Sampling Europe

Nevertheless, the stories of the selected films span across diverse geographical, cultural, and social landscapes of Europe. They take us across modern European social dilemmas, intimate portraits of human relationships, and relaxed, less realistic scenarios. While watching, it is worth keeping in mind how the audiences—particularly those nationally bound—paint their self-portrait when choosing the best film. For example, Emotional Architecture 1959 embodies the proverbial Spanish romanticism and omnipotence of destiny. The national stereotypes are brought to the extreme in the alienated, wacky, bizarre short of the British Baby Thump, while the animation If not now, when…? overturns the archetypical ‘Ordnung und Disziplin’ and instead offers us the hopelessly undetermined protagonist, who ventures, but with funny and endearing hesitation, to jump off a springboard. In the other corner, there is a great scope of films focused not on the imagined characteristics of their environment but on the real issues of society. Rag Head takes us through a sequence of unfortunate events involving a Belgian of Italian descent who gets into trouble with the police because of his Arabian features. Beş follows a Dutch woman of Turkish descent who returns to her home village for a friend’s wedding but experiences alienation there because of language barriers and conservative gender norms. The story about a couple faced with the husband’s terminal disease in Blue Note addresses the question of euthanasia and assisted suicide. The film resists the expected melodrama and serves a tranquil insight into the last day of the couple, which chooses care and compassion in life and in death. The diverse selection of films provides multiple entry points into the European art short film and juxtaposes the intimate, realistic stories with avantgarde, animation, and documentaries. Finally, we get one mixed plate of European films for us to share.