0091 – In the Realms of the Unreal (2004)

spacetime coordinates: 1892–1973 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. 

In the Realms of the Unreal is a 2004 documentary film directed by Jessica Yu about American outsider artist Henry Darger.

An obscure janitor during his life, Darger is known for the posthumous discovery of his elaborate 15,145-page fantasy manuscript entitled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred watercolor paintings and other drawings illustrating the story.

The film’s style is atypical of a documentary. Because there are only three known photographs of Darger, and because of his reclusive lifestyle, the film is mostly a narrated biographical account, accompanied by animated versions of events from his magnum opus, which is also surveyed in detail. Interviews with his few neighbors and other acquaintances are included.

In the last entry in his diary, he wrote: “January 1, 1971. I had a very poor nothing like Christmas. Never had a good Christmas all my life, nor a good new year, and now… I am very bitter but fortunately not revengeful, though I feel should be how I am…”

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079 LUNAR

078 – The Theory of Everything (2014)

spacetime coordinates: 60’s – 80’s England

The Theory of Everything is a 2014 British biographical romantic drama film directed by James Marsh and adapted by Anthony McCarten from the memoir Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen by Jane Wilde Hawking, which deals with her relationship with her ex-husband, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, his diagnosis of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (or Motor neurone disease), and his success in physics.

historical accuracy

In an e-mail to director James Marsh about the portrayal by Eddie Redmayne, Stephen Hawking said there were certain points when he thought he was watching himself.

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075 – The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

spacetime coordinates: 1985 > 1968 > 1932
the town of Nebelsbad / Lutz  in the former Republic of Zubrowka  (the farthest eastern boundary of the Europen continent)

The Grand Budapest Hotel is an 2014 comedy film written and directed by Wes Anderson, from a story by Anderson and Hugo Guinness, inspired by the writings of Stefan Zweig. The narrative takes the form of a story within a story within a story.

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0067 – The Rum Diary (2011)

spacetime coordinates: San Juan, Puerto Rico, the 1960s

The Rum Diary is a 2011 American film based on the novel of the same name by Hunter S. Thompson. The film was written and directed by Bruce Robinson and stars Johnny Depp.

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Paul Kemp: [Kemp and Sala are wandering down a pier late at night, high on hallucinogens] I thought I was losing grip in there. What did we take?

Sala: I don’t know.

Paul Kemp: We need to get some more. [stops to stare at a tank full of lobsters]

Paul Kemp: [quietly] That explains it… doesn’t it?

Sala: Explains what?

Paul Kemp: The world… and us. [he stares deep into the eyes of one particular lobster]

Paul Kemp: [voiceover] I wonder what it is you might think about our different worlds. He looked at me kinda sideways and said, “Human beings are the only creatures on Earth who claim a God, and the only living thing that behaves like it hasn’t got one. Does the world belong to no one but you?” And when he said it, I was taken aback. Not because of who was doing the talking. Because I finally understood the connection between children scavenging for food, and shiny brass plates on the front doors of banks.

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065 – Ida (2013)

spacetime coordinates: 1960s Polish People’s Republic

Ida (pronounced [ˈida]) is a 2013 Polish drama film directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and written by Pawlikowski and Rebecca Lenkiewicz. Set in Poland in 1962, it is about a young woman on the verge of taking vows as a Catholic nun. Orphaned as an infant during the German occupation of World War II, she must now meet her aunt. The former Communist state prosecutor and only surviving relative tells her that her parents were Jewish. The two women embark on a road trip into the Polish countryside to learn the fate of their family.

Called a “compact masterpiece” and an “eerily beautiful road movie”, the film has also been said to “contain a cosmos of guilt, violence and pain”, even if certain historical events (German occupation of Poland, the Holocaust and Stalinism) remain unsaid: “none of this is stated, but all of it is built, so to speak, into the atmosphere: the country feels dead, the population sparse”. ( wiki )

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049 – Shirley: Visions of Reality (2013)

spacetime coordinates: 

saturday, august 28th 1931 paris, 11 p.m.
sunday, august 28th 1932 new york, 9 p.m.
monday, august 28th 1939 new york, 10 p.m.

wednesday, august 28th 1940 new york, 10 p.m.
friday, august 28th 1942 new haven, 8 p.m.

thursday, august 28th 1952 new york, 6 a.m.
tuesday, august 28th 1956 new york, 9 a.m.
wednesday, august 28th 1957 pacific palisades, 6 p.m.
friday, august 28th 1959 cape cod, 11 a.m.

monday, august 28th 1961 cape cod, 7 a.m.
wednesday, august 28th 1963 albany, 7 p.m.
thursday, august 28th 1963 albany, 9 a.m.

Faithfully reproducing 13 of Edward Hopper‘s tableaux three-dimensionally on set, the basis of the film is the story of an independent and opinionated New York actress (Stephanie Cumming) whose life we follow through three turbulent decades of American history, from 1931’s Great Depression to the Riots of 1963.

“Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city,” Edward Hopper once remarked of his masterpiece Nighthawks, the famous scene depicting a downtown diner late at night. In fact, many pieces in Hopper’s oeuvre, a sun-drenched yet grimly nostalgic memento of midcentury modern America, depict solitary figures engaged in an act of reflection. Whether we see them deep in thought in the morning sun or swallowing whisky at a bar after dark, Hopper’s paintings conjure a sense of curiosity for his subjects’ past – and indeed, Vienna-born director Gustav Deutsch was so inspired by this aura of mystery that he decided to create Shirley: Visions of Reality, an exquisite example of interdisciplinary cinema based on the imagery in Hopper’s paintings.

read more: www.anothermag.com