Europa 2005 – 27 octobre

My films are like that: in a room, but looking out onto an open sky. [...] I can’t really say it except to repeat that Bresson note, ‘that without a thing changing, everything is different.’ The film exists. The fiction is set up, and we believe in it. The justness of the agreement leads us to believe it, because everything plays equally at being a sign. That’s the arrangement of the elements. It’s an act of faith. La vallée close is just this: elements treated above all as if in a documentary that, without being changed, portray the story and reveal between them the elements of fiction. But above all seen as they are, insignificant. And then in the relations they set up, they can satisfy our desire for a story. -- Rousseau

A young man, recently arrived in New York from Europe, becomes swept up in a series of events that are beyond his knowledge or control.

A man returns to visit his native Sicily after living in New York for a long time. He learns about the Sicilian way of life from stylized conversations with an orange picker, his fellow train passengers, his mother, and a knife-sharpener.

About the history of the French region of Lorraine, called Lothringen in German.

A landmark work of symbolistic imagery. The words that the filmmakers speak offscreen are imaginary conversation with Cézanne quoted from a critique by Joachim Gasquet. An exchange of memories spanning over 250 years interweaves everything from the philosophy of Empedocles to excerpts from the film Madame Bovary, to extant paintings by Cézanne, to the buildings of the artists’ village at Mont Sainte-Victoire. —ntticc.or.jp

These Encounters Of Theirs divides 10 non-professional actors into couples, then has them take turns in declaiming the Dialogues With Leuco, Cesare Pavese's abstract, philosophical work.

The life and music of Johann Sebastian Bach as presented by his wife, Anna.

A visit to the Louvre in Paris commentated by an actor reading Cézanne.

Set in contemporary Rome, the film shows through a series of encounters with “ancient” Romans, how the economic and political manipulation by ancient Roman society led to Caesar’s dictatorship. - British Film Institute

A satirical attack on West Germany's re-armament and revival of militaristic tradition in the Adenauer era.

A fearless Antigone, refusing to allow the dishonored body of her murdered brother Polynices to be devoured by vultures and dogs, defies the Thebian tyrant Creon by burying him.

Based on a rarely performed Schoenberg opera from 1929, From Today Until Tomorrow explores one night in a marriage. A husband and wife return from a party where she has flirted with another man while he has cast an appraising eye toward one of her acquaintances. Each dreams, briefly, of leaving the marriage for the excitement and mystery of a new lover.

The film is a commemoration of the lost livelihood of the earth, the lost lives of the War and to the work of two of the cinema’s greatest artists.

A familiar Biblical tale transformed into a cinematic opera of seemingly endless possibility. In expressive, melodic tones, the fraternal pair debate God’s true message and intent for His creations, a conflict that leads their followers towards chaos and sin. Set almost entirely within a Roman amphitheater whose history lends every precise line-reading and gesture, every startling camera move and cut, a totalizing force.

An alternate look at a part of Sicilia, perhaps left out for its more straightforward didactic quality. Interesting to again see the long gaps. Also note the extra use of close-up (for them) on the old woman.

The film is a sort of presentation of Franco Fortini's book 'I Cani del Sinai'. Fortini, an Italian Jew, reads excerpts from the book about his alienation from Judaism and from the social relations around him, the rise of Fascism in Italy, the anti-Arab attitude of European culture. The images, mostly a series of Italian landscape shots, provide a backdrop that highlights the meaning of the text. - Fabrizio Sabidussi