Tag: poetry
0071 – Wonderful Days (2003)
spacetime coordinates: AD 2142, Ecoban / Thera / The island of Gibraltar
Wonderful Days (also known as Sky Blue) is a South Korean animated science fiction film, released in 2003, written and directed by Kim Moon-saeng. The film deals with environmental destruction, pollution and class struggle.
Wonderful Days is set in 2142. Environmental pollution has led to a breakdown of human civilisation. A technologically advanced city named Ecoban was built and it harvests energy from the DELOS System, which uses pollution in a carbonite catalysed reaction to generate power. Carbonite extraction is carried out by people who live outside the city in the surrounding wasteland.
“I know that I shall meet my fate / Somewhere among the clouds above; / Those that I fight I do not hate, / Those that I guard I do not love; / Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, / Nor public men, nor cheering crowds, / A lonely impulse of delight / Drove to this tumult in the clouds; / I balanced all, brought all to mind, / The years to come seemed waste of breath, / A waste of breath the years behind / In balance with this life, this death.” (W B Yeats from the DVD cover)
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069 – Total Eclipse (1995)
spacetime coordinates: 19th century France – Brussels – Abyssinia
“The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.“
Total Eclipse is a 1995 film directed by Agnieszka Holland, based on a 1967 play by Christopher Hampton, who also wrote the screenplay. Based on letters and poems, it presents a historically accurate account of the passionate and violent relationship between the two 19th-century French poets Paul Verlaine (David Thewlis) and Arthur Rimbaud (Leonardo DiCaprio), at a time of soaring creativity for both of them.
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0040 – georgica (1998)
spacetime coordinate: post-World War II Estonia
Georgica is a 1998 Estonian drama film directed by Sulev Keedus. The film takes its name from Virgil‘s poem of the same name.
The action takes place in post-World War II Estonia. An old man lives alone on a deserted island which the Soviet fighter planes use for nighttime target practicing. A young neglected boy, who has become mute, is banished from the mainland and sent to the island to keep the old man company. Both are haunted by memories, the boy about his mother and the old man about the years before World War I he spent as a missionary in Africa.
Jakub: If you want to live and survive… then wait… Wait…and do what you’ve got to do. And then…wait again… This is the best thing you can do in this world…
I have seen it and I can tell you… You may push but only slightly… And then wait again… And you’ll live your life – and eat bread and honey… I eat honey –
and translate this old Vergil into Swahili… And I make silage for the animals on the continent… And you too will start talking when the right time has come…
(…) This end of the wax cylinder, it’s still quite empty… This is for you… Then later you can hear what your voice was like – when you were on the island – with an old man, a horse and some bees…
035
‘Life exists in colourful reflections’
‘Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben’
027 – Van Diemen’s Land (2009)
spacetime coordinate: 1822, The Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, British colonial penal settlement, established on Sarah Island, Macquarie Harbour
Van Diemen’s Land is a 2009 Australian thriller set in 1822 in colonial Tasmania. It follows the story of the infamous Irish convict, Alexander Pearce.
A group of transported convicts, suffering brutal treatment at the Sarah Island penal settlement on Van Diemens Land, escape into the Tasmanian wilderness in hopes of reaching the settlements to the east.
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0026 – Proteus: A Nineteenth Century Vision 2004
The animated documentary Proteus explores the nineteenth century’s engagement with the undersea world through science, technology, painting, poetry and myth. The central figure of the film is biologist and artist Ernst Haeckel, who found in the depths of the sea an ecstatic and visionary fusion of science and art.
Selections from the the film Proteus:
TimeSpace Warps 