Some European films included
We're asking you to look at a number of European films, mainly because directors in Europe tend to work with much smaller budgets than their US counterparts. Without the money for glossy sets and special effects, European directors create their coherent screen worlds from contemporary settings, dialogue, character development and psychological tension skillfully manipulated. These models are important in planning our own, low-budget production.

 

Cinema       (Video)

The Celebration
The power of dazzling video shooting and imaginative editing make this skeltons-in-a-closet family gathering compulsive viewing. (Stick it out through the beginning sequences, which are a little boring.)
Review
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Central Station
Sentiment without sentimentality, and excellent editing.
Review (opens in a new window)

Affliction
American film-acting at its very best
Review (opens in a new window)

 

(Cinema)      Video

A Century of Science Fiction (on the syllabus, on reserve) (American)
An Awful Warning on the dangers of amateur shooting, editing and dialogue in SF moving pictures, plus an overview of the visions of the future held by the past.

Caravaggio (on the syllabus, on reserve) Dir. Derek Jarman (British) Although a film set in the past, Caravaggio demonstrates how inventive lighting and setting can generate a sensual visual treatment for very little money.

Day for Night Dir. Francois Truffaut (French)
Once called Truffaut's love letter to the film industry, this movie gives a romanticized but relatively accurate look at the ad hoc, inventive, 24-hour-a-day process of film-making

Living in Oblivion Dir. Tom DeCillo (American)
A funny, but even more romanticized, version of filming for a living, starring Steve Buscemi

Alphaville (on the syllabus, on reserve) Dir. Jean Luc Godard (French)
The future as film noir, suffused with sixties' anomie.

Solaris (on reserve) Dir. Andrei Tarkovskii (Russian)
Adapted from the novel, Solaris, by the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem, this film maps the encounter of a group of humans and a far distant plant

Stalker (on reserve) Dir. Andrei Tarkovskii (Russian)
An imaginative version of a dystopian future when earth has been visited, and then left, by interstellar travelers, whose landing place on earth turns into the mysterious Zone.

THX 1138 Dir. George Lucas (American)
His first, chilling major Science Fiction movie

Mariachi Dir. Robert Rodriquez (Mexican)
Inventive shooting and sharp editing in a lean gangsterfest later remade as the uninspired Desperado. The film, like Celebration, demonstrates the triumph of imagination and creativity over hard cash.

 

 

 
 
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