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Category Archives: Philosophy

The Hedgehog (2009)

07 May

100m; France

Director: Mona Achache

Cast: Josiane Balasko, Garance Le Guillermic and Togo Igawa

Synopsis (IMDB): Paloma is a serious and highly articulate but deeply bored 11-year-old who has decided to kill herself on her 12th birthday. Fascinated by art and philosophy, she questions and documents her life and immediate circle, drawing trenchant and often hilarious observations on the world around her. But as her appointment with death approaches, Paloma finally meets some kindred spirits in her building’s grumpy janitor and an enigmatic, elegant neighbor, both of whom inspire Paloma to question her rather pessimistic outlook on life.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Children, Drama, Philosophy, Working Class

 

Our Daily Bread (1934)

20 Apr

80m; U.S.

Director: King Vidor

Cast: Karen Morley, Tom Keene and Barbara Pepper

Synopsis (IMDB): John and Mary sims are city-dwellers hit hard by the financial fist of The Depression. Driven by bravery (and sheer desperation) they flee to the country and, with the help of other workers, set up a farming community – a socialist mini-society based upon the teachings of Edward Gallafent. The newborn community suffers many hardships – drought, vicious raccoons and the long arm of the law – but ultimately pull together to reach a bread-based Utopia.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in A: Highly Recommended Labor Films, Drama, Farm & Food, Organizing, Philosophy, Politics, Working Class

 

The Philosopher Kings (2009)

20 Apr

70m; U.S.

Director: Patrick Shen

Synopsis: Some people we revere, some we despise and others we simply ignore. The figure of the invisible janitor at last acquires a face, name, and personality in this probing look at the wisdom that comes from lives lived fully.

Contact: Premiered at SilverDocs 2009 Eileen Street, The Philosopher Kings PR Coordinator (510) 910-5778 press@transcendfilms.com http://www.philosopherkingsmovie.com http://www.transcendfilms.com

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Philosophy, Service Workers

 

Bloody Mondays and Strawberry Pies (2008)

24 Jan

87m

Director: Coco Schrijber

Synopsis (Boston Globe): The Dutch filmmaker Coco Schrijber has handcrafted a rapturous, often profound visual essay about the metaphysics of time – about how we spend our lives fleeing from the silence of existence by filling our days with busy-ness. It’s a film to come back and touch in your thoughts for quite a while.

Using fluid pacing and some lovely visual rhyme schemes, Schrijber circles around a handful of subjects. A young German woman named Lena works at a baked-goods factory, glazing strawberry tarts and pensively wondering if this is where she’ll spend the next 30 years. There are interviews with 101-year-old Wall Street legend Irving Kahn and Nancy Wake, a dashing WWII British spy who is now an infirm 96. They have lived great lives that each acknowledges is turning to dust in the end.

With patience and surprisingly few pretensions, in fact, “Bloody Mondays’’ builds a case for boredom as a necessary antechamber to spiritual grace. It is the place where we can, if we’re willing, begin to contemplate everything we devote entire lives working to avoid: our coming deaths, our present purposes, and so on and so on, into the painter’s tireless blue infinite.

 
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Posted by on January 24, 2012 in Arts/Culture, Documentary, Philosophy

 
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