Not surprisingly, Eustache considers his role in filmmaking to be that of archivist instead of author, a respect for the subject and sacredness of images that is especially reflected in his provincial documentaries, Le Cochon and La Rosière de Pessac (and indirectly, Numéro Zéro). On his decision to remake La Rosière de Pessac, Eustache argues that the annual celebration could have easily been remade many times over, noting that the local mayor revived the village festival in 1896, loosely coinciding with the creation of the earliest Lumière films. In this sense, the Rosière ceremony represents not only a chronicle of French history, but is also integrally connected to the evolution of cinema. Moreover, on Le Cochon, Jean-Michel Barjol reinforces the idea of a filmmaker's archivist role by respectfully disagreeing with Eustache's earlier comment that their individually shot footage would have produced a different film from the actual final collaboration, arguing that their independent efforts would have invariably converged towards a near identical film to the resulting collaborative one, arbitrated by the (re)assertion of reality into the shot images. Ironically, the archivist versus author debate is seemingly upended in a subsequent episode in which an image of Eustache is momentarily observed walking along the other side of a wall during the dressing sequence of Le Cochon, and becomes a fitting metaphor for Eustache's abbreviated legacy: the faint, fleeting image of a wandering spirit, and the indelible imprint left behind in its passing.

In this respect, Third Cinema functions, not only as a simple reflection of 'alternative history' from an abrogated culture, but also as a chronicle - and indictment - of this process of systematic erasure. In the essay, The Third Cinema Question: Notes and Reflections, Paul Willemen cites this prevailing sense of indigenous culture and intrinsic activism (especially from the perspective of a dysfunctional, hybridized culture caused by colonial imposition) that characterize the films of Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Ousmane Sembene, and Ritwik Ghatak as cornerstones of Third Cinema's cross-cultural imperative:

"Each of them refused to oppose a simplistic notion of national identity or of cultural authenticity to the values of colonial or imperial predators. Instead, they started from a recognition of the many-layeredness of their own cultural-historical formations, with each layer being shaped by complex connections between intra- and inter-national forces and traditions. In this way, the three cited filmmakers exemplify a way of inhabiting one's culture which is neither myopically nationalist no evasively cosmopolitan. Their film work is not particularly exemplary in the sense of displaying stylistically innovative devices to be imitated by others who wish to avoid appearing outdated. On the contrary, it is their way of inhabiting their cultures, their grasp of the relations between the cultural and the social, which founded the search for a cinematic discourse able to convey their sense of a 'diagnostic understanding' (to borrow a happy phrase from Raymond Williams) of the situation in which they work and to which their work is primarily addressed."

In essence, if a dominated society is to remain relevant, its identity cannot solely be rooted in imitation, but rather, reconstituted as a confluence of both native and assimilated cultures that cannot be inhabited by a simple process of translation. This fundamental problem forms the essential question in Trinh T. Minh-ha's essay, Outside In Inside Out, examining the implicitly imposed limitations on native filmmakers that, by extrapolation, endows a certain omniscience - and consequently, omnipotence - on the part of Euro-American filmmakers to serve as figurative, anointed interpreters of other cultures. For Trinh, this paradigm not only reflects the imbalance of power between Insider and Outsider, but also implicitly reinforces mutually exclusive, binary modes of representation:

"That a white person makes a film on the Goba of the Zambezi or on the Tasaday in the Philippine rain forest seems hardly surprising to anyone, but that a Third World member makes a film on other Third World peoples never fails to appear questionable to many ...The marriage is not consumable, for the pair is no longer 'outside-inside' (objective versus subjective), but something between 'inside-inside' (subjective in what is already designated as subjective) and 'outside-outside' (objective in what is already claimed as objective) ...Any attempts at blurring the dividing line between outsider and insider would justifiably provoke anxiety, if not anger. Territorial rights are not being respected here."

Homi K. Bhabha similarly examines the fallacy of cultural (mis)identification with the Other in the essay, The Commitment to Theory, suggesting instead that the goal of Third Cinema is to facilitate cultural negotiation rather than negation through the co-occupation of what the author defines as Third Space, the "split space of enunciation [that] may open the way to conceptualizing an international culture, based not on exoticism or multiculturalism of the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture's hybridity".

Teshome H. Gabriel further explores the idea of Third Cinema as other history in the essay, Third Cinema as Guardian of Popular Memory: Towards a Third Aesthetics, illustrating its genesis in folkloric tradition, in essence, a medium for conveying history through popular - though not necessarily "official" - memory:

"Another form of Third Cinema narrative - the autobiographical narrative - illustrates this point. Here I do not mean autobiography in its usual Western sense of a narrative by and about a single subject. Rather, I am speaking of a multi-generational and trans-individual autobiography where the collective subject is the focus. A critical scrutiny of this extended sense of autobiography (perhaps hetero-biography) is more of an expression of shared experience; it is a mark of solidarity with people's lives and struggles."

This symbiotic relationship between Third Cinema and its cultural rooting is also reflected in Charles Burnett's essay, Inner City Blues, who argues that the integrity of filmmaking can only be preserved through personal investment within - and by - the community rather than in the bankrolling (and artistic compromises) of commercial studios:

"The commercial film is largely responsible for affecting how one views the world. It reduced the world to one dimension, rendering taboos to superstition, concentrated on the ugly, creating a passion for violence and reflecting racial stereotypes, instilling self-hate, creating confusion rather than offering clarity: to sum it up, it was demoralizing. It took years for commercial films to help condition society on how it should respond to reality. In the later films that strove for a reality, the element of redemption disappeared, and as a consequence, the need for a moral position was no longer relevant. There was no longer a crossroads for us to face and to offer meaning to our transgressions.

...Any other art form celebrates life, the beautiful, the ideal, and has a progressive effect, except American cinema - The situation is such that one is always asked to compromise one's integrity, and if the socially oriented film is finally made, its showing will generally be limited and the very ones that it is made for and about will probably never see it. To make filmmaking viable you need the support of the community; you have to become part of its agenda, an aspect of its survival."

The moral trauma and violence of cultural imperialism is eloquently articulated in Haile Gerima's impassioned essay, Triangular Cinema, Breaking Toys, and Dinknesh vs. Lucy. Contrasting the lavish construction of Hollywood films (and manufactured film stars) to the artisanal quality of Third World cinema, Gerima rejects the temptation to imitate the Hollywood model, citing Hegel's comment that "the most important act a child can engage in is the breaking of his/her toys" as a metaphor for the unattainable pursuit of false idols. Moreover, with the increasing international popularity of Third World cinema, Gerima insightfully cautions against its unwitting distortion as a cultural reinforcement of stereotypes and exotization.

"While we should be pleased with the growing interest shown by the progressive, international community in our cinema movement, we need to be concerned with the distribution and exhibition aspects of our creative outputs. We need to restore dignity to and for our films, we have to fight against the free exhibition of our culture. We must receive economic as well as political return for our labor, as part and parcel of our struggle for legitimate cinema. This will prevent the tendency to relegate our culture to the world of the exotic...

In the coming years, Third World cinema has a two-pronged responsibility: 1) to be an active catalyst in instigating the revolutionary uplifting of the masses of Third World from the gutter to the level of equal partnership - the birthright of all human beings - and to struggle to bring about the total removal of the above- and below-the-line distinctions of existence; and 2) to be a catalyst, directly or indirectly, in demystifying the superiority of the developed countries. This demystification can only take place through the decoding of the deemed superiority of the West. This will create some form of parity that will contribute to a better climate and democratic existence for all human beings. In other words, our cultural contribution to the West will be to bring them a little bit down to the human orbit."

The 2008 New York Human Rights Watch International Film Festival has now been posted, and unlike previous years, this year's selection is a combination of premiering films as well as highlights from previous HRWIFF selections such as Anthony Giacchino's The Camden 28, Scott Dalton and Margarita Martinez's La Sierra, Rithy Pahn's S-21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, and Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam's Dreaming Lhasa. Also, 2007 New York Film Festival Selection, Carmen Castillo's Calle Santa Fe is featured in the program.

Two films that I'm looking forward to this year are Maria Ramos's Behave and Senain Kheshgi and Geeta V. Patel's Project Kashmir. Ramos previously appeared in the HRWIFF program in 2005 with Justice, a sobering look at the Brazilian justice system in the style of Frederick Wiseman and Raymond Depardon. Kheshgi and Patel's film was featured as a work-in-progress screening at last year's festival, an insightful look at the Kashmir conflict from the disparate perspective of Southeast Asian-Americans, Muslim Kheshgi and Hindu Patel, whose lifelong friendship is gradually strained by their immersion into the heart of the regional conflict.

In Frankfurt, the intersection between past and present, history and memory is embodied in the establishing shot of social activist and former teacher, Doris Schwert listening to a reel tape recording of her father's wartime testimony as a partisan rebel and political prisoner who fought against the Fascists in Germany and Spain in the 1930s and 40s. Instilled with her father's socialist ideals of solidarity and worker empowerment, Schwert's student radicalism and subsequent political engagement as a young teacher had drawn increasing concern from school administrators and West German officials who saw her ties to the communist party as tantamount to an act of ideological sabotage in the waging of the Cold War. Contrasting the images of protest graffiti demanding the reinstatement of the blacklisted, left-leaning teachers at her former school with recruitment posters tacked near empty classrooms that paradoxically tout equal opportunity to job seekers even with such insidious former affiliations as the Nazi party and wartime service in the SS, van der Keuken presents the idea of work time as historical recursion, where lessons from the past are whitewashed and reinvented to conform to the sociopolitical and economic expediencies of an amnesic present, a sobering reality that is punctuated by the chapter's concluding, intercutting shot of a confectionery store window display that is lined with premium chocolate Easter baskets and archival footage of a postwar Frankfurt street in ruins, the metaphoric resurrection of a national soul, fueled not by moral enlightenment, but exploitation and consumerism.

The near wordless Amsterdam closing chapter chronicles a day in the work life of metal worker, Jan Van Haagen, from his early morning suburban commute on his bicycle, to the bellowing of a factory horn that signals the official start of the work day (a sound akin to an air raid signal that also recalls the image of wartime Europe introduced in the Frankfurt chapter), to the union-synchronized meal break, to a passing anecdote of a senior co-worker's health problems that led to an early death after refusing to use an exhaust hood during welding operations (in favor of the company's earlier policy of instituting milk breaks as a means of bolstering employee health after working with hazardous materials), to the closing of the workshop in the afternoon. As in the Den Helder chapter, the clock becomes a recurring motif, marking through the workers' prescribed labor and break schedule with the monotonous ritual of fabrication and assembly. Framed against the image of a constantly turning exhaust vent on the facing wall of the building, the juxtaposition between the factory clock and the exhaust fan illustrates the idea of work time as a cultivated environment for social as well as technological progress, a humanization of industrial production.

Motifs repeat in unexpected, yet coherent ways. The traditional construction of operatic tragedy inherent in Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto and Aida causes Kluge to observe, "In all operas dealing with redemption, a woman is sacrificed in Act V". The tragic irrationality of human despair during a high-rise building fire evokes the confusion of languages (and consequently, the confusion of emotions) created by the Tower of Babel, and is subsequently revisited in the chapter, The Opera House Fire, where a fireman, fascinated since childhood by a stage prop, sneaks into the burning building to catch a glimpse of its contents, the Holy Grail embodying the elusive quest. A woman's (Hannelore Hoger) eccentric, Chaplinesque appearance during an undefined interview is similarly reflected in a prostitute, Betty's (Suzanne von Borsody) excessive makeup, each suggesting the commerce of created desire. A tradesman's detailed explanation on proper bolting technique (itself, a crude visual metaphor to a woman's expressed wish to be handled by her husband as if he were a "repairman") resurfaces in the unusual weapon used during a robbery, representing both an object of fetish and an entwined fate that binds Betty and Schleich - the professional burglar who buys her freedom - to each other.

In the chapter The Power Plant of Emotions, Kluge expounds on the early images of music as the crystallization of grief (in the actual footage of a memorial service attended by Helmut Kohl), examining the role of opera in nineteenth century society as a medium for harnessing emotion: a projected scale reduced to the level of the personal (most notably, in the tragedy of the century old war between the Egyptians and the Ethiopians that is distilled to the triangular conflict of Aida). Juxtaposed against the construction of the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London as a showcase for the Great Exhibition of 1851 that will display a collection of valuable, cutting edge products from around the world, the correlation between the opera house and the Victorian-era Crystal Palace reflects their intrinsic connection between the physical and the ethereal within the mindset of colonial (and Industrial Revolution) era contemporary society - a corrupted convergence of dissimilar ideals that is embodied in the opera singer's alchemic quest for eternal life in Leoš Janáček's The Makropulos Case. In essence, the opera house and Crystal Palace have evolved into figurative temples that, like the Tower of Babel, reach towards the false idols of manufactured desire. Framed against the fire that destroyed the Crystal Palace and short circuit fire of the opera house, their destruction becomes a metaphor for the redemption of emotion - disconnected from the material pursuit - a dismantling of the fifth act.

The program for the 15th annual New York African Film Festival has been announced, and the opening night selection is the latest film from venerable independent filmmaker Charles Burnett entitled Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation, a biography of Namibia's first president and South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) leader, Sam Nujoma. The program runs from April 9-15 at the Walter Reade Theater, and continues through May at the French Institute Alliance Française and BAMcinématek.

Film Society of Lincoln Center (Walter Reade Theater)

Africa Paradis (Sylvestre Amoussou, 2007) screening with 1961 UK archival footage, Sierra Leone Independence - Africa Paradis seems to be following in the same vein as Pierre Yameogo's Me and My White Pal (featured in the 2005 NYAFF) on the plight of illegal immigrants, from the upended perspective of Europeans as illegal immigrants in Africa.
Fri Apr 11: 7:30 p.m.; Tue Apr 15: 7:45 p.m.

Shoot the Messenger (Ngozi Onwurah, 2006)
Thu Apr 10: 7:45 p.m.; Sat Apr 12: 9:30 p.m.

Ezra (Newton I. Aduaka, 2007) - A fiction film on a young man coming to terms with his experience as a child soldier during the protracted civil war in the Sierra Leone.
Wed Apr 9: 5:15 p.m.

Goodbye Mothers (Mohamed Ismail, 2007) - An examination of the peaceful coexistence between Muslim and Jews during the "Black Years of Emigration" in 1960s Morocco.
Sat Apr 12: 1:15 p.m.; Tues Apr 15: 5:30 p.m.

Juju Factory (Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda, 2006) - A film that explores the unreconciled history of Belgium's colonial past through the exoticization of contemporary Africa.
Thu Apr 10: 10:00 p.m.

Namibia: The Struggle for Liberation (Charles Burnett, 2007)
Wed Apr 9: 7:30 p.m.

Brothers in Arms (Jack Lewis, 2007) - A portrait of South African activist, Ronald Herboldt, who became the only African to participate in the Cuban Revolution.
Sat Apr 12: 7:30 p.m.; Tue Apr 15: 9:30 p.m.

Black Business (Osvalde Lewat-Hallade, 2007) - Known for her human rights-themed documentaries, Lewat-Hallade's film focuses on Cameroonian families who are still searching for information on their missing loved ones who disappeared during a government campaign in the 1990s.
Thu Apr 10: 5:45 p.m.; Tue Apr 15: 3:30 p.m.

Iron Ladies of Liberia (Daniel Junge and Siatta Scott Johnson, 2007) - A chronicle of the first elected female president in Africa, Liberia's Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf's first year in office following a fourteen year civil war.
Thu Apr 10: 1:15 p.m.

Cuba: An African Odyssey (Jihan El Tahir, 2006-2007)
Sun Apr 13: 9:30 p.m.

The African Slave Trades: Across the Indian Ocean (Diane Seligsohn and Richard Rein, 2007-2008)
Sat Apr 12: 5:30 p.m.; Sun Apr 13: 1:30 p.m.

Meteni: The Lost One (Wondessen Deresse, 2002) screening with Awaiting for Men (Katy Lena Ndiaye, Belgium, 2007)
Sat Apr 12: 3:30 p.m.; Tue Apr 15: 1:30 p.m.

Baa Baa Black Girl (Gül Büyükbeşe Muyan, 2007) screening with Bushman’s Secret (Rehad Desai, 2006) - Muyan's film is an examination of the legacy of slavery in Muslim countries from the perspective of descendant Afro-Turks who continue to face discrimination and social stigma decades after the abolition of slavery in the Middle East.
Wed Apr 9: 1:30 p.m.; Sun Apr 13: 3:30 p.m.

Fantôme Afrique (Isaac Julien, 2005) screening with This is My Africa (Zina Saro-Wiwa, 2008)
Fri Apr 11: 5:45 p.m.; Sun Apr 13: 7:45 p.m.

Meokgo and the Stick Fighter (Teboho Malatshi, 2006) screening with Bunny Chow (John Barker, 2006) - Malatshi's New Crowed Hope entry, Meokgo and the Stick Fighter was featured in the 2007 NYAFF Young Rebels shorts program, a sensual, gorgeously shot tone piece where imagination, humanity, and desire intersect in the austere grace of an eternal, unforgiving landscape.

Russian archival footage: Independently Guinea, The President of Guinea in the USSR, and Hello Guinea
Wed Apr 9: 3:45 p.m.; Sun Apr 13: 5:45 p.m.

French Institute Alliance Française

Buud Yam (Gaston J-M Kabore, 1997)
Tue May 6: 12:30 p.m.; 7:00 p.m.

Sarraounia (Med Hondo, 1986)
Tue May 6: 4:00 p.m.; 9:00 p.m.

Muna Moto (Jean-Pierre Dikongue-Pipa, 1974)
Tue May 13: 12:30 p.m.; 7:00 p.m.

Ali Zaoua (Nabil Ayouch, 2000)
Tue May 13: 4:00 p.m.; 9:00 p.m.

Barra (Souleymane Cisse, 1978)
Tue May 20: 12:30 p.m.; 7:00 p.m.

Drum (Zola Maseko, 2004)
Tue May 20: 4:00 p.m.; 9:00 p.m.

Homage to Ousmane Sembène - A tribute to the late filmmaker that includes a screening of Mamadou Niange's work in progress film, In Memory of Ousmane Sembène, Sembène's first film, Borom Sarret, and a panel conversation.
Tue May 27: 7:00 p.m.

Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAMcinématek)

African Shorts Program with Mama Put (Seke Somolu, 2006), Meokgo and the Stick Fighter (Teboho Malatshi, 2006) and Menged (Daniel Taye Workou, 2006)
Fri May 23: 6:50 p.m.; 9:15 p.m.

Les Saignantes (Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2005)
Sat May 24: 6:50 p.m., 9:15 p.m.

Juju Factory (Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda, 2006)
Sun May 25: 2:00 p.m.; 6:50 p.m.

Growing Stronger (Tsitsi Dangarembga, 2005) screening with A Love During the War (Osvalde Lewat-Hallade, 2005) - Dangarembga's Growing Stronger was one of my favorites from last year's NYAFF (screened in the Women of Zimbabwe shorts program), a profile of two African women from opposite ends of the social spectrum living with HIV: a working class woman, Pamela Kanjenzana and former model and AIDS activist, Tendayi Westerhof.
Mon May 26: 6:50 p.m.; 9:15 p.m.

Clouds Over Conakry (Cheick F. Camara, 2007) - This was the opening film for the 2007 NYAFF, a nuanced look at how tradition and modernity often tenuously coexist in contemporary African society.
Sun May 25: 4:30 p.m.; 9:15 p.m.

Not surprisingly, Mekas's earliest sequences are located within the (hollow) semblances of home itself, from portraits of fellow displaced persons who gather in silence at neighborhood parks and summer retreats in Stonybrook, Long Island, their wounded gazes betraying a despair over a distant homeland, to participating in cultural festivals that only serve to emphasize their dislocation, insularity, and quaint incongruity from cosmopolitan, modern-day New York City, to religious rites of passage that celebrate the continuity of family and ethnic traditions. In Reels 3 and 4, the refuge of sameness, commiseration, and impotent nostalgia that pervades the first two reels gives way to inspiration, liberation, and activism, evolving from the interiorization of grief (a loneliness that is reflected in Mekas's descriptions of his many long walks during his earliest days in New York) to the exteriorization of social commitment and action. Geographically, Mekas marks this transition through the brothers' relocation from Brooklyn to Manhattan, auspiciously on 13th Street in Greenwich Village, which also serves as an introduction to the creative community of artists such as poet Allen Ginsberg and filmmaker Ken Jacobs, and involvement in the nuclear disarmament campaign and the peace movement. Chronologically, this synthesis of creativity and politicization is reflected in the production of Mekas's experimental feature, Guns of the Trees (a time that also marks the filming of Adolfas's own feature, Hallelujah the Hills), as well as his assumed role as social documentarian, chronicling the zeitgeist of protest and unrest. In Reels 5 and 6, the development of Mekas's confidence as a filmmaker and integration into the New York art scene is reflected not only in his day-to-day experimentation (in particular, a playful, wandering camera self-portrait that suggests an embryonic version of Frans Zwartjes's Living) but in his equally comical attempts to be admitted to (or more appropriately, crash) the Robert Flaherty Seminar. In essence, Mekas's transformation becomes tied to his relationship with the creation (and resolution) of fixed images: first, in its frozen (and implicitly idealized) memories of a lost homeland, then subsequently, in the apparatus of capturing transience and passage within his own elusive (and often tangential) journey home. This idea of human experience coming, not to full circle, but to non-intersecting, collinear points within a spiral continuum is poetically encapsulated in the footage of Mekas filming his friends at a Long Island beach where, years earlier, he had visited with people from the Lithuanian expatriate community. Replacing black and white with color film, displaced persons with artists, Mekas captures the integral image of the artist as perpetual observer, outsider, and exile.

The line-up for the 2008 Rendez-vous with French Cinema has been announced and this year's selection looks very promising. I'm especially thrilled to see Nicolas Klotz's La Question Humaine, a film that re-teams Klotz with author Elisabeth Perceval (which incidentally, dovetails nicely with Klotz and Perceval's appearance at MoMA later in the evening for La Blessure). I'm also greatly looking forward to Noémie Lvovsky's Let's Dance (her earlier film Les Sentiments was a highlight of the 2004 Rendez-vous program), Christophe Honoré's Love Songs, and Cédric Klapisch's Paris, as well as the directorial debut of one of my favorite actresses, Sandrine Bonnaire with Her Name Is Sabine.

Roman de gare, Claude Lelouch, 2007 (Opening Night)
WRT: Fri Feb 29: 6:30 pm and 9:00 pm
IFC: Sat Mar 1: 7:00pm

Ain’t Scared / Regarde-moi, Audrey Estrougo, 2007
WRT: Sun Mar 2: 3:30; Wed Mar 5: 1:30pm
IFC: Tue Mar 4: 9:30pm

All Is Forgiven / Tout est pardonné, Mia Hansen-Løve, 2007
WRT: Fri Mar 7: 8:45pm; Sat Mar 8: 4:00pm
IFC: Thu Mar 6: 9:30pm

Fear(s) of the Dark / Peur(s) du noir, Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti & Richard McGuire, 2008
WRT: Sat Mar 8: 9:00pm; Sun Mar 9: 1:30pm
IFC: Sat Mar 1: 9:30pm

The Feelings Factory / La Fabrique des sentiments, Jean-Marc Moutout, 2008
WRT: Tue Mar 4: 8:45pm; Wed Mar 5: 4:00pm; Sun Mar 9: 6:15pm
IFC: Sun Mar 2: 8:45pm

The Grocer’s Son / Le Fils de l’épicier, Eric Guirado, 2007
WRT: Wed Mar 5: 6:30pm; Thu Mar 6: 3:15pm; Fri Mar 7: 6:30pm
IFC: Tue Mar 4: 7:00pm

Heartbeat Detector / La Question humaine, Nicolas Klotz, 2007
WRT: Fri Feb 29: 3:30pm; Sun Mar 2: 8:45pm
IFC: Sat Mar 1: 3:45pm

Her Name Is Sabine / Elle s’appelle Sabine, Sandrine Bonnaire, 2007
WRT: Sat Mar 1: 1:30pm; Wed Mar 5: 8:45pm
IFC: Sun Mar 2: 3:30pm

Let’s Dance! / Fait que ça danse!, Noémie Lvovsky, 2007
WRT: Fri Feb 29: 1:00pm; Sat Mar 1: 9:15pm
IFC: Sun Mar 2: 1:00pm

Love Songs / Les Chansons d’amour, Christophe Honoré, 2007
Sun Mar 2: 1:00pm; Tue Mar 4: 1:00pm and 6:15pm
IFC: Mon Mar 3: 7:30pm

Paris, Cédric Klapisch, 2008
WRT: Sat Mar 1: 6:15pm; Tue Mar 4: 3:15pm
IFC: Sun Mar 2: 5:45pm

A Secret / Un secret, Claude Miller, 2007
WRT: Sat Mar 1: 3:45pm; Sun Mar 2: 6:00pm
IFC: Fri Feb 29: 7:30pm

Shall We Kiss? / Un baiser s’il vous plaît, Emmanuel Mouret, 2007
WRT: Fri Mar 7: 4:00pm; Sat Mar 8: 1:30pm; Sun Mar 9: 8:45pm
IFC: Thu Mar 6: 7:00pm

Those Who Remain / Ceux qui restent, Anne Le Ny, 2007
WRT: Thu Mar 6: 1:00pm; Sat Mar 8: 6:30pm; Sun Mar 9: 3:45pm
IFC: Sat Mar 1: 1:45pm

Trivial / La Disparue de Deauville, Sophie Marceau, 2007
WRT: Thu Mar 6: 8:15pm; Fri Mar 7: 1:30pm
IFC: Wed Mar 5: 7:30pm

As in Ek Din Pratidin, the atmosphere of tension and menace in Kharij serves as a framework for subverted expectation. Structurally, Sen establishes this pervasive sense of uncertainty from the beginning of the film, in the unseen lovers' conversation that plays out against the image of the back of the taxi driver's head - a prefiguring metaphor for what would prove to be an exposition into the couple's subconscious that is also suggested in the image of Anjan in the mirror (in essence, his self-reflection), and is reinforced in the couple's repeated, amplified calls to wake Palan and subsequently, in the neighbors' attempt to break through the kitchen door when the boy fails to respond. Similarly, the protracted police inquest also reflects this anxiety by raising the specter of possible charges being brought as a result of the couple's negligence (and which, in turn, Anjan is quick to divert the blame on his landlord by seizing on a police officer's observation that a ventilator had not been installed in the kitchen), as well as the insinuation by a group of bystanders into the couple's home after surrounding Anjan on the street under the ruse of asking what happened. But beyond facile illustrations of deflected responsibility among inconsiderate employers and frugal landlords, Sen also exposes an endemic culture of collective accountability, where exploitation of the poor and the weak are rationalized not only by economic necessity, but also socially enabled by an impotent intellectualism that reinforces the status quo - an implied complicity that is articulated in a passing conversation between two university educated men who see the tragedy as a moral imperative and propose conducting a seminar on the subject of child labor as a means of taking up the cause. Moreover, by chronicling Anjan's desperate attempts to save face with the help of his influential neighbor (Bimal Chakraborty) by making accommodations for Palan's father to stay for the night (a courtesy that the couple never extended to his son, who slept behind the open stairwell, along with the landlords' houseboy, Hari (Dehapratim Das Gupta)), commenting to his consulting lawyer (Charuprakash Ghosh) that Palan was treated like a member of the family (a claim that the lawyer immediately refutes by citing his deplorable sleeping conditions, and Anjan's accusatory posture in his reference to Palan's earlier bout of illness as the boy having previously caused "trouble"), and attending Palan's funeral rites (albeit to verify that the mourners do not publicly denounce him in his absence), Sen illustrates a pattern of self-interest and denial that intrinsically reveals Anjan's struggle to confront his own guilt - an internal conflict that manifests itself in irrational fears that never materialize. It is the persistence of inerasable guilt that is evoked in the jarring soundtrack that accompanies Anjan's final encounter with Palan's father on the staircase leading to their apartment after performing their purification ritual, an invocation of unreconciled ghosts that reside, not in the realm between life and death, but in the recesses of a haunted conscience.

It is interesting to note that in illustrating the brothers' (as well as Clara's) subverted attempts at escapism (and figurative erasure) - the persistence of a haunted past (an apparent allusion to Tourneur) that is ingeniously reinforced in the discovery of a body on the lake near the fairgrounds where Vicente and Clara go on a date - Costa introduces the idea of an irrepressible, hidden history that continues to haunt present-day consciousness. Costa expounds on this theme of place as the eternal witness to a deracinated history in evoking Cape Verde's tragic legacy (as leprosarium and slave port) in the moral contamination of the forgotten residents in Casa de Lava, as well as the concentration camps of Tarrafal (in Tarrafal and The Rabbit Hunters) that perpetuate a sense of moribund captivity to a contaminated, dying land. Similarly, the contrast between the abandoned, rural family home and the sterile, anonymous apartment buildings where the brothers are held against their will in O Sangue may be seen as a prefiguration of the Fonthainas diaspora itself, from the transitory sanctuary embodied by dilapidated, condemned spaces (In Vanda's Room), to the soullessness of uprooted communities represented by impersonal, high density, public housing (Colossal Youth). In this respect, Vicente and Nino's instinctual struggle to escape also represents a moral captivity to a traumatic history, an elusive homecoming that paradoxically embodies both liberation and surrender to the will of fate.

In a way, Umut may be seen as an adumbration of Djibril Diop Mambéty's Le Franc in its cautionary tale of an insoluble debt that has metastasized into a vicious circle of delusion and gullibility, and the parasitic dependency created by institutionalized, arbitrary, windfall mechanisms that systematize poverty and disenfranchisement. This moral passivity (and consequently, victimization) is introduced in the establishing images of Cabbar: initially, through an incisive shot that frames a wash truck approaching his cart as he sleeps in the foreground, figuratively washing him away, in his oblivion, from the streets in the automated sweep of modernization; then subsequently, from his repeated requests to check his lottery ticket at a newsstand against the day's winning numbers, unable to read the posted numbers on the newspaper himself. At each instance, Cabbar's daily ritual is presented against undermining acts of intervention that render his apparent self-reliance an illusion. Visually, Güney and Gören reflect this rupture between perception and reality through the jarring juxtaposition of interstitial, highly formalized, chiaroscuro landscape shots (often resembling cutout animation) against rough hewn, neorealistic images of struggle and despair. Moreover, Cabbar's decision to follow Hodja's visions also represents a conscious, if unwitting, disempowerment in lieu of direct action and sociopolitical engagement: a rejection that is also suggested in his recusal from a planned cart driver strike, citing the confiscation of his vehicle. In essence, Cabbar's relegation of destiny into the hands of impotent fate reveals an underlying social schism - a division that is implied in the foreshadowing shot between modernity and tradition at the station - that, in turn, exposes the folly of inaction. Concluding with the image of a blindfolded Cabbar aimlessly turning in circles to divine his fortune, Umut illustrates that despair lies, not in the absence of hope, but in its hollow, inert persistence.

The 2008 Film Comment Selects program has just been announced. Highlights include the opening night screening of Jacques Rivette's latest film, The Duchess of Langeais, a late night screening of George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead, the retrospective screenings of Philippe Garrel's J’entends plus la guitare and Trent Harris's Rubin and Ed, a spotlight on Richard Fleischer, and a sampling of Damon Packard's unclassifiable cinema. The closing night will feature Alex Cox's Walker and Searchers 2.0.

SPECIAL LATE NIGHT PREVIEW
George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead (George A. Romero)
Thu Feb 14: 10:30pm

OPENING NIGHT
The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette)
Fri Feb 15: 6:00pm

The Banishment (Andrei Zvyagintsev)
Mon Feb 18: 6:00pm; Wed Feb 20: 3:00pm; Mon Feb 25: 2:00pm

Before I Forget (Jacques Nolot)
Sun Feb 17: 6:45pm; Thu Feb 21: 3:15pm

Boarding Gate (Olivier Assayas)
Fri Feb 15: 9:45pm

Chop Shop (Ramin Bahrani)
Mon Feb 18: 9:00pm

Container (Lukas Moodysson)
Tue Feb 26: 2:15pm and 9:15pm

Dark Matter (Chen Shi-zheng)
Wed Feb 27: 8:15pm; Thu Feb 28: 1:00pm

Dust (Hartmut Bitomsky)
Wed Feb 20: 6:15pm

The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin)
Sat Feb 23: 4:30pm

Ex Drummer (Koen Mortier)
Sat Feb 16: 10:00pm; Tue Feb 19: 3:30pm

Flash Point (Wilson Yip)
Sun Feb 17: 9:00pm; Tue Feb 19: 1:30pm; Fri Feb 22: 4:00pm

Frontière(s) (Xavier Gens)
Fri Feb 22: 9:00pm; Wed Feb 27: 2:15pm

Import Export (Ulrich Seidl)
Sun Feb 17: 1:30pm; Wed Feb 20: 8:15pm

Inside (Julien Maury & Alexandre Bustillo)
Sun Feb 24: 9:00pm; Tue Feb 26: 4:00pm; Wed Feb 27: 6:30pm

Joy Division (Grant Gee)
Sat Feb 16: 7:30pm; Wed Feb 27: 4:30pm

Schindler’s Houses (Heinz Emigholz)
Sun Feb 24: 3:45pm

Wolfsbergen (Nanouk Leopold)
Sat Feb 16: 5:30pm; Mon Feb 18: 4:00pm; Wed Feb 20: 1:00pm

A Wonderful World (Luis Estrada)
Sun Feb 17: 4:15pm; Mon Feb 18: 1:30pm; Fri Feb 22: 1:30pm

RETROSPECTIVE
J’entends plus la guitare (Philippe Garrel)
Mon Feb. 25: 8:30pm

Rubin and Ed (Trent Harris)
Sat Feb 23: 7:00pm

SPOTLIGHT ON RICHARD FLEISCHER
Mandingo (Richard Fleischer)
Sat Feb 23: 2:00pm

10 Rillington Place (Richard Fleischer)
Thu Feb 21: 1:00pm; Sun Feb 24: 1:30pm

MONDO PACKARD
Reflections of Evil (Damon Packard)
Fri Feb 22: 6:15pm

Damon Packard’s Greatest Hits (Damon Packard)
Sun Feb 24: 6:00pm

CLOSING NIGHT
Walker (Alex Cox)
Thu Feb 28: 6:30pm

Searchers 2.0 (Alex Cox)
Thu Feb 28: 8:30pm

Screening on February 29, 2008 at 8:15 p.m at MoMA Titus 1.

P.S. Here's the link to the French trailer for the film that Harry Tuttle alerted me to. (Thanks again, HT!)

An elegant prelude and illuminating companion piece to Carlos Saura's ¡Ay Carmela!, Fernando Fernán Gómez's Voyage to Nowhere chronicles the turning fortunes and endemic poverty that had befallen the itinerant, road theater performers during Franco-era Spain, resulting from both strictly enforced censorship within the regime's repressive agenda of instilling a selective national culture, and an out of favor, traditional form of entertainment against the popularity of a vital cinema. Weaving truth and fiction, memory and imagination, personal history and anecdotal transposition, Carlos's rambling memoirs reflect a nation's sense of disorientation and irreconcilable history under the shadow of the Franco regime as the country emerged from its isolation after years of political turmoil from the Civil War and the Second World War with a revisionist - and institutionally imposed - cultural identity. In a sense, the obsolescence of the road theater in the wake of popular, internationally influenced cinema is not only a supplanting of the artisanal with the technological, but also captures the public's sentiment of dislocation and penchant for escapism that, in turn, reflects a broader symptom for the country's social polarization and class stratification engendered by repressive policies of the ruling elite (an inhuman disparity that is also captured in Mario Camus's The Holy Innocents). It is within this incongruent image between the mundane and the exotic, fame and obscurity, that Carlos's imagined screen encounter with the iconic Marilyn Monroe becomes, not the fanciful delusion of an aging, forgotten actor, but the liberation of haunted memory in the equilibrium of time.

This intersecting crisis of personal and national identity is initially suggested in Siddartha's encounter with an apprehensive job applicant at a crowded botanical survey recruiting office who frets over the likelihood of the interview being conducted entirely in English. Not surprisingly, the surreal opening sequence would prove to be a harbinger for Siddartha's unusual interview as well - a disjointed, three panel inquisition that would run the gamut from knowledge of civic history (in a question that exposes the country's at times reactionary sentiment towards British rule), to curricular proficiency, to existential purpose. But despite having answered their questions handily, Siddartha finds his hopes for a position within the company extinguished by the panel's reaction to his response over his expressed opinion on the most significant world event within the decade. Responding with the Vietnam War over the far less controversial advent of the moon landing, Siddartha proposes that the continued resistance of everyday Vietnamese people intrinsically reveals humanity's ennobled resilience and capacity for great struggle against insurmountable odds. However, rather than a comment celebrating the indomitability of the human spirit, the panel interprets his response as an indication of Marxist tendencies and a sympathetic approbation of the left movement, and curtly dismisses him from the interview. Spending his days in fruitless pursuit of dwindling job prospects, Siddartha witnesses first-hand the toll of poverty, radicalism, and cultural imperialism on a city in a state of perpetual flux: a matinee newsreel hailing the country's seemingly unreaching economic development under Indira Gandhi as the theater is thrown into chaos by the sound of a detonated terrorist bomb; his unemployed university friends' unapologetic theft of a charity collection can; the rampancy of Western tourism that reveals the country's ingrained, subordinate international status as a result of its colonized history; his sister's increasingly liberated (and consequently, publicly scandalous) behavior since becoming the family's sole breadwinner.

Based on the novel by Bengali author Sunil Gangopadhyay (who also wrote Days and Nights in the Forest), The Adversary is the second film in Ray's loosely defined Calcutta trilogy that portrayed the experiences of university-educated young men as they seek to establish their professional lives in the midst of social upheaval. From the introductory, dual image of Siddartha, Ray illustrates an upended society that has lost its identity and soul in the face of extremism and economic polarization. Visually, this dehumanization is revealed in the film's opening sequence, where the stark and otherworldly images reflect the often grotesque nature of the country's postcolonial transformation, as the country's emulation of Western paradigms as a means towards modernization and progress has led to an alienating and deeply divided culture of outmoded traditions and exploitive enterprise. Moreover, this image of a rended society is also reflected in the recurrence of fractured families throughout the film, from the death of Siddartha's father, to the rumored affair between Siddartha's sister and her married employer, to his friend's disclosed relationship with a common law wife, and finally, to his former classmate, Keya's (Jayshree Roy) strained relationship with her father following his decision to remarry his mistress after her mother's death. Concluding with a freeze frame of Siddartha on the balcony of a rural hotel in Balurghat, his journey from his beloved city is also a sentimental estrangement, a self-imposed exile from the entropy and dissonance of the city towards the reassuring, familiar cadence of a patient, eternal land.