(Saturday, March 8, 2008)
Genre: Drama
Director: David Riker
Language: English / Spanish
Runtime: 88 min
Country: USA Release
Date: 7 July 2000
Synopsis La Ciudad is a wonderful, and beautiful movie with twisting story lines. Its black and white imagery gives us a feeling of being there; the vacant lot along the East River waterfront, the empty lot in Bushwick, the streets of Mott Haven, the sweatshops. I will say that my opinion of the movie is slightly tainted. I got to view it at New York's Museum of the Moving Image and met the director afterwards to talk about the film's unique production. Filmed over years, using black and white film was actually a necessity in order to create consistancy in lighting. The stories that make up the film's parts were developed by the actors shown in the film; which may explain its lack of any Hollywood-type ending
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jmj godville
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4:56 AM
Genre: Comedy / Drama / Romance
Director: Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund
Language: Portuguese
Runtime: 130 min
Country: Brazil / France / USA
Release Date: 30 August 2002
Synopsis
Taking place over the course of over two decades, City of God tells the story of Cidade de Deus (Portuguese for City of God), a lower class quarter west of Rio de Janeiro. The film is told from the viewpoint of a boy named Rocket (Busca pé in Portuguese) who grows up there as a fishmonger's son, and demonstrates the desperation and violence inherent in the slums. Based on a real story, the movie depicts drug abuse, violent crime, and a boy's struggle to free himself from the slums' grasp.
The movie begins cinematically depicting chickens being prepared for a meal. A chicken escapes and as an armed gang chases after it bumps into Rocket who believes that the gang wants to kill him. The movie then flashes back ten years earlier, to tell the story of how he got himself into that position.
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jmj godville
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4:35 AM
Genre: Action / Drama / Romance / Sci-Fi / Thriller
Director: Fritz Lang
Language: German
Runtime: 153 min
Country: Germany
Release Date: 13 March 1927
Synopsis
The film contains a scene where Maria retells a variation of the story of the Tower of Babel from the Biblical book of Genesis, but in a way that connects it to the situation she and her fellow workers face. The scene changes from Maria to creative men of antiquity deciding to build a monument to the greatness of humanity and the creator of the world, high enough to reach the stars. Since they cannot build their monument by themselves, they contract workers to build it for them for wages. The camera focuses on armies of workers led to the construction site of the monument. They work hard but cannot understand the dreams of the Tower's designers, and the designers don't concern themselves with the mind of their workers. As the film explains, "The dreams of a few had turned to the curses of many". It then ironically inverts the original story's conclusion, noting that the planners and the workers spoke the same language but didn't understand each other. The workers revolt and in their fury destroy the monument. As the scene ends and the camera returns to Maria, only ruins remain of the Tower of Babel. This retelling is notable in keeping the theme of the lack of communication from the original story but placing it in the context of relations between social classes
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jmj godville
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4:18 AM
Genre: Documentary
Directors: Asger Leth, Milos Loncarevic (co-director)
Language: Haitian / English / French
Runtime: 88 min
Country: Denmark / USA
Release Date: 20 July 2007
Synopsis
This documentary takes viewers into the dangerous slums of Cité Soleil in Haiti, where gang leaders rule the daily lives of families living there. Two of these gangsters are both brothers and aspiring rap stars. Yet they both battle each other for control of the streets and for the love of the same woman. Features a score by Wyclef Jean.
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jmj godville
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3:47 AM
