Movie Extravaganza

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Photographer L.B Jefferies (james Sterwart) is recuperating from a broken leg and confined to a wheelchair in his small Greenwich Village apartment. He passes the time by spying on his neighbors through his apartment's rear window, including a danceer, a lonley woman who lives by herself, a songwriter working at his piano and serveral married couples, including a salesman, with a bed ridden wife, until the unthinkable happens, he witnesses a murder. It was a little slow but a good story.

City of God:

Taking place over the course of over two decades, City of God tells the story of Cidade de Deus (Portuguese for City of God), a lower class quarter west of Rio de Janerio. The film is told from the viewpoint of a boy named Rocket (Busca pé in Portuguese) who grows up there as a fishmonger's son, and demonstrates the desperation and violence inherent in the slums. Based on a real story, the movie depicts drug abuse, violent crime, and a boy's struggle to free himself from the slums' grasp. I think Ienjoyed this movie the most.

War Photographer:

A Documentary I found really impressive is “War Photographer” about James Nachtwey. The Director of this film managed to mount a small video-cam onto Nachtwey´s camera so the viewer kind of looks “through the eyes” of the photographer. Photography, presented to the public in 1839, was believed to create images that were accurate representations of the world. In 1859, it was predicted that photography would be able to visually document future wars correctly. Photography’s accuracy was assumed and taken as a mechanical impression of reality. As explained by louis Daguerre, the creator of the first commerical photographic process, images produced by the camera were of “absolute truth” and “infinitely more accurate than any painting by the human hand.

-T