

2013-10-18
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0.0"I can live better in a place whose history I know," says a young Pole in the prologue of this film. He lives in Kopaniec, formerly Seifershau - a village in Lower Silesia. Between the past and the present lay the expulsion of the Germans and the resettlement of the Poles, many of whom were themselves expellees from what is now Ukraine. The village is the focus of the film and the link between the former and present inhabitants. The younger Poles have grown up with the visits of the former German inhabitants. The life stories of the older Poles and Germans tell of war and expulsion, but also of the time when they lived together in the village, directly after the war. The region was called "The Wild West" in Poland at the time. "Silesia's Wild West" asks what home is: a place, a person, a feeling, a memory?
0.0Wolves divide and fascinate us. 150 years after they were driven to extinction in Central Europe, they are returning slowly but inexorably. Are they dangerous to humans? Is it possible to coexist? Using Switzerland as a point of departure, where wolves have returned in the very recent past, this documentary sheds light on the wolf situation in Austria, eastern Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, and even Minnesota, where freely roaming packs of wolves are more common sight.
Lusatia - the former energy production center of the GDR, today a landscape depleted by lignite mining. Large lakes have been created in which you can "rust" while swimming, and landscape formations reminiscent of the Grand Canyon of the Wild West. Native wolves and many exotic species of international flora and fauna are inexorably conquering new habitats. The people who have remained persevere like settlers. They appear in the film as narrators of their sometimes bizarre stories. We see how they try with imagination and commitment to wrest a re-inhabitable piece of earth from their battered landscape. For Lusatia harbors the old dream of Prince Pückler: the dream of a landscape for people. More is happening in Lusatia than we dare to dream.
6.6Wilma has many qualifications and talents, yet suffers just as many disappointments in life. After she catches her husband cheating, she runs away to Vienna in search of a new life. There she lives with bustling bohemians, tries her luck at a variety of jobs and perhaps... at love again.
7.1Two brothers grow up in the Saxon province (part of Germany) at the turn of the millennium, where the dream of family happiness in a new house quickly turns into a nightmare of decay, violence and xenophobia as they desperately search for stability and belonging.
3.115-year old Klaus Kambor, called Kurbel, is living in a village in Lusatia and already thinks of himself as an adult. He can hold a lot of rhubarb wine and has already kissed a girl. But with his new method of lawn mowing, which he thinks is brilliant, Klaus makes a big mistake: He causes a wild fire in the forest. Then he does not react adult-like at all, but shirks the responsibility, which leads to the break-up with his girlfriend Daniela. Furthermore, Klaus does not realize that several of the places he likes the most in his environment are now going to be sacrificed to mining. When Klaus becomes friends with the teacher Konzak and with the construction worker Jule, he feels understood for the first time and starts to take more responsibility.
0.0Velvet Underground's first public appearance.
5.8Footage from 1964-1968 that did not find its way into the Walden reels is joined in this classic period piece. Mostly centered in New York, it also includes travel footage and appearances by David Wise, Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Smith, Shirley Clarke, Jane Holzer and more. Mel Lyman plays his banjo on the roof.
0.0During the summer of 1966 Jonas Mekas spent two months in Cassis, as a guest of Jerome Hill. Mekas visited him briefly again in 1967, with P. Adams Sitney. The footage of this film comes from those two visits. Later, after Jerome died, Mekas visited his Cassis home in 1974. Footage of that visit constitutes the epilogue of the film. Other people appear in the film, all friends of Jerome.
The film is arranged in six chronologically-ordered parts, each filmed in a different location during Oona's third year.
5.2This is a video record of the Buddhist Wake ceremony at Allen Ginsberg's apartment. You see Allen, now asleep forever, in his bed; some of his close friends; and the wrapping up and removal of Allen's body from the apartment. You hear Jonas' description of his last conversation with Allen, three days earlier. You see the final farewell at the Buddhist temple, 118 West 22nd Street, New York City, and some of his close friends: Patti Smith, Gregory Corso, LeRoy Jones-Baraka, Hiro Yamagata, Anne Waldman, and many others.
6.3This is a mini-portrait of one of the legendary figures of the 60s who should be credited for the discovery of the Velvet Underground, for saving Bob Dylan's mind after the motorcycle crash, for her pioneering sound/image installations, for keeping the New York Sixties' art community together, for one of the key works of erotic cinema Christmas on Earth, and etc. and etc.
5.8Jonas Mekas documents Timothy Leary’s Millbrook estate in the wake of a police raid, juxtaposing serene images of the property with audio of officials justifying their actions. Blending diary footage with subversive reportage, the film exposes the gap between perception and authority, offering an oblique portrait of the counterculture and its suppression.
6.5Filmed in 1950 soon after Jonas Mekas arrived in New York, this short documents everyday life in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It was the first film he shot with his 16 mm Bolex camera, but he did not edit and present the footage until 2003, making it both his earliest and one of his final works on film.
6.9Compiled from two decades of travels through Europe, Jonas Mekas’s Travel Songs gathers five diaristic segments filmed in Avila, Stockholm, Moscow, and Assisi. Shot with his characteristic spontaneity and playfulness, the film turns casual sightseeing into a lyrical meditation on place, memory, and movement.