hoo this was a tough one, and i don't have much to say about these. Mirage: Eigenstate was a strange little sci-fi thing from Indonesia that was visually really interesting but i did not understand what it was about honestly (5/10) and When the Sun Is Eaten (Chi'bal K'iin) was 30 minutes of grainy analog footage of a solar eclipse from three different points in the USA set to drone music, it was honestly cool to watch but it could’ve been just one point in the USA, be a third of the length and i would’ve gotten just as much if not more out of it cause and i know it’s a factor outside the movie itself, but you give that an audience on sleep deficit at 10am and someone will definitely fall asleep during this, i’m not sure if i fell asleep during this or not myself (4/10).

a found footage documentary about the first International Women's Film Seminar in 1973. the circumstances of how this was made is almost more interesting than the movie itself in my opinion, filmed for potential tv coverage of the seminar but quickly forgotten when no distributor was interested, the footage was lost for 50 years until a copy of it with the audio still intact was found. the film itself is a series of interviews with various female filmmakers (and my sworn enemy Alice Schwarzer) about their craft and their mistreatment at the workplace and in film school. a lot of it still resonates today with movements like #metoo not being that far in our past, nevertheless some of the statements made in the movie as well as in the post-screening q+a felt very… off to me, especially as one of the champions of second wave feminism in Germany, Alice Schwarzer, appears very prominently in the movie (which in itself is fine, in the 70s she's done some important work and of course i’m also not asking for her to get removed from historical records that would be silly) and goes mostly unmentioned in the q+a despite Schwarzer's more recent alliances with the populist Sahra Wagenknecht in their shared pro-Russia stance, the rampant transphobia seen in her writings as well as other writings published by her magazine Emma, the long lasting stance to make all sex work illegal, there's a lot to unpack and that Schwarzer was only brought up as a fun anecdote (as well as some other statements in the q+a) kinda soured me some on what is otherwise a very interesting historic document.

5/10

anyways back to something i got absolutely nothing to say about admittedly, this was a fine family drama with light magical realist elements to it, the child actors all did really well but overall the script didn't give me much to latch onto unfortunately i admittedly also wasn't in a good space to focus on the film but a lot of the cultural references also just kinda felt lost on me.

5/10

speaking of cultural references being lost on me, wow this was a weird one. a Taiwanese black comedy parodying 1970s variety shows, spoofing various political moments of that time, WWII, and modern day societal issues in a cocktail of content that on paper sounds awesome but in practice just never fully landed (with the exception of one scene that being the extended homage to/parody of John Cage's performance art and musique concrete pieces here i absolutely got the joke and it was just very cool to watch on its own too). in the q+a after, director Su Hui-Yu was incredibly transparent about how the film was made, a lot of the jokes being on the spot decisions, with the entire movie having been made as a performance art piece at a modern art museum in Taipei a lot of decisions on what any scene would be were made on location, occasionally with audience input, which explains a lot about this movie, i respect the effort and the people behind it seemed like extremely nice people in the q+a but this unfortunately didn't land for me.

4/10

in his “first post-mortal film”, German queer film legend Rosa von Praunheim reflects on his life through archival footage and interviews with long time collaborators, neighbors and friends, and the very cast of the movie, and on his death with a fictional enactment of his death, being haunted by past lovers, obnoxious fans and the media and how he was treated by it. a very graphic, very kinky but also a very self-aware experience that knows what it sets out to do and does so uncompromisingly on a tiny budget.

7/10