FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Nadine Labaki - Caramel 

The title Caramel serves as a metaphor. In Lebanon women use caramel for hair removal. A bitter-sweet remedy - just like life itself! Just like the life of these four beautiful women who spend their days together in the beauty salon of Beirut. Si Belle is the name of the shop and the B is hanging crooked from the sign outside. Just like everyday life in Beirut seems to be a bit off the rails. It is the Beirut of Nadine Labaki, which fortunately is not made of pure misery. Of course there are potholes in the streets, but also shops like Si Belle. Caramel is above all a Feel Good comedy about dreams and hopes, but secretly also a utopia: Here, in Beirut, Muslims and Christians and Orthodox and Jews (...) live together. The most diverse religions and ethnic groups. You don't see war in Caramel and that's a good thing! 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Waltz With Bashir 

Waltz With Bashir is an animated film that examines why thousands of innocent people were massacred. All this happened during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The victims lived in Palestinian refugee camps. They were executed by Christian militias. Nobody stopped them. The question of guilt was never resolved. Did Israel make the massacre possible? Or was it simply not possible to prevent it? Waltz with Bashir begins with a recurring nightmare. It was dreamed by a friend of director Ari Folman's, who tries to reconstruct his own war experiences. What happened then? It lies outside of what one can cope with. That's why Folman sets out to interview Israeli soldiers. Knowing that the truth depends less on facts than on memories. Therefore - in order to reconstruct memories, fantasy, hallucinations - Folman uses animation techniques for his documentary film. At least extraordinary enough, or has there ever been such a political documentary before? Normally, animated films are funny and cute. Here, animation serves the purpose of making the event visible at all. Waltz With Bashir is structured like a "normal" documentary. Folman interviews contemporary witnesses. But the animation allows him the freedom to imagine what the interviewees say. Even nightmares can be illustrated. Gradually the image of a massacre comes together. Who even knew what happened? Which Israeli commander would have been able to stop all this? There are no answers. In any case, there are no firm ones. A genocide took place and nobody can reconstruct it exactly. But doesn't wisdom say that in every war the whole is lost? In the end, the world regrets once again not having acted. Those responsible are morally guilty. Those who did not stop them are just as much to blame. That is us. 

FREE ON CINEGEEK.De Takeshi Kitano - Zatoichi 

The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi offers all the contradictory elements that make Takeshi Kitano such a fascinating director and actor! As is so often the case, Kitano plays a man with a motionless face and few words - and then within seconds - action! This man lives by a code, enforces it according to his own rules. All this is presented in Kitano's style, which includes his performances, which function as if in a musical revue. Kitano performs under the name Beat Takeshi. Until then he played modern tough guys. In Zatoichi he ventures back into the 19th century for the first time. He slips into the role of the blind swordsman Zatoichi. By the way, you can find the models for this in our DVD cellar: Zatoichi meets Yojimbo - Zatôichi to Yôjinbô (1970) DVD7257 and Zatoichi meets the one armed Swordsman - Shin zatô Ichi: Yabure! Tôjin-ken (1971) DVD7181. The original Zatoichi was always played by Shintaro Katsu until the late 80s. The series comprises 26 films! During the 90s, the Zatoichi series continued again with almost 50 films and comedian Kiyoshi Atsumi. Kitano as Zatoichi is more like a Westerner, redefining the pop character of his character. His Zatoichi is a humble wanderer with razor-sharp developed hearing and instincts. He knows much better what is happening around him than those who can only see. He walks with a slightly stooped posture. Sometimes he smiles or laughs to himself. He never seems tense and in no time his horse has found its target! The basic plot corresponds to a revenge drama. Zatoichi meets two sisters (one is actually a transvestite). They work as geishas. After the notorious Ginzo gang murders their parents, the sisters become orphans. Zatoichi finds out about this. Although he never declares his intention to do anything, the members of the gang die one after the other until it comes to the second fight between Zatoichi and the chief villain Hattori (Tadanobu Asano). It all sounds quite conventional, but in Kitano's hands, his special timing, his pace, his unmistakable style, make it a Kitano film. He doesn't like Hong Kong martial arts extravaganzas. Zatoichi kills his opponents quickly and leaves a chic blood pattern in his wasteland. Yet he is not in every scene. The film also focuses on the Ginzo boss (Ittoku Kishibe) and the two geishas. We also get an insight into village life, gossip and the great interest in Zatoichi's second job: he is a blind masseur. Kitano prefers to combine violence with artistic outings and music. A house-building scene almost turns into a musical performance. For this, even the actors we have seen before appear behind the scenes. This seems as charming as it is almost unnecessary, but it makes all the difference: imaginative playfulness in a building-block action film. Some of you complained that Kitano was breaking martial arts rules. That's true! I'm very grateful to him for that! Until Zatoichi, he had made eleven films. Most of them were hard action films, but he also did a lot of other things. In Japan, he is best known as the host of a bizarre TV show that puts people in perverse situations (like rolling down a hill in a barrel with nails). Likewise, his films thrive on Kitano's free artistic will. He doesn't continue the Zatoichi series, he redesigns it.

FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Medium Cool 

Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool is a direct, highly informative film - for which a review - subjective, slightly chaotic - is basically inappropriate. This film needs answers instead! What is so new and extraordinary about Medium Cool? The subject matter was familiar to contemporaries during the late 60s anyway: a cameraman who films traffic accidents and similar events and lives completely emotionless. But then he meets a single mother and her son and begins to build a relationship with them. how did Wexler make Medium Cool? How was it conceived and realised? How was it shot and edited? Please consider; until recently, Hollywood had spoken disdainfully of art films. Such films were incomprehensible to the audience. And then a radical experimental film like Medium Cool gets such attention!?!! I think it had been part of the so-called New Hollywood movement to realise that cinema-goers are thinking people too. Not idiots. The age-old Hollywood principle had always been to show the audience the way from A to B to C. Everything was explained! This changed with the indie films of the 60s. Since "The Graduate" (DVD106), such art films were box office hits! And the audience could follow the fast cuts of these films - also because of the viewing habits through the commercials on TV. Even more, the audience of the 60s was ready to accept stories that could not be understood after 30 seconds of film. The conventional Hollywood formulas give themselves away. We put the building blocks together again and again. Medium Cool is different. It relies on images and is told through PICTURES - not dialogue. In the process, Wexler jumps back and forth between several levels. There is documentary material (the Democratic Party convention) plus a fictional story (such as the romance of the cameraman). Fictional characters act in real situations and real posed situations that pretend to be fictional (the TV crew confronting black activists). Last but not least, we also find real people in fictional situations (the boy and the pigeons). But the real things are not to be separated from the fictional ones at all! They all carry the same meaning and that is through the way they are connected. But Wexler goes further and evokes memories of older films we know. He hints but never elaborates. In general, he likes to hint without sketching out the path from A to C. That's why Medium Cool is so important and compelling and extraordinary: simply by HOW everything is tied together here. This is especially true of the finale, which is entirely due to chance. And in the end, isn't everything coincidental and not so dramatic?