0109 – Europa (1991)

spacetime coordinates: 1940’s  US-occupied Germany

Europa (known as Zentropa in North America) is a 1991 Danish art drama film directed by Lars von Trier. It is von Trier’s third theatrical feature film and the final film in his Europa trilogy following The Element of Crime (1984) and Epidemic (1987). Europa was influenced by Franz Kafka‘s Amerika, and the title was chosen “as an echo” of that novel.

A young, idealistic American hopes to “show some kindness” to the German people soon after the end of World War II. In US-occupied Germany, he takes on work as a sleeping car conductor for the Zentropa railway network, falls in love with a femme fatale, and becomes embroiled in a pro-Nazi terrorist conspiracy.

Europa employs an experimental style of cinema, combining largely black and white visuals with occasional intrusions of colour having actors interact with rear-projected footage, and layering different images over one another to surreal effect. The voice-over narration uses an unconventional second-person narrative imitative of a hypnotist

The film’s characters, music, dialogue, and plot are self-consciously melodramatic and ironically imitative of film noir conventions.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101829/

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.

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0086 – Poll (2010)

spacetime coordinates: 1914 Estonia

The Poll Diaries (German: Poll) is a 2010 German drama film directed by Chris Kraus  loose adaptation of the diaries written by poetess Oda Schaefer combining a coming-of-age story about a precocious 14 year-old girl with the apocalyptic end of an era.

In the summer of 1914, fourteen-year-old Oda von Siering (Paula Beer) leaves Berlin to join her family and an assortment of German and Russian aristocrats on an estate in Estonia. The von Siering family home is a character in its own right, a hulking, neoclassical manor that hovers on stilts above the sea.

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073 – Rain Down From Above (film by Ivan Maximov)

0072 – Blade Runner Ambience – Sounds Of The City 2019

spacetime coordinates: 2019, Los Angeles

0068 – The Merchant of Venice (2004)

spacetime coordinates: Venice, 1596

The Merchant of Venice is a 2004 romantic drama film based on Shakespeare‘s play of the same name. It is the first full-length sound film in English of Shakespeare’s play

The title character is the merchant Antonio (Jeremy Irons), not the Jewish moneylender Shylock (Al Pacino) who is the more prominent character. This adaptation follows the text, but omits much. Director Michael Radford believed that Shylock was Shakespeare’s first great tragic hero who reaches a catastrophe due to his own flaws. The film begins with text and a montage of how the Jewish community is abused by the Christian population of Venice and brings attention to the fact that, as a convert, Shylock would have been cast out of the Jewish ghetto in Venice.

(trivia) the bare-breasted prostitutes were not put in the film to make it more risqué, but rather to add a note of historical authenticity. Venetian law at the time required all prostitutes to bare their breasts because the Christian authorities were concerned about rampant homosexuality in their city.

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0045 – Taboo (2017 TV series)

spacetime coordinate:  1814 London

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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