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Benjamin is a socially inept nobody. Max is handsome and charismatic. What these strangers have in common is computer hacking. After proving his skill, Benjamin is invited to join Max and his friends in a subversive hacker group. Identifying themselves as CLAY the gang carries out a series of spectacular attacks on political parties and even the ‘Federal Intelligence Agency’. For the first time in his life Benjamin feels like he belongs to something. Benjamin now wants recognition and status in the shadowy corner of cyberspace where hackers communicate-“the Net inside the Net.” To achieve this he will need to impress MR X, reigning king of the hacking world. The road to MR X involves an extremely dangerous Russian group known as FRI3NDS. With European cyber police also on his trail, Benjamin and CLAY will need to execute the most brilliant of plans just to stay alive.
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Every year without fail Hannes, his wife Kiki and their closest friends go on a bike tour. It’s Kiki’s turn to choose the destination and for some strange reason she’s selected Ostend in Belgium. Why Belgium? What does Belgium have to offer besides chocolate and fries? Shortly into the journey Hannes makes an announcement. He is terminally ill, and assisted suicide is legal in Belgium. This will be his final ride. After the shock has subsided the group decides to pedal hard and enjoy a wild time in celebration of Hannes’ life. For his younger brother Finn, womanizing Micha and bickering couple Mareike and Dominik, this will be a ride to remember.
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In the last days of Apartheid in South Africa four photographers from The Star newspaper in Johannesburg risked their lives daily to document the country’s frequent and appalling outbreaks of violence. Kevin Carter, Ken Oosterbroek, Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva were collectively known as the “Bang-Bang Club”. Today, only Marinovich and Silva are alive. Their candid testimony reveals how camaraderie, extreme bravery and sense of personal and professional duty results in the capturing of extraordinary and frequently disturbing moments in time. We also discover how violence and its aftermath claimed the lives of Carter and Oosterbroek.
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A documentary that analyzes the modern educational system and argues that it squelches children’s capacity for imagination, creativity, and independent thought. Our economic and social system is increasingly jeopardized by crises and there is no answer in sight. The politically and economically powerful were largely educated at the best schools and universities. Their cluelessness is tangible and long-term prospects have been replaced by hectic knee-jerk activity. It is becoming terrifyingly clear that the boundaries of our thinking have been too tightly confined from childhood on. Regardless of what school we attended, we follow thought patterns that date back to the early era of industrialization where what counted was forming people into well-functioning cogs in a production-line manufacture-driven society. Since then, learning contents may have greatly changed since then, and the school is no longer a place of authoritarian drilling. Nonetheless, the fixation on normed standards determines lessons more than ever. For some time now a harsh wind blows at schools. “Performance“, the maxim of the competitive society, has become the inexorable measure of all things throughout the world. But the exclusive orientation towards technocratic learning goals and the accurate repetition of context-free information is the death of precisely that playful creativity which might help us, without fear of failure, to seek new solutions. Alphabet concludes a trilogy that featured We feed the World and Let‘s make Money; it reverts to the themes of both, concentrating them in its lense and magnifying them to the point of ignition.
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Germany, 1968. Teenagers Martin and Ruby fall in love. Everything seems possible. Martin dreams of becoming a famous writer. Ruby sings like an angel. It can only be a matter of time before her beautiful voice carries her to stardom. But first they have to escape their provincial town and Ruby’s tyrannical, devoutly Catholic father. In desperation the lovebirds run away to Berlin. Their freedom is short-lived. For her sins Ruby is placed in a Catholic home run by the merciless Sisters of Mercy. Martin’s punishment is a stint in the infamous Freisstatt House of Correction. Fast-forward to 1977. Martin is broken and angry, while Ruby sings, but only with the help of booze and pills. But at last they are reunited. What does the future hold for these damaged souls?
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A magnificently photographed and superbly decorated adaptation of the German legend as told in the plays Faust by Johann Wolfgang Goethe and The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. The story begins with a wager between an angel and Mephisto (the Devil). Claiming he can destroy the soul of anyone, Mephisto sets his sights on Faust, an elderly alchemist who has led a simple and honest life. Mephisto starts his diabolical campaign by casting a deadly plague upon Faust’s hometown of Prague. From there Faust loses his faith in God and forms a pact with Mephisto that promises him eternal youth and carnal pleasure with beautiful duchess Marguerite and innocent virgin Gretchen.
????? Cine-Vue
????? Eye For Film
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‘Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans’ is the basis for this film. Fatih Akin offers the audience exquisite cuisine in this comedic look at a German-Greek chef running a Hamburg eatery, who upsets regular customers when a new chef presents his nouvelle cuisine. Adam Bousdoukos plays the financially strapped owner-chef whose battles with his brother, recently released from jail, and the new chef, lead to amusing and challenging events. Watch out for Anna Bederke who plays a waitress with attitude, and in one of her last film appearances, Moritz Bleibtreu’s mother Monica. The film has been described as ‘an audacious, dirty Heimat film’ — savour it for yourself.
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The doco “From Caligari to Hitler” is very good – chronicling so many of the great films during the Weimar Republic and linking it to that chaotic period in particular how expressionism and new sobriety movements were efforts to represent what was happening in a collapsing state. The doco offers footage from the works of a long list of great film directors (many who would go onto to produce much of the great work of post-war Hollywood) F.W. Marnau, Fritz Lang, Lubitsch, Robert Siodmak, Billy Wilder etc. After the doco they had a screening of Marnau’s adaptation of Goethe’s “Faust” with an ambient score from composer Thomas Koner.
The other film I liked was Faith Akin’s new film about the Armenian genocide “The Cut”, which has an excellent performance from Tahar Rahim (A Prophet, The Past) about the endurance of a man encountering the horrors of surviving mass destruction and travailing across continents in search of his children. Its strange that there haven’t been that many films on this topic (all I can think of are Atom Egoyan’s “Ararat” and Elia Kazan’s “America, America”) considering the enormity of the impact of these events on so many people during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Thanks Stephen