Mar 3: 6:30pm

A Woman in Berlin / Anonyma – Eine Frau in Berlin (Max Färberböck, 2008)
Fri Feb 20: 3:30pm
Wed Feb 25: 6:00pm

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SPECIAL RETROSPECTIVES

The Killing of Sister George (Robert Aldrich, 1968)
Sat Feb 28: 4:00pm

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (Lou Adler, 1981)
Wed Feb 25: 8:30pm

The Third Generation / Die Dritte Generation (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979)
Sat Feb 21: 3:45pm
Tue Feb 24: 6:15pm

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DOUBLE TROUBLE: JOEL DeMOTT AND JEFF KREINES

Demon Lover Diary (Joel DeMott, 1980)
Sun Feb 22: 2:30pm

Seventeen (Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines, 1983)
Sun Feb 22: 4:30pm

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FILM COMMENT SELECTS: GUY DEBORD

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (Guy Debord, 1978)
Sun Mar 1: 2:00pm

The Society of the Spectacle / La société du spectacle (Guy Debord, 1973) screening with Réfutation de tous les jugements, tant élogieux qu’hostiles, qui ont été jusqu’ici portés sur le film ‘La société du spectacle’ (Guy Debord, 1975)
Sun Mar 1: 4:10pm and 8:40pm

Hurlements en faveur de Sade (Guy Debord, 1952), screening with On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Unity of Time / Sur le passage de quelques personnes à travers une assez courte unité de temps (Guy Debord, 1959), and Critique de la séparation (Guy Debord, 1961)
Sun Mar 1: 6:15pm

This duality is also reflected in the juxtaposition of Killanin's comments with the appearance of a hitchhiker. On one hand, Killanin points out that Thornton is, to some extent, an alterego (whose shared history with Ford involved immigrant parents who settled in Pittsburgh) and represents an idealized, other gaze that goes against the grain of historical reality. On the other hand, the hitchhiker represents an antithesis to the immigrant story by describing her experience as having worked as an au pair and in a millinery factory in Pittsburgh before deciding to return home to Ireland. The convergence of disparate realities is further developed in the young woman's employment as a concession stand attendant for one of the local, film-themed sightseeing tours that now capitalize on the popularity of The Quiet Man. In a sense, fiction and reality not only coexist (an idea that is also suggested in the deliberately staged shot of the attendant, still in her Maureen O'Hara costume, riding home that evokes a shot of the bicycling couple in Ford's film), but that fiction has also transfigured into reality by creating (and perpetuating) its own illusion.

The transformation of Innisfree from scouted, rustic town suitable for the location shoot to one now defined by - and economically reliant on - perpetuating the fictional images created by the film also reflects Guerín's theme of cinema as simultaneously a medium of illusion and conjurer of reality (a theme that also surfaces in Tren de sombras in the figurative conjuring of the dead by restoring amateur filmmaker, Fleury's lost film from the turn of the century). In one episode, film reality diverges from geographic reality when an IRA partisan describes the war torn, mine-filled landscape that was cleared to create the film's idyllic images of pastoral life. In a subsequent episode, the two realities again converge in a staged explosion caused by an errant cow for Guerín's film. In both cases, the landscape has been altered by artificially constructed, historical realities. Similarly, by using repeated shots of the attendant shuffling full-scale cutouts of John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara at a tour site (the scenes wryly cued by opening and closing the shutters of the small, puppet-theater sized concession stand), Guerín reflects on the idea that the town, too, has become a modern day, real-life staged spectacle. Concluding with images of the hitchhiker moving on to another town in search of job opportunities, she becomes an embodiment of the immigrant paradigm and a traveling performer for Guerín's camera.

In its brooding, elliptical tale of loss, separation, and displacement, L'Arbre mort shares kinship with Marguerite Duras's India Song and Jonas Mekas's diary films, where the impossibility of returning home is sublimated in a haunted quest for an elusive object of desire. Similar to Mekas's cinema, Morder's use of silent, Super 8mm film in conjunction with a separate narrative and musical soundtrack creates a disjunction between image and sound (which Duras also incorporates in India Song) that reinforce the distance and impreciseness of human memory. This disjunction is further reflected in Morder's rapid cut framing that reveal Jaime's disorientation and uncertainty over his alienating homecoming (most notably, in his isolated shot during the family reunion and subsequently, standing at a gateway in search for Laura). Ironically, it is in this state of disorientation - a descent into the unknown that is implied in the image of their Orphic journey down a winding staircase - that Laura is figuratively liberated from the realm of the dead: shedding the ghosts of an irretrievable past to emerge in the light of an uncertain, new dawn.

Visually, Yoshida prefigures this sense of illusion in Ito's arrival at the Seito (Blue Stocking) compound, her introduction to staff journalist, Hiraga Haruko illustrated as the inverted image of their reflection on a pond, and crystallizes in the extended sequence of Osugi staggering through the rooms after being stabbed by his other mistress, Itsuko Masaoka (Yûko Kusunoki) in a jealous rage, the collapsing of shoji screens evoking the dismantling of walls in A Man Vanishes. The imbalanced, hazy, false horizon created by Hiraga and Ito's reflection from the footbridge also reinforces the idea of disjunction that is similarly prefigured in the highly stylized, theatrical opening sequence of Ito's daughter (also played by Okada) being interrogated about her faint memories of the past that breaks with the aesthetic formalism of the succeeding images.

Eiko's transformation from propositioned, sexually liberated young woman in one scene to a militant interrogator in another scene also reveals an underlying cultural (and generational) amnesia that has enabled role-playing as a substitute for identity and conviction, an ambiguity that is reflected in a shot of Eiko and Wada projecting a selection of archival, wartime photographs depicting destruction, violence, and genocide in search of images for use in a commercial advertisement (superimposing film on the female body in a figurative animation - and eroticization - of images that is similarly explored in The Man Who Left His Will on Film). In essence, Eiko's burning of film stock, then her stockings as a means of arousing Wada not only implies a metaphoric rejection of the past in its invocation of the "Blue Stocking" feminist movement, but also suggests a paradoxical correlation between liberation and destruction, empowerment and emasculation. Culminating with the Taisho-era actors posing before Eiko and Wada for a cast shot to wrap up production on a film that Wada speculates will be an important historical document, Yoshida reinforces the idea that revolution - like the act of filmmaking - is an artificial construction: the conjuring of an unreconciled (and ultimately doomed) past, forged equally by displaced ideological and sexual impulses.

But beyond an intimate account of Jordi Solé's remarkable evolution from impoverished baker's son, to revolutionary, to one of the key architects of the Spanish Constitution of 1978, to distinguished parliamentarian and cultural minister, the film also examines the disjunction between national history and personal memory. Paralleling his own faint memories of childhood with his father's struggle against the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease and his mother's subsequent hospitalization from a cerebral embolism, Solé frames his experience within the broader context of a cultural amnesia, where truth becomes increasingly relegated to the realm of myth, and the history of the resistance has been equally romanticized by revisionists (in one scene, the old site of La Pirenaica, having been converted to a Securitate office after the disbanding of the radio station, is now marketed as a neo-socialism historical site after the fall of Ceaucescu), exploited for political means (most notably, in politicians claiming the distinction as one of the "Fathers of the Constitution" even though only a handful of the convened group actually participated in its drafting), and taken for granted by a post Franco-era generation. Visually, Solé reflects this disjunction by incorporating secondary images into the personal interviews - archival newsreels, family photographs, footage from Alain Resnais's La Guerre est finie (from a script by Semprún), iconic paintings (in particular, Pablo Picasso's Guernica which provided an implicit expression of solidarity among members of the resistance), and graphics from comic book superhero, Captain Thunder (penned by popular comics writer and secret Communist party member, Victór Mora) - that figuratively fill the void of incomplete, fragmented memories. Juxtaposed against a neurologist's diagnosis that Jordi's illness has entered a depersonalization phase where he has difficulty recognizing himself and the stories of his life, Solé reflects on his father's condition as a both a personal and cultural tragedy - a memory gradually being erased by the ravages of time, and within it, the dilution of a nation's collective consciousness.

But beyond a chronicle of Soviet-era whitewashing, Drygas examines the plasticity of memory in the way time deforms and sets - however imperfectly - during moments of crisis and tragedy. This idea is illustrated in the reading of Siwiec's will, as photographs of his wife and children from 1968 are intercut with present-day interviews of the children, now middle-aged, who share memories of their father and comment on the legacy of a heroism that had only been realized in the hindsight of cultural rehabilitation - his death, figuratively suspended in time, even as history has transformed to reframe his protest as an act of patriotic resistance. The refiguration of memory is also reflected in Siwiec's wife, Maria's recollections of their last Easter together, observing a distance and melancholy that may or may not have actually existed (a daughter earlier recalls Siwiec's animation especially when discussing politics with family), and in the accounts of witnesses who remember the incident only within the context of a momentary disruption from the pageantry by a mentally unstable spectator. In this respect, Hear My Cry converges towards Harun Farocki's expositions on the interrelation between cognition and recognition in Images of the World and the Inscription of War, exploring the disjunction between the captured image (seeing) and its registration (memory). Concluding with a slow motion, magnified shot of Siwiec's self-immolation captured by Kronika Filmowa camera operator, Zbigniew Skoczek, the manipulated footage itself becomes a protraction of time and signification of the image - an act of imprinting memory.