Reviews
[)(XJUMI NIAHY FLOWERS DON’T GROW HERE
(E) 51 min
(DVD retail Clarity Productions) 0.”
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A directorial debut gorng beyond the photogenic ‘Orange Revolution' to reveal a harsher Side of contemporary Ukraine. Flowers Don't Grow Here documents the harrowmg lives of a group of Kiev street children.
These range from an 18-year-old prostitute With two children and an abusive partner. to a group of squatters who have formed an ad hoc ‘family' in the home of One of their number. and a mentally ill yOLing man living under a bridge.
PrOVing painfully unguarded. they gleefully gossip aDOLit each other but at the same time remain emotionally numb from maltreatment and solvent abuse.
Like these children. the dOCumentary lacks any normalising structure. Such as a narrator. giVing it an unmediated cinema verite feel. and althOugh the odd attempt at stylisatzon Jars. this is a pass:onate howl of rage against in;ustice. ViSit W\-vw.p.v'odL.Cing claritycom for more infOrmation.
(Dave Martin)
DOCUMENTARY THE
HOLOCAUST: PERSECUTION IN EUROPE
1 933-45
(E) 393min
(Oracle Home Entertainment Eureka Video DVD retail) 0..
Containing some astonishing footage of the camps. this Six—part examination of the Holocaust is nevertheless a (.IOCumentary series full
of problems. There have been numerous brilliant and troubled examinations of this period. including Resnais' Night and Fog and Lanzmann's Shoah. There have also been a lot of books. texts. and poems (philosopher Theodore Adorno even talked provocatively about the impossibility of poetry after the Holocaust). In the wake of this profoundly humane body of work this series seems almost feeble-minded. With its moralising and yet curiously unemotional voice-over and. in most episodes. its heavy use of cue music coming in as we see archival footage of camp atrocities. it shares with Schindler's List and Life
is Beautiful a need to infantilise and Simplify. That doesn't mean the protect is without impOrtance and, as part of a school history programme. it COuId prove extremely useful. Broken up into SIX DVDs. The Yellow Star. The Liberation of AuschWitz. The Liberation of ch’deal iek . ThereSienstadt Camp: Deception and Reality. Concentration Camps: Bavensbruck and Buchenwald and Dachau and Saschenhausen. the films are undeniably full of awful but extremely important information. (Tony McKibbin)
ANIMATION MILLENIUM ACTRESS
(PG) 87min
(Manga Entertainment DVD retail) COO
Director Satoshi Kon eschews the chilling tone of his earlier Perfect Blue for this altogether gentler paean to the Japanese
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film industry. It focuses on an elderly actress. Chiyoko Fujiwara (voiced by three actresses in various time periods). telling her life story to Genya Tachibana (ShOzo Izuka) in an interview to mark the demolition of an old movie studio.
Making an interesting animated companion piece to Stanley Kwan's Centre Stage. a fictionalised biopic of the Hong Kong actress Ruan Ling-yu. this is both epic and intimate. although if one woman's heartbreak leaves you cold. you are unlikely to persevere With the measwed. occaSionaIly soporific pace. Minimal extras. (Dave Martin)
DOCUMENTARY STARWOIDS (PG) 95min (Ventura DVD retail)
YOU may not know what a Starwoid is but chances are yOu'lI know at least one of them. They're those intense. excitable people. aged between 16 and 40. who possess an irrational attachment to Star Wars and all its cultural detritus. This indie dOCUmentary captures the zeal. fanatiCism and ultimately the folly of some of the hundreds of people who camped Outside Mann‘s Theatre in Los Angeles in the spring of 1999 waiting to get tickets for The Phantom Menace. the first Star
INTERVIEW, O&A
JUST THE TWO OF US
Husband and wife writer/director team DOMINIC HARARI and TERESA DE PELEGRI talk about faith, farce and their film, Only Human.
Harari: It was sort of an evolutionary process. We wanted to make a film about a dysfunctional family. the family as a form of masochism. We liked the idea of setting it all in one night. so baSicalIy we chose a JeWish famin because we're both Jewish. And then we had this son of nightmare scenario of one of the daughters bringing home a Palestinian boyfriend.
Pelegri: We kind of based the story on a very good friend of ours in Madrid. He's JeWish and he has been married to an Egyptian Muslim woman and they have been liVing in Jerusalem and had a very difficult time.
Harari: While we were writing the script Teresa got pregnant so we took it as a sign that the film should be a screwball farce a la Wilder and Hawks.
Pelegri: I was born and raised in Barcelona and decided I wanted to be a filmmaker quite early. We met at New York Film School and we started writing together. Harari: Professionally. we've written a lot of scripts in Spanish cinema. We find working together easy; we wouldn't do it otherwise. A lot of people say I couldn't imagine working With my wife. but to us it comes pretty easily.
Pelegri: The work we do together is good. we're happy. it's better. We have no plans to work separately at the moment.
Harari: If you have separate careers. then you Just don't see each other. I think we're almost addicted now. I'd be like a headless chicken now.
Pelegri: I'd be so lonely.
Harari: As you will see. the film is short — Hitchcock says the human bladder can only last 90 minutes. so we didn’t go above that. Our next project is called Eating Disorders and it's set in ‘foodie London'. It is going to be a Spanish/English co- production. It's three intertwined stories ab0ut relationships in which the main conflicts are centred on food. We decided to set it in London. because this nation. which. as far as the Spanish are concerned. never even knew how to cook. has become obsessed with food. It's more important than sex now for the English people. Food is everywhere . . . the most influential guy is Jamie Oliver.
Pelegri: And not Tony Blair. And cooking books are number one in the bestsellers list.
Harari: This w0uId never happen in Spain. Food is more pan of the fabric of life. (InterVIew by Paul Dale)
I Only Human is out now on DVD (Verve).
Wars mOVie in 16 years. Made in 2001.
Stan/veids was something of a missed Opportunity for directOr Dennis Pr/ywara. who fails to capitalise on the excitement of the fans.
the street and the obsessive collector fighting his way through branches of WalMart at dawn. You almost forget there's a mowe at the heart of all this.
(Mark Robertson)
being driven more by events in the Queue. at the expense of any real climax. It spirals into a Lord of the Flies-like scenario With the cheery loner. the massed group who build a TV station on
ALL DVDS WERE REVIEWED ON A SYSTEM SUPPLIED AND INSTALLED BY LOUD 8: CLEAR
20 Oct (S Nov 7005) THI LIST 43