What Is War Film Series

1. Grave of Fireflies
(Isao Takahata, 1988; near the end of WWII; Japan)
March 28 (Friday) Humanities Institute (Main Library 4th floor), 4:00-6:30 p.m. (facilitator: Eva Nagase)

Based on the semi-autobiographical novel written by Akiyuki Nosaka, whose younger sister died in his care during the World War II. Grave of Fireflies tells the story of two children trying to survive bombing and scarcity. As in the Barefoot Gen films, no mention is made of Japan's role in the war as an aggressor; but the depiction of the needless suffering endured by its victims transcends national and ideological boundaries. --Charles Solomon [adapted from www.amazon.com]

2. Black Rain
(Shôhei Imamura, 1989; Hiroshima nuclear havoc; Japan)
March 31 (Monday) LLRC (Main Library 5th floor) 7:00-9:30 p.m.(facilitator: TBA)

A Cannes Film Festival award winner, "Black Rain" is an unforgettable movie about humanity and survival after the 1945 atomic catastrophe that changed the world forever. Stunning photography vividly details the horror of ravaged Hiroshima, while its shocked survivors struggle with radiation sickness as they rebuild their shattered lives.

“When Yasuko, filled with hope, waits for a shining rainbow, symbolizing life. You wait with her, with all your heart, until you remember that this film is shot in black and white.” [www.amazon.com commentator]

3. Kanal

(Andrzej Wajda, 1957; Warsaw Uprising; Poland).

April 3 (Thursday) Javits Center Room 105, 6:00-8:30 p.m. (facilitator: Prof. Izabela Kalinowska-Blackwood)

September, 1944. It's the 56th day of Warsaw's uprising against the Nazis. The third Platoon of the Resistance is down to 43 heroic men and women, and they're penned in. After a last day of fighting, and of good-byes to family, to love making, and to music, a handful of doomed survivors wade into the city's underground sewers in hopes of escape. Their valor is tested a final time. A symbolic depiction of hell on Earth.

4. The Tied Balloon
(Binka Zhelyazkova, 1967; WWII; Bulgaria)
April 4 (Friday) LLRC, 4:00-6:30 p.m. (facilitator: Lilla Toke)

Made in 1967 but available for wider audiences only after the fall of communism (it was shelved for exactly 22 years, until 1989) this funny and touching, bitterly satiric and artistically sophisticated film is virtually inaccessible in the West. Directed by Binka Zhelyazkova, a Bulgarian woman director, the film evolves around the adventures of the people of Cherkask, a small village in Bulgaria during the Second World War, and their encounter over twelve hours with a lost war-balloon. One morning a little girl notices a war balloon on the sky. The teacher tells the villagers that the balloon is made out of pure silk, which immediately brings up the possibility of making new clothes for the entire village and so they decide to chase and pull down the balloon in order to cut it into pieces and transform it into clothes. Most of the film builds on the unsuccessful hunting of the balloon by the male village members and their gradually developing relationship to it. The simplicity of the story is contrasted with highly refined cinematography and a subtle parodic reconstruction of war films.

5. Battle of Algiers
(Gillo Pontecorvo, 1967; Algerian de-colonialization)
April 7 (Monday) LLRC 7:00-9:30 p.m. (facilitator: David Anshen)

Although filmed in a semi documentary style it uses no news footage. Centering on the city of Algiers during the Algerian war against the French colonial authority that style makes the camera a sort of neutral observer to the unfolding horror. Bombings of civilians by both sides, torture and grim urban warfare are presented in a striking and often chilling manner. The camera here offers no opinion. It leaves it to viewer...(Compare, perhaps, the film "Memories of Underdevelopment"). [adapted from Ryzzard, www.amazon.com]

6. The Grand Illusion
(Jean Renoir, 1973; WWI; French)
April 8 (Tuesday) Javits Center Room 105, 6:00-8:30 p.m. (facilitator: Prof. Robert Harvey)

Not unlike Billy Wilder's "Stalag 17"[without the caricature]…Renoir illicits a rock-solid performance from actor/director Erich Von Stroheim, and his performance is the greatest asset of the film…Erich Von Stroheim as a respectful and sympathetic German officer-cum-camp warden is surprisingly well fleshed out. Renoir creates a touching and believable friendship between Stroheim's Captain von Rauffstein and Pierre Fresnay's Captain de Boieldieu, both of whom belong to a dying breed of career officers. [adapted from Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times]

7. Distant Thunder (Ashani Shanket)
(Satyajit Ray, 1974, India; WWII Bengal Famine)
April 9 (Wednesday) Humanities Institute, 4:00-6:30 p.m. (facilitator: Sumana Raychaudhuri)

This film takes as its subject the Bengal famine of 1943 when, due to the negligence and indifference of the British authorities, some 5 million lives were lost [even as colonial India was engaged wholeheartedly in aiding the British war effort]…Ray focuses on a remote village, where the war is little understood, and is merely "distant thunder." The warplanes flying overhead are regarded uncomprehendingly, but with wonder. Soon, shortages of food lead to starvation. At the center of this is a young Brahmin couple, who make use of their caste to earn a living. The horrific turn of events bring home to them the concept of social responsibility… The final shot brings the sheer scale of the holocaust home to us. [adapted from Himadri Chatterjee, amazon.imdb.com]

8. The Sand Pebbles
(Robert Wise, 1966; Chinese civil war)
April 11 (Friday) LLRC, 4:00-6:30 p.m. (facilitator: Ketty Thomas)

Shot in Taiwan and Hong Kong, the film combines historical sweep and intimate human drama in several parallel stories, all revolving around U.S. Navy machinist's mate Jake Holman…who joins the "sand pebble" crew of the U.S.S. San Pablo, a Navy gunboat patrolling the Yangtze River on the eve of the Chinese revolution in 1926…Holman is a defiant voice of humanity in this clash between outmoded values and inevitable change; his final line of dialogue ("What the hell happened?") is a tragic summation of misguided policy, expressing the film's criticism of the Vietnam War. [adapted from Jeff Shannon, www.amazon.com]

9. Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
(Stanley Kubrick; 1964; Cold War)
April 21 (Monday) LLRC, 7:00-9:30 p.m. (facilitator: Cristina Mathews)

Dr. Strangelove is a perfect spoof of political and military insanity, beginning when General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), a maniacal warrior obsessed with "the purity of precious bodily fluids," mounts his singular campaign against Communism by ordering a squadron of B-52 bombers to attack the Soviet Union. With dialogue ("You can't fight here! This is the war room!") and images (Slim Pickens's character riding the bomb to oblivion) that have become a part of our cultural vocabulary, Kubrick's film regularly appears on critics' lists of the all-time best. [adapted from Jeff Shannon, www.amazon.com]

10. Closely Watched Trains
(Jiri Menzel, 1966; Czech anti-German rebellion)
April 22 (Tuesday) LLRC, 7:00-9:30 p.m. (facilitator: TBA)

In a boring train station, a young man is trying to prove his manhood. We closely watch his struggle like a passing train, until the shocking “confrontation between dreams and real-world obligation … in a world gone mad through no fault of one's own” (Tom Keogh, www.amazon.com).

11. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
(Hayao Miyazaki and Kazuo Komatsubara, 1984; post-human civilization)
April 25 (Friday) LLRC, 4:00-6:30 p.m. (facilitator: Xiaoning Lu)

“1000 years ago, civilization collapsed, and a ceramic fragment was hidden in the earth laid waste. The ruined ocean came to be called the Wasteland, and, giving off poisonous vapor, its forest of fungi spreads, until it threatens the existence of the declining human race” … Even in such a state, among human races, the war for world dominance still persists. Hayao Miyazaki’s most acclaimed film. A hard-to-find film in the U.S. It inspires compassion and empowering way to affirm all lives on earth.

The organizers would like to thank the faculty members, the Humanities Institute, the Language and Learning Resource Center (LLRC) and the Javits Center for making this series possible. The views expressed by the facilitators and/or discussants do not reflect those of the Department of Comparative Studies, the university or our hosts in any way.