Zurich Film Festival part 1

On Monday started the second edition of the Zürich Film Festival. The whole event its taking mainly place in two tiny cinemas in Zürich: Frosch and Academy with killing loud sound. Considering that they are only at the second edition I give them some credit such for actually coming up with the idea... cause I bought myself a festival pass already :D
At the end there will be a Award ceremony based on a jury and on the public voting. Now, for the public voting... I got a little power there. And the first movie a saw was:

Hammer & Tickle - The Communist Joke Book
directed by Ben Lewis

I laughed and I also cried. Coming myself from a post socialistic country I couldn't stop remembering the destruction of self proclaimed father and mother of the republic did to my country. But this was not was Ben Lewis was only trying to portrait, but the how the people deal with it. And that was the part I laughed my heart out. The subtle battle again reality through jokes mirroring the ironic reality as an opposite to the propaganda program.
The movie cover most of the former socialist countries. China was excluded but then again it is still communistic, Bulgaria barely mention, Central Asia states not even mentioned but Romania, Poland, Czech Republic, East Germany, Hungary and naturally Mother Russia were all covered!

Still, the documentary has some lacks as for images were not always respected by the script (while showing Romania they were speaking about Poland and things like that) but it is excusable if you see it as a whole image of European Socialism.

The joke I laught the most at was:

A Briton, a Frenchman and a Russian are viewing a painting of Adam and Eve frolicking in the Garden of Eden.
"Look at their reserve, their calm," muses the Brit. "They must be British."
"Nonsense," the Frenchman disagrees. "They're naked, and so beautiful. Clearly, they are French."
"No way! They have no clothes and no shelter," the Russian points out, "They have only an apple to eat, and are being told they live in a paradise. Obviously, they are Russian."

I gave the movie a 4/5.

But was wearing proudly, in an ironical way naturally, a special T-shirt which was quite difficult to obtain:

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Second movie viewed was a movie called "Princess" coming out of Denmark, made buy a quite "young" director Anders Morgenthaler.

A beautiful composition! Morgenthaler's strength lay's in the versatile use of hardcore anime, 3D compositions and use of low quality digital video, perfectly blend in a telling a story about a 5 year old girl dealing with the loss of her mother, ex-porn star protected by a uncle which try to protect her from finding more about her mothers past. As fascinating as is the art used by Morgenthaler to tell the story, the story has many lacks as it tries to set itself as a shocking and powerful
and it
fails.

I gave the movie a 3/5.

A fair review I found it here.


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The trailers of Hammer and Tikle and Princess hold the rights of their creators/producers.