How are you going now that you’re doing everything from the confinements of your home? Have you managed to keep some kind of a decent relationship with all the others who share the same prison as you? Your family members, or maybe your partner, kids, parents, house mates? Or if you’re on your own, do you feel like smudging the bathroom mirror with toothpaste by now?
It could be worse, you could have all the freedom and still feel trapped like the couple in this film, in a passive aggressive funny nightmare. Watch their silent bickering escalate to a very surprising and (hopefully not just for me) a sweet ending.
I am sure you’ve noticed, we have taken a break this year. If you’re missing our screenings, check this page once in a while. We’ll post movie links and short films to keep the Euraw spirit alive.
I believe we’ve posted this one before, but this short film is so relevant now. And I don’t know about you but I tear up every time I watch it. The story is really simple but the performances are superb. Luminita Gheorghiu is the queen of Romanian New Wave.
Stay safe and love one another. And now that all social events have been cancelled most of us will become avid online movie watchers. But when you’re surfing the web for something new, try to also look for titles from The Other Europe.
We’d love to invite you to our 2020 Annual General Meeting. If you are a member with a 3 month or a 10 month pass, or if you’d like to get involved and join the Euraw Inc Committee, join us this Saturday (the 18th) from 10:30-12:30 at Mr Tulk (on the La Trobe side of the State Library) for brunch and a chat.
On the agenda:
2019 rundown and wrap up
reiterate the Board/Committee structure
what’s on for 2020: discuss the future program of Euraw Stories
chat, nibble, socialise
All pass holders are welcome to participate and join the Euяaw Inc Committee and help our events grow bigger and run better.
See you on Saturday at Mr Tulk, corner of Swanston and La Trobe St, within the State Library of Victoria.
This black comedy allows us to learn that the first living being in space was not actually a dog called Lajka but a Hungarian crop-sprayer by the name of Lajkó.
Drama 1’30 min
Director: Balázs Lengyel
Languages: Hungarian
In early 1957, the Soviet Union decides to give Hungary the honour of providing the first cosmonaut to orbit in space. The most suitable candidate turns out to be none other than Lajos Serbán, known to all as Lajkó, whose life as a pilot reflects his lifelong attraction to the stars and an unexplored infinity with outer space.
When he is eventually selected for this daring mission, he has little notion of the fact that it is not by chance that his dreams are set to come true.
On this day 30 years ago, an important event occurred: the ideological and physical division between east and west was finally removed. On the night of the 9th of November 1989 the commander of the Bornholmer Straße border crossing yielded, allowing for the guards to open the checkpoints and allowing people through with little or no identity checking. As the Ossis swarmed through, they were greeted by Wessis waiting with flowers and champagne amid wild rejoicing. Soon afterward, a crowd of West Berliners jumped on top of the Wall and were soon joined by East German youngsters.
To commemorate this event we’ll screen a hilarious German film that captures the transition East Berliners went through during those times.
Germany 2003
Drama/Comedy 2 hours
Director: Wolfgang Becker
Languages: German
In October 1989, right before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Alex Kerner (Daniel Brühl) is living with his mom, Christiane (Kathrin Sass), and sister, Ariane (Maria Simon). But when the mother, a loyal party member, sees Alex participating in an anti-communist rally, she falls into a coma and misses the revolution. After she wakes, doctors say any jarring event could make her have a heart attack, meaning the family must go to great lengths to pretend communism still reigns in Berlin.
In true European style, Hier is a coproduction between 6 countries, directed by a Hungarian, with a Romanian lead actor, spoken in French and English, and shot in Morocco. It’s also known by three names: French – Hier, English – Yesterday, Hungarian – Tegnap.
Hungary, France, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, Morocco 2018
Drama 1’59 min
Director: Bálint Kenyeres
Languages: French
The central character, 50-year-old Victor Ganz owns a thriving building and civil engineering company that operates worldwide. Some very costly problems on a building site in North Africa mean he has to go there (he hates traveling), to a country where he is confronted with memories of his youth, which have been carefully buried in the depths of his mind. Meetings in ministries, disinformation, the reappearance of a past love who had mysteriously disappeared, an investigation in the local underground to find her: Victor Ganz slowly plunges into a labyrinthine world where present and past intertwine.
Germany/ Czech Republic 2013 Adventure/ Comedy 1’30 min Director: Markus Dietrich Languages: German
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnicT2UGQD4
For ten-year-old Friederike October 1989 gets off to a disastrous start: her beloved Uncle Mike (27) is expelled from the GDR and has to leave the country within 48 hours. Inspired by her big idol Captain Burgh, Friederike and her friends Jonathan (10) and Fabian (10) construct a teleporting machine to “beam” her uncle Mike back to the GDR. But the experiment dramatically fails. Instead of successfully beaming the three kids across, the entire village population disappears! For a moment it seems that Frederike and her friends are the last remaining kids on earth. But TV proves what Frederike had immediately suspected: they have managed to beam everybody but themselves to West Berlin. They witness on TV how their families and friends desperately try to climb back over the Wall to their home country. Only quick thinking and action can undo the experiment and prevent the worst from happening before the border guards open fire. A race against time and the nasty local policeman Mauder begins.
A locked door inside a Belgrade apartment has kept one family separated from their past for over 70 years. As the filmmaker begins an intimate conversation with her mother, the political fault line running through their home reveals a house and a country haunted by history. The chronicle of a family in Serbia turns into a searing portrait of an activist in times of great turmoil, questioning the responsibility of each generation to fight for their future.
Serbia 2018
Documentary 1’44 min
Director: Mila Turajlić
Languages: Serbian
FROM THE DIRECTOR
I want to speak of my country from a very personal angle, and from a very precise point of departure – the place where I live. The more I stare at the locked doors that I have been faced with all my life, the more I realize how much about Serbia can be understood by talking about divided spaces.
The plot of the film grows like a spiral: A personal investigation into divided space (unfolds) a family chronicle (which becomes) an account of turbulent times (that ends up portraying) a story of a country.
While the story unfolds inside the apartment, the view from the windows lets us enter a Serbia rarely ever seen in the media. I have been filming from the windows for the past 10 years, creating an archive of dramatic and intimate moments taking place on the streets below.
What is the story behind a locked door and an apartment full of history? That an individual is powerless before the forces of politics, or that she is defined by the choices she makes in those situations?
A critical and audience favourite at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival (where it was awarded the Best Director prize) and a major 2019 Oscar contender, Paweł Pawlikowski’s follow-up to the Academy Award-winning Ida (screened in Euraw’s 2016 program) is a ravishing, music-fuelled romance charting two mismatched lovers caught between East and West in 1950s Europe.<
Poland 2018 Drama 1’30 min Director: Paweł Pawlikowski Cast: Tomasz Kot, Joanna Kulig, Borys Szyc, Agata Kulesza, Cédric Kahn Languages: Polish
In the ruins of post-WWII Poland, pianist Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) is commissioned by the Soviet state to form a musical ensemble to help rekindle national pride. Whilst touring the villages in search of talent he meets the beautiful Zula (Joanna Kulig, in a luminous star-making turn), a fiery and charismatic singer with a past, and the two fall passionately in love. When a performance in Berlin offers the pair an opportunity for escape to the West, a last-minute decision finds them stranded on either side of the Iron Curtain. As the years march on, Wiktor and Zula – whether through political circumstance or personal impetuosity – struggle to find their moment in time…
Spanning 15 years across Warsaw, Berlin, Paris and Yugoslavia, and inspired by the lives of the director’s own parents, COLD WAR meticulously recreates the era with virtuosic black-and-white cinematography, and an extraordinary soundtrack that is used judiciously to signify the passage of time and shifting relationships. Warmly lyrical, impossibly romantic and visually stunning, COLD WAR is one of the films of the year.
