24th April 2016 ; Wim Wender's WINGS OF DESIRE

 

WINGS OF DESIRE

A film by Wim Wenders

1987/ Germany/ 129 min

24.04.16 /5.45pm / Perks mini Theater

http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.in/

Wim Wender's celestial tribute to life, love, Berlin, filmmaking, angels and the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, among many things. .Seen through the (black-and-white) lens of veteran French cinematographer Henri Alekan and reflected in the gentle eyes of Wenders' star angel Bruno Ganz, "Wings" is a soaring vision that appeals to the senses and the spirit.

The angels in “Wings of Desire” are not merely guardian angels, placed on Earth to look after human beings. They are witnesses, and they have been watching for a long time--since the beginning. The film evokes a mood of reverie, elegy and meditation. It doesn’t rush headlong into plot, but has the patience of its angels. It suggests what it would be like to see everything but not participate in it.

We follow two angels: Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander). They listen to the thoughts of an old Holocaust victim, and of parents worried about their son, and of the passengers on trams and the people in the streets; it’s like turning the dial and hearing snatches of many radio programs. the angel Damiel decides that he must become human.He falls in love with the trapeze artist.

"Wings," like most Heaven-and-Earth movies, ties up its resolution with romantic ribbons but, in Wenders' eyes, such a conclusion is the crowning union of life's dual opposites, the sensual and the spiritual, German's East and West -- as well as its Nazi past and occupied and uncertain present . . . It's also one of the best endings you can hope for in a movie. And "Wings" is one of the best movies you can see.  (Source: Internet)

 

Wim Wenders

Born in Dusseldorf in Germany just after the end of World War II, German film director Wim Wenders grew up with an insatiable appetite for movies. After studying medicine and philosophy in his native country, Wenders took up art study in and then returned to his homeland to attend Munich's Academy of Film and Television. Wenders began his career writing film criticism before directing a few short subjects of his own; in 1970 he and several other young filmmakers formed a production-distribution firm, Filmverlag Der Autoren. Summer in the City (1970) was Wenders' first feature film, but it was his 1973 adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter that first brought him attention outside Germany.

Wenders began his "road movie" cycle, inspired by such American pictures as Easy Rider (1970) and Two Lane Blacktop (1971). Three films in this genre followed in quick succession: Alice in the Cities (1974), The Wrong Move (1975) and Kings of the Road (1976).

 Wenders' American-financed films Hammett (1980) and Paris, Texas (1983) were remarkable in their evocation of time and place.Wenders' return to German filmmaking was rewarded in 1987 with the release of Wings of Desire.

10th April 2016; Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem

A film by Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz

2014 / Israel/ 115 minutes

5.45 pm / 10^th April / Perks Mini Theater

http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.in/

“Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem” is the story of a woman wronged by men and God, if finally, in a sense, redeemed by cinema. Gett is the Hebrew word for a legal divorce document in Jewish law. This is the ordeal of a woman’s attempt to divorce her husband under the strict religious laws of Israel. There’s no such thing as civil divorce in Israel, where, even today, the termination of a marriage cannot be granted — or even enforced, regardless of grounds — without the husband’s consent.

Shot entirely in the limited space of a courtroom and using uniquely subjective visual aesthetic, “Gett, The Trial of Viviane Amsalem” is Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz’s third feature film as a directing team. Ronit Elkabetz also stars in the film as Viviane, a character they developed based on their mother’s life.

Viviane — brought to powerful life by Ronit Elkabetz with currents of humility and hauteur — is at once a fleshed-out character, a political metaphor, a shout to heaven and earth. Despite a part requiring long periods of silence, her character’s emotions are as visible — and as changeable — as clouds passing in the sky.

The film depicts the last two years of struggle during which the adamant three-rabbi court tries every means to convince her to remake the couple. The action takes place almost entirely in two rooms, a Jerusalem Bet Din (Rabbinical Court) and its waiting room.  Despite the seemingly uncinematic nature of this inert, even claustrophobic scenario, the film mesmerizes, utterly. It’s at once a feminist film, obviously, and a larger story about diminishing the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) authority and influence in Israeli life.

Ronit Elkabetz & Shlomi Elkabetz

Israeli film makers  sister-brother duo Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz have made three films together.

Ronit Elkabetz actress / film maker was the oldest of four children, with three younger siblings who were all brothers. Her younger brother Shlomi, became a director whom she worked with on their trilogy on the life of Viviane Amsalem.Her acting career started in 1991. n May 2010, Ronit Elkabetz received the France Culture award at the Cannes Film Festival, a prize awarded to filmmakers for quality work and social involvement. The judges described her as a "woman teeming with passion and erotica, who can even play the queen of Egypt

Shlomi Elkabetz was born in 1972 in Be'er Sheva,Israel. After completing his military service, he decided he wanted to work in film. He traveled in the Far East and went on to New York, where he remained for seven years. He wrote prose and plays, and also acted; at a certain stage he and Ronit began to write the screenplay for "To Take a Wife," incorporating into it autobiographical elements. In 2000 he returned to Israel. The film, which came out five years later, won various prizes, including the Audience Award at the Venice Film Festival.