World Cinema

Dekalog is a series of 10 films, each an hour long. these were made for Polish tv and each deals with one of the 10 commandments.

if you only watch one foreign film in your life, i would urge you to watch the first episode in the series: thou shall have no other gods before me. it will change the way you look at cinema. and that's a promise!

kieslowski, the director, is famous for his 3 colours trilogy. but this is his undisputed masterpiece. the films are not linked in any way, nor do they 'preach'. you, as the viewer, are a fly on the wall, observing the lives of ordinary people in the most extraordinary way.

lots of people get put off with 'art' films, saying it's as exciting as watching paint dry! trust me, you won't be able to take your eyes off the screen. every time i've shown this film to friends, we spend a great deal of time discussing the movie later. often days after the event. in that respect, dekalog shares one thing in common with all great works of art: it makes you think.

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Talking of movies that make you think, "Memories of Murder" was a recent one that I watched that satisfied that condition.

A must watch in every sense of the term. A Korean murder mystery that is a compelling watch and has a book-like charm in making you sit up and think about the story and its possibilities and not just the eye candy and/or special effects like most movies.

"Cidade de Deus" is another excellent movie. As is "Amores Perros".
 
almost all the movies I liked are mentioned by others. The missing ones are :

1. Amelie (French)
2.Turtles can fly(iranian)
3.Ponyo on the Cliff (japanese)
 
Andrei Rublyov/Andrei Tarkovsky!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Diary of A Country Priest/Robert Bresson!!!!
The Passion of Joan of Arc/Carl Dreyer!!!!
Battleship Potemkin/Sergei Eisenstein!!!!
Metropolis/Fritz Lang!!!!
La Dolce Vita/Federico Fellini!!!!
Winterlight/Ingmar Bergman!!!!
Ran/Akira Kurosawa!!!!
Pathar Panchali/Satyajit Ray!!!!
Viridiana/Luis Bunuel!!!!
Blow Up/Michelangelo Antonioni!!!!
Children of Paradise/Marcel Carne!!!!
The Rules of the Game/Jean Renoir!!!!
Umberto D/Vittorio De Sica!!!!
Ballad of Narayama/Shohei Imamura!!!!
Tokyo Story/Yasujiro Ozu!!!!
The Round Up/Miklos Jancso!!!!
Mephisto/Istvan Szabo
Blow Up/Francois Truffaut
Breathless/Godard!!!!
Une Affaire De Femmes/Claude Chabrol
A Taste of Cherry/Abbas Kiarostami
The BRD Trilogy/Rainer Werner Fassbinder!!!!
In The Mood For Love/Wong Kar Wai
Farewell My Concubine/Chen Kaige!!!!
Red Sorghum/Zhang Yimou
Ashes and Diamonds/Andrzej Wajda
Forbidden Games/Rene Clemente
A Summers Tale/Eric Rohmer
Underground/Emir Kusturica!!!!
Hiroshima Mon Amour/Alain Resnais!!!!
Three Colours/Krzysyof Kieslowski
La Pianiste/Michael Haneke
Dogville/Lars Von Trier
and my Hollywood goodies...
Vertigo/Alfred Hitchkok
On The Waterfront/Elia Kazan
Chinatown/Roman Polanski
Just a few of the great films that come to mind immediately..
Been watching films from around the world for something like 25 years now.Have watched 4 films in a row,in an auditorium on dozens of occasions.These films,especially the !!!! are essential viewing.But pleeaasse only on a big screen!Watching cinema in a 'home theater' with a miniature 42 inch screen is like drinking 30 Ml of whisky with 200 Ml of tap water.Absolutely lacking in taste,colour or body...
"To have not seen the films of Ray is to have lived in the world without ever having seen the moon and the sun."-Akira Kurosawa
I believe that statement holds true for most of the films on this list.
I have noticed on world cinema threads that a lot of mindless/violent/kiddystuff cinema from Japan and other countries is also mentioned in the same breath as the really good films.I believe that by watching better world cinema films and by ditching Hollywood and Bollywood entirely, once and forever we can open up a new world of splendor and richness in our minds.I stopped watching Orson Welles,Stanley Kubrick,Woody Allen,Martin Scorsese,Robert Altman,Fred Francis Coppolla,Steven Spielberg,Bernardo Bertolucci.....almost a decade back.I find the newer directors like Quentin Tarantino,James Cameron and the Coen Brothers totally banal and boring I believe that the cinema of Hollywood and Bollywood excels in quantity over quality.Obscene sums of money are spent to create molehills which are marketed,oscared and sold as mountains.
Cinema for me is like entering a cathedral or a temple.The best cinema enables us to touch the essence of this world for a moment.Andrei Tarkovsky does this for me.The box office hits of Hollywood and Bollywood along with EVERYTHING shown on television is to me ANTI-CINEMA.It kills and numbs our world and turns us into small children eternally craving for some new sensation to perk up our jaded lives....
 
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