After the marriage of her niece, Rosemary, Anglo-Indian school-teacher Violet Stoneham lives a lonely life in her single room flat located at 36 Chowringhee Lane in Calcutta, with only a tom cat for company. She is thrilled when a former student, Nandita Roy, looks her up and also brings her boyfriend, Samaresh Moitra, to her flat. Samaresh is an author and likes the solitude of Violet’s flat, and would like to write his new novel there, to which Violet readily agrees to. He likes her antique record-player and she gives it to him as a gift. She hopes she has become part of a family again. It is Christmas time and Violet would like to bake a cake and visit Nandita and Samaresh to surprise them. But is a surprise that awaits her when she reaches her destination.
On a cafe at a railway station, housewife Laura Jesson meets doctor Alec Harvey. Although she is already married, they gradually fall in love with each other. They continue to meet every Thursday on the small cafe, although they know that their love is impossible.
In winter in the south of France, a young woman is found frozen in a ditch. She’s unkempt, a vagabond. Through flashbacks and brief interviews, we trace her final weeks as she camps alone or falls in with various men and women, many of whom project their needs onto her or try to give her life direction. She squats in an old house smoking hash with a man, falls for a Tunisian laborer and works beside him pruning grape vines, stays with a couple shepherding goats, meets an agronomist trying to save plane trees, gets tipsy with an old woman, and has an offer to appear in porn films.
It is 1940. Chuchu and Luo Xiaoman are Chinese students who have been sent to study in Moscow, at the International School. She is 13; he is 12. Xiaoman is from Yanan, Mao’s base after the Long March; Chuchu had seen her father executed by Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang. The youngsters fit in well and learn to speak Russian… A large group of students, including Chuchu, leave for summer camp in Byelorussia accompanied by their teacher, Miss Vera. Xiaoman remains behind… The Nazis invade the Soviet Union. Moscow remains unoccupied. Xiaoman takes a job delivering condolence letters to soldiers’ families. At one apartment, he finds a mother has died. Her very young daughter, Nadia, has not realized it… The summer camp is occupied by Germans. Miss Vera is murdered. One of the Russian boys, Carl, is half-German, and helps the others to escape. They are quickly recaptured. Chuchu and several other students are sent by Gen. von Dietrich to work as servants at Nazi headquarters in the Yakovliv Monastery. The general is also a medical doctor with a peculiar hobby, tattooing…
Kanji Watanabe is a longtime bureaucrat in a city office who, along with the rest of the office, spends his entire working life doing nothing. He learns he is dying of cancer and wants to find some meaning in his life. He finds himself unable to talk with his family, and spends a night on the town with a novelist, but that leaves him unfulfilled. He next spends time with a young woman from his office, but finally decides he can make a difference through his job… After Watanabe’s death, co-workers at his funeral discuss his behavior over the last several months and debate why he suddenly became assertive in his job to promote a city park, and resolve to be more like Watanabe.
Cochin Arts and Communications will be doing a public screening of Ralph Ziman’s Jerusalema on 22nd October, 2010(Friday) at 6:30 PM.
Plot
Starting off with simple smash and grabs, and petty crime, Lucky Kunene quickly graduates to more aggressive heists such as armed robbery and carjacking. Soon, Lucky realizes he needs a bigger score to fulfill his goals of making it big, and escaping from the slums, to a dream house by the sea. Kunene hatches an elaborate and violent plan to make his fortune – hijacking buildings from landlords of Johannesburg tenements by winning the favor of the tenants and then holding their rent hostage from the landowners. His high-profile real estate acquisitions attract the attention of the local police force who have no qualms about using unprovoked brutality to bring him down. His trouble with the law, coupled with an escalating war between a local drug lord, creates a tense standoff: both sides are closing in, and Kunene must stay one step ahead–or his empire, and his life, will come crashing down.
Tagline: An unflinching look into the crime, corruption and the transgressions of those looking to survive in the most crime-infested district of Johannesburg.
In a Carpathian village, Ivan falls in love with Marichka, the daughter of his father’s killer. When tragedy befalls her, his grief lasts months; finally he rejoins the colorful life around him, marrying Palagna. She wants children but his mind stays on his lost love. To recapture his attention, Palagna tries sorcery, and in the process comes under the spell of the sorcerer, publicly humiliating Ivan, who then fights the sorcerer. The lively rhythms of village life, the work and the holidays, the pageant and revelry of weddings and funerals, the change of seasons, and nature’s beauty give proportion to Ivan’s tragedy.
A disillusioned killer embarks on his last hit but first he has to overcome his affections for his cool, detached partner. Thinking it’s dangerous and improper to become involved with a colleague he sets out to find a surrogate for his affections. Against the sordid and surreal urban nightscape (set in contemporary Hong Kong), he crosses path with a strange drifter looking for her mysterious ex-boyfriend and an amusing mute trying to get the world’s attention in his own unconventional ways.
Gabrielle is a young woman with a future: she’s the weather girl on a local TV station destined to a rapid promotion. She’s self-confident and self-possessed. In Lyon, on successive days, she meets two men of high status: Charles, a middle-aged writer, and Paul, the heir to a pharmaceutical fortune. Both are attracted to her and both have flaws immediately evident: Charles, who is married, can be dismissive; Paul can be possessive and threatening. To the dismay of one, Gabrielle chooses the other. How will each man handle her choice, and after she falls in love, can she sustain her personal strength?
In England, the Italian English hairdresser Milo Tindle is invited by the successful writer of detective stories Andrew Wyke to visit his isolated house. The lower class Milo is the lover of Andrew’s wife, who is used to have a comfortable life, and he intends to marry her. Andrew proposes Milo to steal his jewelry simulating a burglary. Milo would make a fortune selling the jewels to an intermediary; and Andrew would be reimbursed by the insurance company and would not pay alimony. However, the whole situation was part of an evil game. When Milo vanishes, a detective visits Andrew to investigate what really happened that night, when deadly games are disclosed.
