0111 – Season of the Witch (2011)

spacetime coordinates:  Villach in the year 1235 // 14th-century Holy Roman Empire// Styria // Wormwood forest

Season of the Witch is a 2011 American fantasy adventure film directed by Dominic Sena. starring Nicolas Cage, Ron Perlman and Claire Foy. The film draws inspiration from the 1957 film The Seventh Seal.

In the 14th century, Teutonic Knights Behmen von Bleibruck (Cage) and Felson (Perlman) are engaged on a crusade, taking part in several different battles throughout the 1330’s (1332 Gulf of Edremit, 1334 Siege of Tripoli, 1337 Imbros & 1339 Artah) and eventually in the Smyrniote crusades. After witnessing the massacre of civilians during the 1344 capture of Smyrna, the two knights desert the Order and the crusade and return to Austria.

---

Wormwood, the name of the forest where blood is shed, is also the name of a destructive entity in the Bible. This entity, a star whose name also translates as Bitterness, appears to cause widespread illness. According to Revelation 8:10-11, “The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water–the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become bitter.”

---

‘Season of the Witch’ Trailer HD

---

imdb

104 – The Darjeeling Limited (2007)

spacetime coordinates:  2000’s India

The Darjeeling Limited is a 2007 American adventure comedy-drama film directed by Wes Anderson which he co-produced with Scott Rudin, Roman Coppola and Lydia Dean Pilcher and co-wrote with Coppola and Jason Schwartzman. The film stars Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Schwartzman and also features Waris Ahluwalia, Amara Karan, Barbet Schroeder and Anjelica Huston with Natalie Portman, Camilla Rutherford, Irrfan Khan and Bill Murray in cameo roles.

The Darjeeling Limited includes many of Anderson’s signature themes and styles, such as despair, abandonment, sibling relationships, a privileged class who rarely work, and timeless fashions and props. Anderson has revealed that The River by Jean Renoir, the films of Satyajit Ray and documentaries on India by Louis Malle were his inspirations for this movie. The film was dedicated to Ray and makes allusions to him and his work.

As of April 2015, on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 68% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 188 reviews, with a consensus among critics that the film “will satisfy Wes Anderson fans.”

imdb

0095 – Valhalla Rising (2009)

spacetime coordinates: Scottish Highlands around the year 1096

Valhalla Rising is a 2009 English-language Danish adventure drama film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, and starring Mads Mikkelsen. in writing the script Nicolas Winding Refn was responsible for the spiritual, metaphysical and plot related part while Roy Jacobsen was responsible for all the Norse mythological, viking and historical themes due to his extensive knowledge about vikings and Norse paganism.

The film follows a Norse warrior named One-Eye and a boy as they travel with a band of Christian Crusaders by ship in the hopes of finding the Holy Land.

_______

imdb

090 – Avril et le monde truqué (2015)

spacetime coordinates: 1941 Paris, Fort-la-Latte, French Empire

April and the Extraordinary World is a 2015 French-Belgian-Canadian animated science fiction adventure film co-directed by Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci, co-written by Ekinci and Benjamin Legrand, and starring Marion Cotillard. It depicts an alternate steampunk world with a visual style based on the work of French comics artist Jacques Tardi often credited solely as Tardi.

_____

imdb

 

084 – Kray / The Edge (2010)

spacetime coordinates: Siberia, the fall of 1945, KRAI -free labour camp / labour outpost

The Edge (Russian: Край) is a 2010 Russian drama film directed by Alexei Uchitel.

imdb

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.

---

imdb

066 – The Mission (1986)

spacetime coordinates:  18th century South America

The Mission is based on events surrounding the Treaty of Madrid in 1750, in which Spain ceded part of Jesuit Paraguay to Portugal. A significant subtext is the impending Suppression of the Jesuits, of which Father Gabriel is warned by the film’s narrator, Cardinal Altamirano, who was once himself a Jesuit. Altamirano, speaking in hindsight in 1758, corresponds to the actual Andalusian Jesuit Father Luis Altamirano, who was sent by Jesuit Superior General Ignacio Visconti to Paraguay in 1752 to transfer territory from Spain to Portugal. He oversaw the transfer of seven missions south and east of the Río Uruguay, that had been settled by Guaranis and Jesuits in the 17th century. As compensation, Spain promised each mission 4,000 pesos, or fewer than 1 peso for each of the circa 30,000 Guaranis of the seven missions, while the cultivated lands, livestock, and buildings were estimated to be worth 7–16 million pesos. The film’s climax is the Guarani War of 1754–1756, during which historical Guaranís defended their homes against Spanish-Portuguese forces implementing the Treaty of Madrid. For the film, a re-creation was made of one of the seven missions, São Miguel das Missões.

Father Gabriel’s character is loosely based on the life of Paraguayan saint and Jesuit Roque González de Santa Cruz. The story is taken from the book The Lost Cities of Paraguay by Father C. J. McNaspy, S.J., who was also a consultant on the film.

The waterfall setting of the film suggests the combination of these events with the story of older missions, founded between 1610–1630 on the Paranapanema River above the Guaíra Falls, from which Paulista slave raids forced Guaranís and Jesuits to flee in 1631. The battle at the end of the film evokes the eight-day Battle of Mbororé in 1641, a battle fought on land as well as in boats on rivers, in which the Jesuit-organized, firearm-equipped Guaraní forces stopped the Paulista raiders.

Historical inaccuracies

________

imdb

wiki