Barbara Wurm

Comments

Chibusa yo eien nare

A film about the poetry of life in hard times. Soul and body, sense and sensitivity, living, touching, desiring, dying. True, Koibumi ('Love Letter') might be fresher, Tsuki wa noborinu ('The Moon has Risen') wittier, Ruten no ouhi ('The Wandering Princess'") the bigger epic, Onna bakari no yoru ('Girls of the Night') of wider social range, and Ogin sama ('Love Under the Crucifix') even more tragic, but Forever a Woman aka The Eternal Breasts combines it all. it has the magic pace of a lifetime, leaving you in tears (of joy, too).

Komissary (Commissars)

The quiet, heavy, and dark world of decision-making. Political poetics as poetic politics – historically multilayered ambiguity. On revolutionary times and thereafter.

POZNAVAYA BELYI SVET

I chose this one, not because I prefer the only Lenfil’m-based piece to the eccentric’s others (Odessa bound), but it does take place at the crossroads of her ever-shaken career and about halfway through her life. A milestone in light-handedness, triangles, fun and melodramatic love.

Der GLÄSERNE TURM

A lucid post-war-metaphor on celluloid, with a level of disguised truth-searching sincerity nowadays unimaginable.

YA VIZHU SOLNTZE (I See the Sun)

Well, what should I say, a donkey can be the reason for falling in love with the blind love of an innocent young girl even more than with the sober attitude of a beautifully mature woman (needless to say, I also recommend Ramdenime interviu pirad sakitkhebze ('Some Interviews on Personal Matters', 1978), my friend Christine's favourite.

AURORA

Honesty reveals itself probably only shortly before the border to pretentiousness. The result is pure existentialism, mind-blowing glances into the mirror of cinema.

O SLAVNOSTI A HOSTECH

Inspired by the games played in literature. An accurate study of the functioning of authoritarian regimes. Mean, timely and eternal.

Tao Jie

A gesture of kindness and humility. No more. No less. After all, a simple life is not so simple.

Everything Will Be OK

One of those ultimate films. Wiser. Self-critical while world- and film-bound. A final word on guilt, media, humans and our universe.

Untitled

No reason to say good-bye, when you’ve had a taste of freedom.

Further remarks

It's not only because I am getting old that the world seems to fall apart a bit at the moment – forgive the absence of humour in this list. I still like fun :)