BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: the post-war German cinema season concludes.

IT’S AMAZING to think a film like this was made one year after World War Two ended. Made by the soon be East German DEFA studio, The Murderers Are Among Us tackles Germany’s war guilt head on, looking at the casual way in which war criminals assimilated themselves back into society. The film is a plea to not forget, for Germans to confront their past and shows the way in which Germany should advance forward.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

DIRECTOR Anurag Kashyap believes in living life on his terms, and making cinema that may not please everybody. His first two films – Paanch (Five) and Black Friday – ran into massive problems with the Indian movie censors. The first was denied a certificate on six grounds, including abusive language and glorification of violence. His second feature made in early 2000 on the police investigations after the Mumbai serial blasts of 1993 was not permitted to screen for a couple of years because of the sensitive nature of its subject. When Black Friday finally opened last year it got rave reviews.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: a German Psycho.

THE GERMANS have made some excellent serial killer films in the past. What has made them so fascinating is that these films seem to be just as much about the society in which the killer operates in, if not more, rather than simply giving the audience any sort of perverse pleasure via a conventional thriller. While The Devil Strikes at Midnight (Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam) could still also be seen as a rather conventional film, it’s also an interesting indictment on the German psyche, a compelling view of post-war anomie of a country trying to understand its own behaviour pre-and during World War II.

In an ongoing series, TIM WONG scouts for new and elusive films that either have fallen off the radar, or are yet to see the light of day in New Zealand. (contains spoilers)

WITH cheap shots Jesus Camp and Audience of One prolonging religion’s bad rep on screen, Lee Chang-dong’s aptly titled Secret Sunshine, while not quite the positive reinforcement, arrives at a more constructive view of Christianity, portrayed here as a faith well equipped to manage and absorb debilitating grief. Yet for all the love and rejuvenation He offers a distraught mother in the wake of her son’s kidnapping and death, the film never loses sight of God’s mean-spiritedness either: the rationale behind the Lord’s will to taketh away a point of contention for the inconsolable Shin-ae (Jeon Do-yeon). Relocating to her late-husband’s hometown in the hope of starting afresh, she finds only temporary solace; her son discovered face down in a creek after being ransomed and murdered. Jeon, who claimed Best Actress at Cannes for her exhausting performance, hits the right notes of emotional devastation required for any Lee Chang-dong role, even if the uncontrollable wailing at times resembles comedy over tragedy – her hysterical breakdown in the throws of Christian worship a real doozy of born again frenzy. Joining her spiritual journey is the splendid Song Kang-ho; he plays a mild mechanic whose dysfunctional courtship both confirms him as Korea’s most interesting thesp, and provides the film with an alleviating sense of humour.

GREGOR CAMERON reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Germany year zero.

REMINISCENT of the fifties Black & White films of the Children’s Film Foundation or like something out of Enid Blyton the contagious enthusiasm of the boys at the beginning of The Bridge (Die Brücke) endears them to the cinema goer. Certainly their antics in the beginning call up images of Robert Westall’s The Machine Gunners as they play at war and gambol through a war-fatigued village.

Out of India, GAUTAMAN BHASKARAN considers the current Indian and Bollywood Cinema.

INDIA’s official entry to the 2008 Oscars, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Eklavya: The Royal Guard with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead/title role is now in a legal tangle. Bhavna Talwar, whose Dharam was also in the race for selection, has gone to court saying that some members of the selection panel (chosen by the Film Federation of India) were closely associated with Chopra. The court will decide on October 10 whether the case merits a hearing, and has asked the parties involved in the dispute to submit their responses by that date.