MILF:06 Thick City

MILF:06 Thick City

Stealing from the Landscape Architecture Film Series @ the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, here are the remaining six films in the current Fall 2006 series.

Calcutta (dir. Louis Malle, 1969)
“With minimal narration by the director and very little context this is a kaleidoscope of stunning visuals from Calcutta, a city of 8,000,000 in the late 1960's: rich and poor, exotic and mundane, secular and religious, children and adults, animate and inanimate. Given only the images, the viewer can read any meaning she or he wants into the film.”

What Have I Done To Deserve This? (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 1984)
“A dysfunctional family in Madrid: Gloria is a cleaning lady, hooked on No-Doze, living in a crowded flat with Antonio, her surly husband, a cabby who adores an aging German singer he used to chauffeur; he's also a forger. One teen son sells heroin, the other sleeps with men. Her mother-in-law keeps bottled water and cupcakes under lock and key, selling them to the family. Two alcoholic writers cook up a plot to sell a manuscript as Hitler's memoirs, if Antonio will transcribe it in Hitler's hand. He won't, so they ask the German singer to intercede. Meanwhile, Gloria has given away one son to a sex-crazed dentist, and grandma picks up a pet lizard. Can this chaos be tamed?”

Night on Earth (dir. Jim Jarmusch, 1991)
“A collection of five stories involving cab drivers in five different cities: Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki.”

London (dir. Patrick Keiller, 1992)
“A travelogue by architect-turned-filmmaker Patrick Keiller captures a year in the life of England's capital through the eyes of the enigmatic Robinson, whose literary reflections and historical speculations are voiced by an unnamed, unseen narrator.”

Café Lumière (dir. Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2003)
“Commissioned by the Japanese studio Shochiku as an homage to its famous house director Yasujiro Ozu, it's a haunting look at Tokyo and the overall drift of the world that's slow to reveal its secrets and beauties.”

Kontroll (dir. Nimród Antal, 2003)
“The massive labyrinthine netherworld that is the Budapest subway system provides the stunning setting for Kontroll, a high-style, high-speed romantic thriller in which the lives of assorted outcasts, lovers, and dreamers intersect and collide. One handsome young hero, one mysterious maiden, and one particularly nasty killer must conduct a race against time, trains, and destiny itself in their frantic pursuit of one another.”


MILF:05 “The Best Things In Life Are Free”: Selections of Feature Films from the Internet Archive
MILF:04 The World
MILF:03 Nanoscapes
MILF:02 Spatializing the Marvelous: The Musicals of Busby Berkeley
MILF:01 Figures in the Field
MILF