Spirits of the Rainforest

1994

Kim MacQuarrie

"Spirits of the Rainforest" is a feature documentary set in the remote Amazon rain forest of Manu National Park, in southeastern Peru. The film follows the intertwining stories of several researchers studying brilliantly-plumaged macaws and voracious giant otters as well as an American anthropologist (Dr. Glenn Shepard) living with a village of Machiguenga Indians, one of four ethnic groups that live in the park. The film follows the Machiguenga Indian Merino as he instructs his young son, Alejo, about the rain forest and also portrays the Machiguenga shaman, Mariano, who cures tribal members through the use of hallucinogenic drugs and in so doing visits with the forest spirits. 

Written by Robin Jackson

L'ange - The Angel

1983

Patrick Bokanowski

Connected by the recurring image of floating, disarticulated staircases, Patrick Bokanowski's equally transfixing, mysterious, and impenetrable magnum opus, L'Ange may be characterized as a synesthetic composition - a series of aesthetically distinctive, self-encapsulated chamber pieces, each revealing quotidian, if fantastic, acts of obsessive compulsion and moribund ritual. Converging towards the hybrid animation of his early short films, La Femme qui se poudre and Déjeuner du matin, Bokanowski's curious, often gothic figurations reveal an abstract logic of thematic suites that similarly reveal his penchant for juxtaposing optical experimentation with traditional fine arts, where rended objects (a doll used as a fencing target in L'Homme au sabre), accidental ruptures (a pitcher falls from the dinner table in L'Homme sans mains), and bursts of activity (a bather splashes animatedly in L'Homme au bain, and a group of identical librarians research, file, and reorganize a sprawling library in Les Bibliothécaires) reflect an overarching, universal law of entropy that, paradoxically, enables creation from the very act of friction, disorder, kinesis, and destruction.

The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz

2000

Ben Hopkins

Joe, a young American soldier, is hit by a mortar shell on the last day of World War I. He lies in a hospital bed in a fate worse than death --- a quadruple amputee who has lost his arms, legs, eyes, ears, mouth and nose. He remains conscious and able to think, thereby reliving his life through strange dreams and memories, unable to distinguish whether he is awake or dreaming. He remains frustrated by his situation, until one day when Joe discovers a unique way to communicate with his caregivers.

Reindeerspotting - Escape From Santaland

2010

Joonas Neuvonen

A documentary portraying barely twenty years old Jani, a drug addict living in Finnish Rovaniemi -the city in Lapland otherwise known as "Home Of Santa".

Rovaniemi is a snow-white Hades of boredom. Jani is willing to do anything to escape the tedious, tawdry everyday greyish dullness of reality.

The film-maker, Joonas Neuvonen, studying filmmaking in India at the time of shooting (2003), returned to his home town Rovaniemi and caught up with some of his childhood friends.

The sordid and deeply disturbing details of this documentary about heavy drug-users are known to most, of course, and has previously been popularized in the film "Trainspotting" -which the title of this documentary alludes to. Also, Swedish Stefan Jarls' "Modstrilogin" ("They Call Us Misfits") is a predecessor, equally unflattering in it's portrayal of societys' outcasts.

Reindeerspotting is a Finnish equivalent, and an in a sense important update for todays' audiences, revealing that absolutely nothing has happened since Jarls' exposé was introduced over 40 years ago.

Neovonens' documentary, his first, has a curiously detached and yet very sympathetic view of his friend Jani, who is unfortunatley doomed and inevitably set for his own destruction. Jani is intelligent, warm and owns an affectionate charm that makes this all the more hard to watch.

The film is very well edited and the unflinching material, thanks to Neuvonens', literally, very up-close approach to his subject, is intense and gripping in a stark and sad way.

Jani was recently found dead in Phnom Penh (2010).

The Handmaid's Tale

1990

Volker Schlöndorff

In a dystopicly polluted rightwing religious tyranny, a young woman is put in sexual slavery on account of her now rare fertility.

My Best Fiend - Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski

1999

Werner Herzog

In the 1950s, when Werner Herzog was 13, he was sharing an apartment with Klaus Kinski, an ego-maniacal live-wire. In an unabated, 48 hour fit of rage, Kinski destroyed every piece of furniture in sight. From this chaos, a beautiful albeit volatile partnership was born. In 1972, Herzog cast Kinski in Aguirre, The Wrath of God. Four more films would follow. In this personal documentary, Herzog traces the often violent up and downs of their relationship, revisiting Munich apartment where they first met - and thrashed, and the various locations of their films. 

Written by L.H. Wong