Schläft ein Lied in allen Dingen/Колыбельные / SLEEPING SONGS

"An artist's search for new ideas leads him on a journey of self-discovery in this drama from German filmmaker Andreas Struck. Martin (Stefan Rudolf) is a musician who works with a well-respected experimental jazz ensemble. Martin is a man driven to break the rules and defy creative convention at every turn, but he feels he's losing touch with his muse, and has begin to suspect his girlfriend is more interested in dating a well-known musician than in his true nature. One evening, it all becomes too much for Martin, and he leaves the stage midway through a performance, stopping by the banks of a river to toss his horn into the water. Martin becomes a drifter, wandering for the sake of wandering, until he crosses paths with Hannah, an eccentric elderly woman who writes poetry. Hannah may not seem like the sort of person Martin has been waiting to meet, but the longer he reads her work, the more he suspects she has an understanding of both art and life that he lacks. Schlaeft ein Lied in Allen Dingen (aka Sleeping Songs) was an official selection at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide"



Credits
SCHLÄFT EIN LIED IN ALLEN DINGEN

Director
STRUCK, Andreas
Production Company
Neue Mediopolis Filmproduktion
Production Company
WDR - Westdeutscher Rundfunk
Production Company
ARTE
Producer
HENGGE, Petra
Producer
RIS, Alexander
Producer
ROTHE, Jörg
Production Manager
HESS, Hans Christian
Assistant Director
SEIBERT, Dirk
Casting
DIHRBERG, Anja
Screenplay
GABLER, Dagmar
Director of Photography
DOUB, Andreas
Editor
JACOBS, Karin
Production Designer
FREYER, Jutta
Costume Designer
WEGNER, Elena
Music
MOLVAER, Nils Petter
Sound Design
SCHMIDT, Sebastian
Mixer
MEHL, Olaf
Sound
VARZA, Siddh


Martin
RUDOLF, Stefan
Kristina
KHAMATOVA, Chulpan
Hanna
HÖSS, Traute
Rio
METSCHURAT, Barnaby
Atze
ALTMANN, Michael
Maggie
KALENBERG, Paula
Wiesel
KIEFER, Martin
Konrad
PACKHÄUSER, Wolfgang
Rick
FRISCH, Arno
Jakob
GROTHGAR, Andreas
policewoman
ENGELHARDT, Bettina

Novel. "Loneliness in the net" by J.L Wiśniewski

"...find out on your own what a true love is. A love full of passion and sacrifice, born in the virtual reality. Find out what a friendship, betrayal and death really are...J.L Wiśniewski puts in words a story of two lost, lonely people and he does it in a truly brilliant way. She''s got theoretically everything - a good job, a husband and a house. The only missing thing is love. He loved once before, passionately and selflessly, but the death took it all away from him. They meet by chance in an internet chat. They made friends and after some time they''d decided they can''t live without each other any more.. They fell in love.Their lives got complicated again. Guided by the feeling of guilt towards her husband she decides to go back him, even though she''s pregnant with Jakub. He can''t aceept that and surely will never do that.The book makes you shed more than one tear and touches you deeply from the inside.I recommend it to you, it''s worth it".

A more contemporary story would be impossible: the Internet, pagers, airline e-tickets, genome decoding, text messages. And it"s a classic love story. A story of love on the Internet. The ultimate love, the one of dreams. Wiśniewski tells the story superbly and analytically taking his reader from near celebratory tenderness only to amaze a few lines later with daring eroticism. Loneliness on the Net is also a tribute to knowledge intertwined with a love story. It"s a story about molecules of emotions, about who discovered DNA, and what happened to Einstein"s brain.

Loneliness on the Net hit all bestseller lists in Poland (over 300.000 copies sold). The novel has been translated into many languages and was brought to the Polish cinema theatres as a feature movie in 2006.

Janusz Leon Wiśniewski (born 18 August 1954 in Toruń) is a Polish scientist and writer mostly known for his novel S@motność w Sieci translated into English as Loneliness on the Netю
Wiśniewski holds a Master of Physics and Master of Economics, qualifications both from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Doctor of Informatics from Warsaw University of Technology and Habilitation in Chemistry from the Technical University of Łódź. He is one of the authors of the computer program AutoNom, a naming tool for organic substances in the IUPAC nomenclature
Currently Wiśniewski lives and works in Frankfurt, Germany.

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O Lucky Man!/О, счастливчик! (1973)

This sprawling, surrealist musical serves as an allegory for the pitfalls of capitalism, as it follows the adventures of a young coffee salesman in Europe. Many actors play multiple roles, giving the film a stagy tone...

O Lucky Man! is a 1973 British comedy film, intended as an allegory on life in a capitalist society. Directed by Lindsay Anderson, it stars Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis, whom McDowell had first played as a disaffected public schoolboy in his first film performance in Anderson's film if.... (1968). The film was entered into the 1973 Cannes Film Festival.

During his journey, Travis learns the amoral lesson, reinforced by numerous songs in the soundtrack by Alan Price, that he must abandon his principles in order to succeed, but unlike the other characters he meets he must retain a detached idealism that will allow him to distance himself from the evils of the world: a fact which causes the film to often be considered a reappropriation of Candide by Voltaire. As one of the film's songs says:

Smile while you're makin' it, Laugh while you're takin' it, Even though you're fakin' it, Nobody's gonna know.

In O Lucky Man!, Travis progresses from coffee salesman (working for Imperial Coffee in the North East of England and Scotland), a victim of torture in a government installation and a medical research subject, under the supervision of Dr Millar (Crowden), where he is almost turned into a sheep.

In parallel with Travis' experiences, the film shows 1960s Britain retreating from its imperial past, but managing to retain some influence in the world by means of corrupt dealings with foreign dictators. After finding out his girlfriend is the daughter of Sir James Burgess (Richardson), an evil industrialist, he is appointed Burgess' personal assistant.

With Dr Munda, the dictator of the fictitious Zingara, a brutal police state which nevertheless manages to be a playground for wealthy people from the developed world, Burgess sells the regime a chemical called PL45 'Honey' for spraying on rebel areas (the effects resemble those of Napalm). Burgess connives at having Travis found guilty of fraud, and he is imprisoned for five years.

The final scene of the film shows him becoming involved in a casting call for a film, with Lindsay Anderson himself playing the director of the film. He is given various props to handle, including a stack of school books and a machine gun. When asked to smile Mick continually asks why. The director slaps Travis with his script book after he fails to understand what is being asked of him. After a cut to black (a device used throughout the film) a slow look of understanding crosses Mick's face. The scene then cuts to a party with dancing which includes all of the cast celebrating.(WIKI)

Directed by Lindsay Anderson
Produced by Lindsay Anderson
Written by David Sherwin and Malcolm McDowell (Story)
Starring Malcolm McDowell
Ralph Richardson
Rachel Roberts
Arthur Lowe
Helen Mirren
Graham Crowden
Dandy Nichols
Music by Alan Price
Cinematography Miroslav Ondříček
Editing by David Gladwell
Distributed by Warner Bros.
Release date(s) 1973
Running time 183 min.
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Preceded by if....
Followed by Britannia Hospital

O Lucky Man! on IMDb

Transylvania / Трансильвания (2006)

Zingarina arrives in Transylavania, accompanied by her close friend Marie and her guide and interpreter Luminitsa. She is not there only to visit this region of Romania but to trace her lover Milan, a musician who has made her pregnant and who left her without a word of explanation. When she finds him back, he brutally rejects her and Zingarina is terribly upset. She leaves her two companions and having become a wreck she hardly survives by following a wandering little girl. Her destiny changes for the best when she meets Tchangalo, a traveling trader...

Starring: Beata Playa, Alexandra Beaujard, Birol Unel, Amira Casar, Asia Argento
Directed by: Tony Gatlif
Produced by: Tony Gatlif



Genres: Art/Foreign and Drama
Running Time: 1 hr. 43 min.

Ты, живущий / Du levande / You, the Living (2007)

You, the Living (Swedish: Du levande) is a 2007 Swedish black comedy film written and directed by Roy Andersson.
This is an absurdist take on the everyday foibles of human nature. Andersson couples his iconic visual style (stationary shots, a monochromatic palette of grays and greens) with a meticulous eye for composition (compared by some critics to the work of German painters Otto Dix and Max Beckmann) to yield a brilliant succession of dreamlike tableaux: a bride and her electric guitar-playing groom sail along in a house moving like a train; a distraught man complains of his financial woes while his wife tries to make love to him; a drunken woman shouts “No one understands me” to a bar full of silent patrons; a man waiting in line to buy a train ticket changes queues repeatedly, to no advantage. Running the gamut from quotidian struggles to big philosophical questions of love, sympathy and purpose in an uncaring world, Andersson brings a blast of distinctive Nordic humor to our universal woes.

Directed by: Roy Andersson
Cast: Elisabet Helander, Jessika Lundberg, Bjorn Englund

Bacheha-Ye Aseman / The Children of Heaven / Дети небес (1997)

Ali takes his little sister Zahra's shoes to the shoemaker to be repaired, but loses them on the way home. The siblings decide to keep the predicament a secret from their parents, knowing that there is no money to buy a replacement pair and fearing that they will be punished. They devise a scheme to share Ali's sneakers: Zahra will wear them to school in the morning and hand them off to Ali at midday so he can attend afternoon classes. This uncomfortable arrangement leads to one adventure after another as they attempt to hide the plan from their parents and teachers, attend to their schoolwork and errands, and acquire a new pair of shoes for Zahra. Zahra sees the shoes on a schoolmate's feet, and follows her home, but the two soon become friends...

Directed by Majid Majidi
Produced by Amir Esfandiari, Mohammad Esfandiari
Written by Majid Majidi
Starring Amir Farrokh Hashemian, Bahare Seddiqi
Music by Keivan Jahanshahi
Cinematography Parviz Malekzaade
Editing by Hassan Hassandoost
Distributed by United States Miramax Films
Release date(s) United States January 22, 1999
Running time 89 min.
Country Iran

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Раны / Rane (1998)

Directed by: Srdjan Dragojevic
Genre: Comedy,Drama
User Rating: 8.0/10 (1,401 votes)
Runtime: Canada:103 min | Hungary:100 min
Awards: 2 wins
Cast (first 5): Milan Maric, , , Vesna Trivalic, Nikola Kojo

Awards
Stockholm Film Festival 1998 Won Bronze Horse Srdjan Dragojevic
Thessaloniki Film Festival 1998 Won FIPRESCI Prize Parallel Sections Srdjan Dragojevic For its powerful, dramatic depiction of the brutal reality and complexity of life in the Balkans today.

How easy is it for desperate youngsters to become dangerous gangsters in a decaying society washed all over by the blood of war? Fairly easy indeed. Rane shows incidents, probably somewhat facts, that took place in Serbia of the war era. Things similar to what you see on this film could happen virtually everywhere, but this film gives a very Yugoslavian feeling to everything. Yugo style mafia, Yugo style murder, and all that. Revolting politicians and their greed are to blame, not only the desperate young men who lose their reasoning while trying to be someone. The film and the casting is overall successful, and it's so very Serbian. I recommend it to anyone who.. well anyone who likes a good film. But don't expect anything American style on this one, as I say it's Yugo to the bone...

Stratosphere Girl / Девушка из стратосферы (2004)

The story (if you can call it that) is of a girl who works in a Tokyo hostess bar only to uncover a bizarre murder mystery. The screenplay is a rambling mishmash of ideas that -while not entirely successful- maintains our interest throughout and leaves us scratching our heads in bewilderment. From the opening scene, we are submerged into the film's environment without warning or introduction, and without expectation, for that matter. The plot is so non-linear and, quite frankly, non-important that we have no choice but to take the picture on its own terms. Even though nothing seems to fit from a conventional perspective, every bizarre moment of the script seems perfectly ordinary within the film's world. None of the characters seem remotely aware of just how strange their surroundings are, and this is how the film manages to succeed. The film-maker does not even TRY to offer an explanation for anything that takes place, he just presents it and expects us to draw our own conclusions. And even if you never reach a conclusion, as was the case with me, it is still an entertaining experience...

Directed by Matthias X. Oberg
Produced by Karl Baumgartner
Written by Matthias X. Oberg
Starring Chloé Winkel,
Jon Yang
Distributed by TLA Releasing
Release date(s) 9 September 2004 (Germany)
Running time 90 min


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Sweet Rain / Shinigami no seido /Accuracy of Death (2008)

Sweet Rain: Shinigami no Seido (Sweet Rain 死神の精度, lit. "The precision of the agent of death") is a 2008 Japanese movie based on a Kotaro Isaka novel and directed by Masaya Kakehi.
CAST:
* Takeshi Kaneshiro
* Manami Konishi
* Sumiko Fuji

Adapted from the bestselling novel by Kotaro Isaka “The Accuracy of Death”. Chiba (Takeshi Kaneshiro) appears seven days before a person dies an unexpected death. His job is to observe the person for seven days, and then decide either to ‘execute’ or ‘pass over’. Getting his work quickly out of the way, he goes to the listening booth of a CD shop and indulges in his favorite pastime, listening to ‘humanity’s greatest invention’: music.

He is...a Grim Reaper. Today, again, in the rain, he waits. His subject, her death due in seven days, is Kazue Fujiki (Manami Konishi), 27. She works for a manufacturing company, in the complaints department. Exhausted after her day, she emerges from her office. It’s time for the Reaper to go to work.