As part of their growing library of Black Lives Matter films, OVID is proud to add a collection of seven films from iconic Black, gay filmmaker Marlon Riggs (1957-1994) starting with ETHNIC NOTIONS and COLOR ADJUSTMENT.
Also new is Julie Bertuccelli’s THE TREE starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thomas Heise’s cinematic essay through 20th-century Germany history HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME, the four-part docuseries THE HITLER CHRONICLES, the epic drama LUMUMBA directed by Raoul Peck (I Am Not Your Negro), and DIPLOMACY, a suspenseful feature film set in ’44 as a Swedish consul-general meets with the German military governor of occupied Paris to save the city’s historical landmarks.
Read on for more details on these new releases:
Directed by Marlon Riggs:
Color Adjustment (87 minutes, 1991)
Marlon Riggs’ study of how network television absorbed deep-seated racial conflict into the non-threatening formats of primetime television. Clips from Amos ‘n’ Andy, Good Times, Roots and The Cosby Show among others are intercut with interviews with producers, cultural critics and actors.
Ethnic Notions (56 minutes, 1987)
The Emmy-winning documentary takes viewers on a disturbing voyage through American history, tracing for the first time the deep-rooted stereotypes, which have fueled anti-black prejudice. Through these images and caricatures we can begin to understand the evolution of racial consciousness in America that permeated popular culture from the 1820s to the Civil Rights period and implanted themselves deep in the American psyche. Narration by Esther Rolle and commentary by respected scholars shed light on the origins and devastating consequences of this 150-year-long parade of bigotry.
The Hitler Chronicles
Directed by Joachim C. Fest, Christian Herrendoerfer, Michael Kloft, Jochen Bauer, Peter Cohen
As never seen before, and more topical today than any other Hitler biography, the Chronicles depict everyday European life between 1889 and 1945 in impressive images, many of them in color. Based on the most extensive compilation of archive material to date, with almost half of it previously unpublished sources, Hitler’s life is shown in detail against the social backdrop of the first half of the 20th century in a contemporary interpretation.
Heimat is a Space in Time
Directed by Thomas Heise
In HEIMAT IS A SPACE IN TIME, German filmmaker Thomas Heise shares the stories of three generations of his family, in their own words. It’s a personal history of Germany on an epic scale. Heise sets the tone early, reading an anti-war essay written in 1912 by his grandfather Wilhelm, when he was a schoolboy. The director uses the same matter-of-fact, uninflected tone throughout the film – as he reads letters and notes from relatives who lived through the horrors of the First World War, Nazi Germany, and then life in Communist East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Diplomacy
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff
In 1944, Raoul Nordling, the Swedish consul-general in Paris, meets with Dietrich von Cholitz, the German military governor of occupied Paris, to convince him not to destroy historical landmarks across the city.
| Lumumba Directed by Raoul Peck From the director of I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO. Made in the tradition of such true-life political thrillers as Malcolm X and JFK, Raoul Peck’s award-winning Lumumba is a gripping epic that dramatizes for the first time the rise and fall of legendary African leader Patrice Lumumba. The Tree Directed by Julie Bertuccelli The exquisite Charlotte Gainsbourg (Antichrist, Melancholia, I’m Not There) stars in French filmmaker Julie Bertuccelli’s achingly beautiful follow-up to her sleeper hit Since Otar Left. The Closing Night Film at Cannes in 2010, THE TREE is a mystical drama of loss and rebirth in the Australian countryside. Not since classic 1970s works Picnic at Hanging Rock and Walkabout has the harshly gorgeous outback landscape been such a lyrical yet foreboding metaphor for grief and coming of age. |
