Send us your Movie Memories
Has there been a film in 2000-09 that made a significant impact on you? Something that has made you laugh, cry, or spurred you into action? Or was it the time and context, rather than the film, that was memorable: in a certain country, with (or without) a special someone, at a particular stage in your life?
This is a space for films that may not have helped redefine cinema – it is much more personal: it’s about films that have, in some small way, helped define you.
Profound or random, funny or serious, we want to know. Share your memory with us below and we’ll enter it into our monthly draw to win a clutch of special Decalogue prizes. Good luck!
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The most moving inspiring film I have ever seen
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The first film we all enjoyed as a family – my children were old enough to appreciate the humour and my wife and I were young enough to enjoy it as well!
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In 2005, I was in Sarajevo and looking for ways to spend an afternoon before I caught a train. I managed to stumble across the Sarajevo Film Festival and saw a documentary double bill: the first screening was about a former trafficked prostitute in Amsterdam trying to cope with rebuilding her life after working in the sex industry. It was uncompromisingly brutal and did not make for a happy afternoon.
Thankfully it was followed by Georgi And The Butterflies. The film follows the (mis)fortunes of Georgi Lulchev, director of Home #6 for Psychologically Challenged Men near Sofia, Bulgaria. Along with playing the lottery every week, the home’s ongoing financial problems drive Dr Lulchev towards a series of crackpot money-making schemes such as silk harvesting, ostrich farming, and butterfly farming… Hence the name.
Filmed with curiousity, compassion, and a good dose of humour, this documentary has stuck with me ever since I saw it, so much so that I tried to (and eventually did) track it down on DVD so that I could watch it again. While undoubtedly depressing, Home #6 for Psychologically Challenged Men is also shown to be a place of optimism, hope, and perserverance in the face of a bleak situation, showing the best qualities of both patients and employees. A memorable way to spend an afternoon in a city where you don’t know anybody. Actually, that would probably also be true in a city where you do.
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The fabulous destiny of Amélie Poulin – biting strawberries off fingers, the magic camera, pricing dildos, oysters of a chicken, passport photo machine repair man… belle? jolie!
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This was the first low budget digital film I was aware of watching and it has remained with me all this time. Not only was the story great and the acting, but the use of the camera was perfect to the telling of the story. Sadly, apart from the person with whom I watched the film, I’ve never met anyone else who saw it!