HFF Watchlist! Dea Kulumbegashvili's recommendations
The award-winning filmmaker of APRIL and BEGINNING has some picks for you.
Welcome to my latest experiment with the HopeForFilm newsletter.
I want to help you build your watchlist to such an extent that you too have selected more films to consider than you will likely be able to consume during your lifetime. And I would like them to be predominantly boldly authored cinema, the kind that we truly need a new ecosystem for… you know… NonDē! As well as the sort most folks may have not seen.
My new plan is to follow up my Hopeful Conversations with a list of a couple recommendations of what such films to watch from the filmmakers, filmworkers, and filmlovers I interview. Let me know if you like this feature. Perhaps it can be weekly. Perhaps it should be monthly. If you have an opinion please share it.
You might remember Dea Kulumbegashvili from our 6/5 Hopeful Conversation on her film APRIL "I do not think that art needs to entertain anyone.". She’s got three bold choices to offer, and one of which I haven’t seen.
Please check out her recommendations and notes below.
Alice, 1988 by Jan Svankmajer. This is a very loose adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in the Wonderland. I would say that this film is somehow a darker and more surreal experience of the Alice’s adventure. Alice is rather an experience than a narrative story that would require to provide “what and why” kind of explanations of the events of the film.
The film itself is partially a live-action and in parts a stop-motion animation. This is usually a technique used by Svankmajer in his films. I find this absolutely fascinating as this technique challenges our perception of presence and space, “real” and “non-real”. Alice falls into a surreal dream as she chases a white rabbit. In this surrealist dream everything is possible; just like in a dream the rules of gravitation, proportions and every other rule of physics is challenged and disregarded. This is a film that shows that cinema as a medium makes it possible to dive into our own dreams and stop trying to make sense.
Stream it in US on Hoopla with your library card or on Ovid.
Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968 by Tomás Gutiérrez- Alea. This film from Cuba, is maybe the one that I think the most in the past few months. I am from Georgia, a beautiful country that is increasingly more separated from the rest of the world as the government chooses the politics of isolation and limited freedoms. There is a lot of resistance among young people who want to be able to think freely, to be able to debate, engage arguments and challenge the status quo. For these aspirations many are detained. There is an overall sense of melancholy, of lost liberties. What once was taken for granted now comes with the sense of guilt. We question- can we be careless? Can we indulge in the romantic affairs, just for pleasure? The world around us is falling apart.
I mentally get back to the main character of this film. Sergio is an intellectual, an aspiring writer who lives during the events that are larger than him. Sergio drifts through life as he tries to fall in love in his attempts to connect with life, to question his place and if he belongs during the turbulent changes that Cuba is going through.
Available to stream on YouTube.
The Long Farewell, 1971 by Kira Muratova. The film was censored and shelved in Soviet Union. It was only released in theaters in 1987.
This film is just wonderful. I have seen it so many times… It is such nuanced and such tender exploration of the life of a single mother, of womanhood… The main character is very familiar to me. She is not a hero; she is not larger than life representation of what a mother should be. But rather a study of the “ordinary” middle class, single mother (if we need to categorize) and her struggle with banal realities of life - aging, loneliness, youth that is left behind and not much to aspire for in the future.
Main character is portrayed as she is -with flaws in her character and nuances of her all-encompassing maternal love. This woman dedicated her life to raising her son. As if in her own life she were a secondary character. This film’s big moment is when a son grows up, reconnects with the father and wants to leave his mother’s house… Somewhere, where the father lives, life seems more eventful and interesting. The film explores the pain that mother feels and the clumsy decisions she that she makes as she is struggling to accept the distance that her son needs for his own good.
Available to stream on Apple and Amazon.
If you’d like to read more about Dea, please check out this post:
Interesting! I want to see April and Beginning, and Alice. Thank you for the recommendations, Ted and Dea!
I like to hear about films I may have never seen before. I was referred to "Children of Paradise" and "Resurrection" (1980), two of my favorite films.