German Animation

This is a collection of short German Animation compiled into a single programme.

Liked "The Rocks", "Hessi James" and "Terminal Paradise" the best for their storyline and the humour! Fell asleep during "Cherchez la Femme" as I had a heavy lunch. Thought "Rubicon" was cute" while "Hobo", "Ghost Train", "Recently 2", "The Modern Cyclops" and "The Raven" were pretty interesting! "Harara", "Escape", "The Message", "The Moment" and "The Patchwork Queen" were too abstract for me.

Side Effects Of Love

This is a love story of an Indian couple shown through the male perspective with lots of song and dance.

Liked the many comical moments and how the male lead was able to explain his situation so clearly!

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Don't Look Back

The film consists of three short segments. The first is about a father attempting to reconcile with his daughters. The second is about a telecoms engineer falling in love with a girl who is having an affair with a married guy. The last story is about a guy feeling lost about how things have changed after he got discharged from National Service.

All the three stories are about regret of some sort and how life must still go on despite of this. Liked the shots of the train and the railway tracks that appeared in all the film segments!

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The Choice

The story is about how a detective solved a murder mystery involving a pair of twin brothers who lead very different lifestyles.

Liked how the film unravelled the thought process of the police in solving the case! There was quite a bit of suspense where the audience had to decide who could be the real murderer! Very well written script with great dialogue!

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Life in Loops (A Megacities RMX)

This is a documentary that describes the life of the underpriviledged people in the big cities. It is edited from a similar themed film "Megacities" made almost ten years ago with additional scenes in Tokyo.

Liked how the music complemented what is shown on the screen and the MTV feel! Interesting how the film is cut to show the parallels among the different cities!

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A Zen Life

This is a biography of D.T. Suzuki who brought Zen to United States.

The documentary interviewed many people who are influenced by him. Learnt quite a bit about the Zen philosophy through them and Suzuki's television interview.

Scream of the Ants

The story is about a newly wed couple's honeymoon trip in India. It also turned out to be a spiritual journey as the people that they met acted as their guide.

Liked the interesting imageries and the dialogue! It is also funny at times! Good that most of the dialogue is in English so that I spend less effort reading the subtitles.

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Ad Lib Night

The story is about what happens in a single night when a girl pretends to be the long lost granddaughter of a man who is dying of terminal disease.

Liked the script and the quiet moments of the film! The girl looks very pretty too! Especially liked the sock changing scene that symbolised the decision to step into the shoes of the other person and the dialogue in the car towards the end where the revelation made everything fall into place!

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The Other Half

The story is about the life in Sichuan, China where a young woman work as a secretary in a law firm. Clients would come to their firm and seek consultation on their cases and these are presented in a face-to-face interview style.

Liked how the different clients presented their cases at the law firm! The different problems that they faced helped me understand life in China better. Also liked how the digital camera captured the small town life so realistically!

Feet Unbound

The story is about a young woman retracing the steps of the Chinese Red Army during the Long March period more than 70 years ago. She interviewed six surviving female soldiers who recounted the living conditions then.

Liked the interesting personal stories told by the old soldiers! They looked smart in their uniforms and so animated when they recalled how they had to traverse the mountains, cross the rivers and fight the enemies all at the same time! Also liked the narration by the young woman that served to contrast between the past and present life!

In a Year of 13 Moons

The story is about a man with an identity crisis. He had a sex change operation to turn from Erwin to Elvira so that he could be with a man (Anton) he loved and left his wife (Irene) and daughter (Marie Ann) but things didn't work out as planned and he became depressed in the process.

Liked the extensive use of voice narration and the scenes where Elvira had to talk to strangers in the street! Also liked how the nun weaved her way across the different characters as she walked and the interesting dance that was performed in Anton's office!

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The Woven Lives of Others

This is about the life of a tribal village in Philippines. The priestess laments about her diminishing role in the village while soldiers and communist rebels fight in the jungle.

Liked the leisurely pace, the songs and the music in the film! Not much of a plot though as it just shows the daily life of the different types of people in the tribe.

Betina

A strange film about life in an Indonesian village where people rear cows. A girl tries to find her father who seems to be working in a cemetry and using black magic on widows who just lost their husbands.

One particular cow seems to be a witness to what goes on in the village as people interact with it. The girl milks her and lies together with it in the barn while her colleague is jealous of the cow and abuses it. Reminds me a bit of "Au Hasard Balthazar" about the life of a donkey which I am watching halfway.

Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst

The story is a biography of a famous Australian, Florence Broadhurst. She is a socialite who started a company doing colorful wall papers when she became a grandmother and got murdered mysteriously one day.

Interesting use of animation to tell her story! Also liked the interviews with her staff who clearly loved her and feared her at the same time! Didn't like the part where they simulated a day in the life of Florence showing her walking around as I thought it was quite pointless.

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The Last Chip

A cute short film about a trip to the casino by three asian women in Australia where one gambler passed them her last chip which is supposed to bring them good luck.

Interesting look at how the casino works in the eyes of both the staff and the client! Quite educational since the Integrated Resorts will be opening in Singapore soon!

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Prague

The story is about how a man travelled with his wife to Prague to collect his dad's dead body and finding more about himself in the process.

Was quite surprised to see the bad guy in "Casino Royale" act in this film! Great acting and nice scenery! Liked how the male lead tried hard to communicate his feelings even though he is clearly not very good at it!

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M

The story is about the Japanese society's perception of the female sexuality shown through a young housewife who is being pimped by a gang member.

The film described the different roles of the female gender pretty well! As an adult, she has to fulfil her role as a wife to her husband and as a mother to her child, yet she longs to be just a daughter of a father figure. At other times, she is just a sexual image in the head of her husband and other men. Had a better understanding of this through the young housewife's dealings with her husband, her son, her pimp and a young man who befriended her son at the baseball field.

Grbavica

The story is about the life of a Bosnian family that consists of a single mother and her daughter. The mother works in a factory in the day and a bar in the night. The daughter studies in school and she has an upcoming class trip that costs US$ 200. The cost can be waived if she proves that her father died in the war as a soldier, so she keeps bugging her mother about it.

Liked how the film showed the group of single mothers quietly sitting down and staring at different directions! The songs and poems are beautifully written too! Also liked how the individual parts combined nicely together towards the end!

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The Journals of Knud Rasmussen

The story is based on the journals of a Danish ethnographer named Knud Rasmussen in the 1920s. He and his friend stayed with an Inuit family in an igloo and he recorded their way of life which is slowly being eroded away by Western culture.

Liked the opening that showed the family preparing for a group photo and how the director showed their everyday life! Compared to "Nanook of the North", which is another documentary about Eskimos, this films describes more on the family relationship and the spiritual aspect rather than how they catch fish or canoe around on the icy waters. One girl who sat in the corner quietly in her thick bearskin fur coat reminded me of one particular character in "South Park"!

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The Marriage of Maria Braun

The story is about how a German woman, Maria, survive post World War II Germany through her wits and charm!

Liked how the strong minded Maria manage to survive the tumultous times! She figures out other people's mind easily but has people guessing what she'll do. Very nicely written dialogue that cuts straight to the point! Liked the explosive start and finish too!

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