BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Soviet revolution.

SERGI PARADJANOV’s The Colour of Pomegranates is one of the most formally and politically revolutionary films ever made, so it’s of no surprise that some his other work will be infused with the ‘dissident’ qualities that saw him languishing in jail for a considerable time. After all, he eschewed the montage, socialist realism and cautionary tales of collectivism that had been the staple of Soviet cinema since the heydays of early Eisenstein. Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors was also provocative in quite a different way to The Colour of Pomegranates – stylistically it was a hotpotch of camerawork with formal icon-like shots (paving the way for the latter film), shaky handheld shots, and some of the more inventive camera shots in film history (I’m talking specifically about the two deaths that punctuate the opening section of the film). But it’s not simply the camerawork that assaults – sounds (e.g. the giant trumpets or the swish of the grass), tastes (you could feel an apple being eaten), and touches. Paradjanov doesn’t hold back in his visual flourishes either – colour dissolves to black and white, impossible camera frames jump out without warning, images appear all in red – yet they all service the story. We feel Ivanko’s pain and solitude. Consequently this is a film to be felt, it’s cinema at its most sensual and elemental.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: the visitor.

THE TRICKSTER is a common figure in literature and mythology, the mischievous imp which effects social change by subverting norms of behaviour. A movement within “African American” literature was to use the trickster figure to try and dismantle oppressive institutions – the trickster tells the truths about people that they pretend not to hear otherwise, effecting the way people view ‘everyday life’. It’s quite a subversive tool – I, like I suspect many in the audience, sided with the family, as opposed to the infuriating Harry (Danny Glover). When in actual fact, the film shows the evil Harry as a necessary tool in bringing the family together, for confronting uncomfortable home truths, and for forcing the characters to find their own family identity.