The city of Liège in Belgium's Walloon region is grey. The air seems forever stained by the heavy mining that for years made its inhabitants rich and sick. Here lives Rosetta (Émilie Dequenne), a young woman trying to keep herself and her alcoholic mother afloat with measly jobs while saving up enough money so she can, finally, leave the trailer park she's forced to call home.

“Your name is Rosetta. My name is Rosetta. You found a job. I found a job. You've got a friend. I've got a friend. You have a normal life. I have a normal life. You won't fall in a rut. I won't fall in a rut. Good night. Good night.”

– Rosetta

Directors Jean-Pierre and Luc #Dardenne once described this film as a war movie. It's pained, like the voices from the trenches that still scar the Belgian landscape. The camera – Alain Marcoen's – close, as if were following the girl through a rifle's scope. And raw, like the open wounds left behind by the mining companies.

Synchronous to the screening of a film that wasn't, Derek Jarman's Blue was broadcast on radio and television. Those who tuned into the radio could request a special card printed in that most spectral of colours, International Klein Blue, a blue that according to its creator Yves Klein, has “a quality close to pure space” and “immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched”.

“You say to the boy 'Open your eyes'. When he opens his eyes and sees the light, you make him cry out, saying 'Oh, Blue, come forth! Oh, Blue, arise! Oh, Blue, ascend! Oh, Blue, come in!'.”

– Nigel Terry

Submerged in #blue, seeing through what was left of Jarman's eyes, we live through the artist's life, and love, and loss. When you leave the theatre, put down that card, you're temporarily blinded by the physiological afterimage of a devastating disease. What remains is the voice of a filmmaker who lost his sight.

Wes has it all laid out. His business partner just needs to see it. And his wife. And the people from the West Coast, California, where there's smog and people and no space. They surely want a home, or a second home, in Utah. It's close to Vegas, sure they'll love it. The people.

“One cannot even be sure, whether it is a sect, a mystery cult, a new religion, a church, a people, a nation, or an American subculture; indeed, at different times and places it is all of these.”

– Sydney E. Ahlstrom, historian (1982)

With Sure Fire, director Jon Jost accomplishes that what Lynch tries. A mundane gem with an ominous undertow, but all without the need for mystery or eccentric characters.

 

Just Utah, and its people.

At night, a small group of prostitutes frequent a local 面薄 / mee pok #restaurant. One of them, Bunny (Michelle Goh), caught the hawker's eye, but she's not interested in the “mee pok” (the “fish ball”, as they call the vendor) (Joe Ng) and besides she has a boyfriend. Then, a car crash. Bunny is left for dead in front of the eatery. He takes her in, preparing endless meals

May Lin is a real estate agent who meets up with a man in the bare, too sterile flat she brokers. Another man who took the key of the same dwellings for his own cause, decides to settle in.

 

Over time, the apartment serves not only as the space where events take place, but locks and guides the flatmates through their compulsions.

In a #plague-ridden Taiwan, it rains relentlessly. The #rain and a #virus forces people to retreat. In Hsiao Kang's crumbling building, a plumber inadvertently punches a hole from his floor to the unnamed woman's below. While she, another victim of the #disease, holes up in her apartment they struck up a strange detached relationship.

 

Between the endless downpour and frantic #food hoarding, in her heart a #musical sings.

Paris Is Burning is probably best known for its fabulous #ballroom and #vogue​ㅤing scenes but in its heart, it tells the story of #family, of people who found their new ménage where they can live and love without fear and prejudice.

“In the ballroom circuit, it is so obvious that if you have captured the great white way of living, or looking, or dressing, or speaking – you is a marvel.”

– Pepper LaBeija

While you may expect a fierce documentary about #TransRights, or maybe merely a glamorous parade, you will be confronted with the flagrant #racism that made the #BallroomScene so essential for the Black and #Latinx LGBT+ community who founded it. And the tragedy of its demise in the name of pop culture even more heartbreaking.

“When you work with the cosmos, suddenly you get ideas for how to treat some visuals, like some images that had no intention of being in the film. That’s the freedom of the independent. Normally when you’re making a movie, it's almost pre-set, what elements will go in, so it will have “a unified structure”. But for me, I shoot so many things impulsively, that once I start editing a movie, suddenly there is an imperative for this obscure shot to come in here … or there. You keep juggling until you find on organic flow. You don't have a script, you just do it by feel. You're surprised that audiences like it.”

– Kidlat Tahimik, via