"Dear Mr. President!" - this is how Zosia Kaczynska titled her letter, asking Boleslaw Bierut - on behalf of herself and her three siblings - to release her mother from prison. This letter did not reach the addressee. Most of the requests for clemency, written by convicts and their relatives, already at the beginning of their journey to the head of state received a note in the prosecutor's office or court: leave without further course. Historian and archivist Janusz Kotanski and former political prisoner Janusz Horodniczy followed in the footsteps of documents found in the archives in search of those harmed by Stalin's repressive apparatus.
Australian-born filmmaker George Miller offers a personal view of Australian films. He suggests that they can be regarded as visual music, public dreaming, mythology, and song-lines.
Mari is a high school teacher who is earnest and somewhat cold. Tired of her monotonous days, she discovered a secret game: wandering around Roppongi at night and seducing men.
Director Mohsen Makhmalbaf claims to have never seen a movie before making his first film. Doubtful as it sounds, this boast matches perfectly with the controversial artist's personae.
Set on May 18, 1993—the day on which Denmark voted to join the European Union, just a few months after they'd voted not to do so—the film follows eight or so disparate Danes (an escaped mental patient, a newly-famous singer, a business executive, and their assorted families and cohorts) as they unwittingly alter one another's lives, for better and for worse.
Filmmaker Ernesto Rimoch looks at the potent combination of love and ambition in this film about a couple who's so happy their daughter is marrying into a rich clan that they throw the best wedding ever, even if they can't afford it.
BEAUTIFUL FUNERALS is a hand-painted double-step-printed film composed of 1) dense blackness variously punctuated by brilliantly colored jewel/flower-like shapes AND 2) interruptive white sections which are fuzzily dotted with blurred whites and criss-crossed by black "brushstrokes" and hard-edge straight black and white lines.
