ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[memento]

Plot: The movie follows a group of young friends in the city of Tel Aviv and is as much a love song to the city as it is an exploration of the claim that people in Tel Aviv are isolated from the rest of the country and the turmoil it's going through. The movie looks at young people's lives in Tel Aviv through the POVs of gays and straights, Jews and Arabs, men and women. It all begins when Noam, a young Israeli soldier, serves in the reserve forces and meets at a check point a Palestinian young man called Ashraf. Following an incident during which Noam misplaces his ID card at the check point, Ashraf shows up on the doorstep of the apartment that Noam shares with a gay man and a straight woman. How will the meeting affect all of their lives?

[southendmd]

Plot:  In this film made over ten years, filmmaker Barbara Sonneborn goes on a pilgrimage to the Vietnamese countryside where her husband was killed. She and translator (and fellow war widow) Xuan Ngoc Nguyen explore the meaning of war and loss on a human level. The film weaves interviews with Vietnamese and American widows into a vivid testament to the legacy of war.

[Fran]

From IMDb:  After the war, Matt Gordon returns to Singapore to retrieve a fortune in smuggled pearls. Arrived, he reminisces in flashback about his prewar fiancée, alluring Linda, and her disappearance during the Japanese attack. But now Linda resurfaces... with amnesia and married to rich planter Van Leyden. Meanwhile, sinister fence Mauribus schemes to get Matt's pearls.

[Lynne]

From Wiki

Poor Sicilian fishers are exploited by fish wholesalers. One of the families is trying to escape them by being their own boss. But fate nobody helps them, and even fate is against them... Played by real Sicilian fishers, filmed on location in the Sicilian dialect : almost a documentary. 

[southendmd]

Plot:  Travelogue documenting extremely isolated areas in Switzerland between Bernese Alps and the Rhone River.

[memento]

Plot: Dean (Henry Jaglom) is a maverick American film director surprised that his most recent film has been chosen as the Official U.S. Entry at the Venice Film Festival. A beautiful French journalist (Nelly Alard) arrives at the festival with the apparent intention of interviewing the unique and eccentric filmmaker. In the midst of all the festival madness, she is forced to confront the wide divergence between things as they really are and things as they seem to be - both onscreen and off. And so, finally, are we. Shot half in Venice, Italy and half in Venice, California, "Venice/Venice" looks at the profound effect movies have had - and continue to have - on our lives, our loves and on our dreams of romance. 

[Fran]

From IMDb:  In the early years of this century, an impoverished British woman, Kate Croy, seems trapped by and dependent upon her wealthy aunt. Befriending a fatally ill, rich American woman provides Kate with not only a trip to Venice, but an opportunity to break free of her aunt and her poverty.

[oilgun]

From IMDb:   Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Winnipeg. Everything in Winnipeg is a euphemism. Sleep walkers hold the keys to their old homes! By law! Nazi Fascists invaded Winnipeg! The coldest city in the world! Home of the Ultravixens! Forks and the Forks under the Forks, and the horsehead picnic tables! Hermaphrodite streets - half front street, half back lane! Masons, ghosts, spirits and sad buildings! Citizen Girl! Yes, you can find these things in Winnipeg, Winnipeg, wonderful Winnipeg!

If you've ever seen a film like My Winnipeg before, it was likely only in your dreams, or the dreams of the mad poet of Winnipeg, Guy Maddin. Maddin's love of the silent film era has shaped his own visual style, shot usually on old grainy film stock, appearing as it his films were perhaps well preserved 1920s avant garde. He's built a career on making films so outrageously insane by modern film-making standards. His films are usually either bizarre horrors or totally unique comedies, or both. My Winnipeg is a film of sinisterly off the wall humor, conveyed through Guy Maddin's narration (played by Darcy Fehr). One gem: "My father died, with nothing left to do, he died. I'd like to say he spontaneously combusted on the ice at the area, that would have been great."

The narration often doubles back on itself, repeating itself in different forms, or entirely contradicting itself in single sentences. All the while the images (usually grainy black and white, but also occasionally in color or animation) are punctuated with flash cards, usually in single or short phrases (Tragedy! Dead Man walking! Dance of the Hairless Boners, Naked! Hairless! Dance! Swollen Pride! Why?!) They flash only for a fraction of a sentence, making them difficult to read.

I guess if My Winnipeg could be placed in a genre, they would have to call it a slapstick documentary. Maddin uses archive footage mixed with Maddin's own. The central thesis of the film is Maddin's memories and the city's as well. To begin, he rides a train, sleeping, while it rolls around the Winnipeg streets, seemingly unable to ever leave town. To come to terms with his inability to ever leave the city. He rents his old home for a month, to recreate his childhood memories. He recruits actors to play his siblings, and takes his mother (Ann Savage) to the home, then recreates memories and incidents from childhood. Maddin always seems to have a fascination with mothers, his mother. Elsewhere, he details the Masonic undercurrents of the city, the occult, man pageants, Nazi takeovers, and the rape of the city's beloved Winnipeg Jets by that corrupt National Hockey League!

So, the question that many ask then, "is it true?" Being Canadian, I know some things are true, some things are not. Would you want to really know the answer anyway? Its law that everyone gets to keep the keys to their old homes. Why? Because the town has the highest sleepwalking rate in the world! They leave their homes and wander to their old houses in the dark, in the cold, in the snow! You must let them in until they wake! Is that true? I don't care to know. If I knew then I would have to have come back to reality. Unless of course Maddin's Winnipeg is reality. In which case, Winnipeg! Wonderful Winnipeg!

[memento]

Plot: Is there a place in the world for Yu Ming? He's a clerk at a convenience store in China, bored with his life. At a library, he spins a globe and stops it with his finger, which turns out to be touching Ireland. He reads about the country and teaches himself Gaelic, flies to Dublin, and finds to his chagrin that no one understands him. He assumes that his Gaelic is at fault, that is, until he walks into a bar looking for work.

[Lynne]

From IMDb:

Because of a motorcycle accident, a young man from the poor outskirts of Paris must find a steady job in order to avoid being sent to prison. He gets into more trouble trying to do that.