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LOVE CHILD (South Korea-America // directed by Valerie Veatch) is a documentary following of the first tried case of Internet Addiction the world has ever seen. Filmed over two years in Seoul, Korea, the film follows the story of a young couple in South Korea who were immersed in an on line game raising a fairy child and their real life baby died of neglect.
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Downfall (German: Der Untergang) is a 2004 German-Italian-Austrian historical war drama film depicting the final 12 days of Adolf Hitler‘s rule over Nazi Germany in 1945. It was based on several histories of the period.
The film begins with an excerpt from the documentary Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary (2002), featuring the real Traudl Junge expressing her guilt and shame for admiring Hitler in her youth. The film continues showing Hitler (Bruno Ganz) hiring Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara) as his secretary at the Wolf’s Lair in East Prussia in November 1942.
The story resumes on 20 April 1945, the Führer’s birthday, during the Battle of Berlin.
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Adventurer James Keziah Delaney builds his own shipping empire in the early 1800s.
It was created by Steven Knight, Tom Hardy and his father, Edward “Chips” Hardy and is based on a story written by Tom and Chips Hardy. The eight-part series, set in 1814, begins with James Delaney (Tom Hardy) returning to England after twelve years in Africa with fourteen stolen diamonds, following the death of his father and as the war with the United States is nearing its end. Delaney finds himself in a face-off against the East India Company, whilst playing a dangerous game between the two warring nations.
music composed by Max Richter.
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Hard to Be a God (Russian: Трудно быть богом, translit. Trudno byt’ bogom) is a 2013 Russian science fiction film directed by Aleksei German, based on the novel Hard to Be a God by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.
A group of 30 scientists travel from Earth to a nearly-identical alien planet that is culturally and technologically centuries behind. The inhabitants of this planet have brutally suppressed a renaissance movement, murdering anybody they consider to be an intellectual, and thus the planet is stuck in the middle ages.
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The story starts when Min, a botanist who spent her childhood as an orphan, comes to intern at the botanical gardens under her new instructor, Chen. It is there that she meets An, Chen’s daughter, and finds herself falling in love in a time and place where same-sex relationships are an unforgivable crime.
Since it delves into a topic considered taboo in China, the government refused to allow for the film to be shot or even shown in the country (it was ultimately filmed in Vietnam)
Dai Sijie (director) “I felt that the deep love that brought these two young women together was extremely romantic. In my mind, these women weren’t so much ‘lesbian’ – since they didn’t really possess a recognition of knowledge of themselves as such – but rather they just were determined to love each other dearly. That unwavering surety of pure love just tears at the heart. Also, what really got to me was the fact that these were women denied their freedom. They were justified in their love and there should be no reason why they shouldn’t be able to continue in it–so one has to wonder, why do they not have that right? Since I have experienced losing the right to my own expression, I know what it feels like to not be able to be who you are in your own country. I felt close to both of them, because to me it seemed like we were all outsiders.”
The Chinese Botanist’s Daughters Interview with Dai Sijie in Tokyo Wrestling
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he Assassin (Chinese: 刺客聶隱娘; pinyin: Cìkè Niè Yǐnniáng; or: The Assassin Niè Yǐnniáng) is a 2015 martial arts film directed by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien. A Taiwan/China/Hong Kong co-production, loosely based on the late 9th century martial arts story “Nie Yinniang” by Pei Xing, a core text in Chinese swordsmanship and wuxia fiction.
landscapes
“The King of Kophen’s bluebird failed to sing for three years.
One day the Queen remarked : Birds sing only to their own kind, set the bird before a mirror!
The King heeded her advice.
The bluebird saw its own image, it sang of its sadness, it danced, until it expired.”
(trivia: In the film, the actors speak classical Chinese which was mostly used for literary texts and almost never spoken. The final version henceforth includes Chinese subtitles.)
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Safe — sometimes written as [safe] or [SAFE] — is a 1995 British/American drama film written and directed by Todd Haynes, and starring Julianne Moore. The story is a character study of a suburban California housewife whose life deteriorates under the stress of “environmental illnesses” and seeks hope from “New Age” practitioners with whom she becomes involved. Safe was voted the best film of the 1990s in the 1999 Village Voice Film Poll.
Set in an affluent neighbourhood of the San Fernando Valley in 1987, the film recounts the life of a seemingly unremarkable homemaker, Carol White who develops multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS, also known as “Twentieth-Century Disease”). MCS is a medically controversial diagnosis in which a person develops mild to severe non-specific symptoms and believes that these symptoms are triggered by chemicals found in everyday household and industrial products.
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