La Haine

La Haine (French pronunciation: [la ʔɛn], ‘hatred’) is a 1995 French black-and-white film written, co-edited, and directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. It is commonly released under its French title in the English-speaking world, although its U.S. VHS release was entitled Hate. It is about three teenage friends and their struggle to live in the banlieues of Paris. The title derives from a line spoken by one of them, Hubert: “La haine attire la haine!”, “hatred breeds hatred.”

This film focuses on a single day in the lives of three friends in their early twenties, from immigrant families living in an impoverished multi-ethnic French housing project (a ZUP – zone d’urbanisation prioritaire) in the suburbs of Paris, in the aftermath of a riot. Vinz (Vincent Cassel), who is Jewish, is filled with rage. He sees himself as a gangster ready to win respect by killing a cop, and practices the role of Travis Bickle from the film Taxi Driver in the mirror. His attitude towards police, for instance, is a simplified, stylized blanket condemnation, even to individual policemen who make an effort to steer the trio clear of troublesome situations. Hubert (Hubert Koundé) is an Afro-French boxer and small time drug dealer, whose gymnasium was burned in the riots. The quietest, most thoughtful and wisest of the three, he sadly contemplates the ghetto and the hate around him. He expresses the wish to simply leave this decadent world of violence and hate behind him, but does not know how since he lacks the means to do so. Saïd – Sayid in some English subtitles – (Saïd Taghmaoui) is a Maghrebin who inhabits the middle ground between his two friends’ responses to their place in life.

A friend of theirs, Abdel Ichaha, has been brutalized by the police shortly before the riot and lies in a coma. Vinz finds a policeman’s .44 Magnum revolver, lost in the riot. He vows that if their friend dies from his injuries, he will use it to kill a cop, and when he hears of Abdel’s death he fantasizes carrying out his vengeance.

The three go through an aimless daily routine and struggle to entertain themselves, frequently finding themselves under police scrutiny. They take a train to Paris but encounter many of the same frustrations, and their responses to benign interactions with Parisians cause the situations to degenerate to gratuitous hostility. A run-in with sadistic Parisian plainclothes police, during which Saïd and Hubert are humiliated and physically abused, results in their missing the last train home and spending the night on the streets. They go to a roof-top from where they insult skinheads and policemen, before later encountering the same group of racist anti-immigrant skinheads who begin to beat Saïd and Hubert savagely, now that the balance of power has shifted. Vinz arrives and his gun allows him to break up the fight and all the skinheads flee except one (portrayed by Kassovitz himself) who Vinz is about to execute in cold blood. His dream of revenge is thwarted by his reluctance to go through with the deed, and, cleverly goaded by Hubert, he is forced to confront the fact that his true nature is not the heartless gangster he poses as, and he lets the skinhead flee.

Early in the morning, the trio return to the banlieue and split up to their separate homes, and Vinz, in a wise decision, turns the gun over to Hubert, relinquishing his destructive self-image and potentially opening the door to personal growth and a constructive future. However, Vinz and Saïd encounter a plainclothes policeman, whom Vinz had insulted earlier in the day whilst with his friends on a local rooftop. The policeman grabs and threatens Vinz, making reference to the earlier incident on the roof. Hubert rushes to their aid, but as the policeman holding Vinz taunts him with a loaded gun held to Vinz’s head, the gun accidentally goes off, killing Vinz instantly. Hubert and the policeman slowly and deliberately point their guns at each other, and as the film cuts to Saïd closing his eyes and cuts to black, a shot is heard on the soundtrack, with no indication of who fired or who may have been hit. This stand-off is underlined by a voice-over of Hubert’s slightly modified opening lines (“It’s about a society in free fall…“), underlining the fact that, as the lines say, jusqu’ici tout va bien (so far so good); i.e. all seems to be going relatively well until Vinz is killed, and from there no one knows what will happen, a microcosm of French society’s descent through hostility into pointless violence.

Bicycle Thieves

Bicycle Thieves (Italian: Ladri di biciclette), also known as The Bicycle Thief, is a 1948 Italian neorealist film directed by Vittorio De Sica. It tells the story of a poor man searching the streets of Rome for his stolen bicycle, which he needs to be able to work. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Luigi Bartolini and was adapted for the screen by Cesare Zavattini. It stars Lamberto Maggiorani as the poor man searching for his lost bicycle and Enzo Staiola as his son.

It was given an Academy Honorary Award in 1950, and, just four years after its release, was deemed the greatest film of all time by the magazine Sight & Sound‘s poll of filmmakers and critics in 1952 The film placed sixth as the greatest ever made in Sight & Sound’s latest directors’ poll, conducted in 2002 and was ranked in the top 10 of the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.

Antonio Ricci is an unemployed man in the depressed post-World War II economy of Italy. With a wife and two children to support, he is desperate for work. He is delighted to at last get a good job pasting up posters, but he must have a bicycle. He is told unequivocally, “No bicycle, no job.” His wife Maria pawns their bedsheets in order to get money to redeem his bicycle from the pawnbroker.

On his first day of work, Antonio’s bicycle is stolen by a young thief, who snatches it when he is putting up a poster. Antonio gives chase, but to no avail. He goes to the police, but there is little they can do. The only option is for Antonio, his young son Bruno, and his friends to walk the streets of Rome themselves, looking for the bicycle. They search Rome’s largest square Piazza Vittorio, where they encounter countless bicycles and parts resembling his own. They falsely accuse a merchant of possessing the stolen bike, and their task seems futile. Subsequently, at the market at Porto Portese Antonio and Bruno believe they have found the thief trying to pawn the bike to an old man, and they chase him but he manages to get away. They then pursue the old man into a church, where they accuse him of knowing where the purported thief resides. The commotion disrupts the mass, and the old man manages to slip away.

During a rare treat of a meal in a restaurant, Antonio shares his shattered dreams with his son. Desperate, Antonio even visits the dubious fortune teller that he had earlier mocked. However, she merely doles out to him the vague and unhelpful, “you’ll find the bike quickly, or not at all.” Antonio hands over some money and leaves.

As he walks out of the clairvoyant’s house, he encounters the thief and chases him into a whorehouse. Antonio takes the thief outside and is set upon by the hostile neighbours. Bruno slips off to fetch a policeman. Meanwhile, Antonio angrily accuses the thief of stealing his bike, but the young man denies it. When the policeman arrives, the thief is lying on the ground, having or feigning a seizure. The irate neighbours blame Antonio for causing the “innocent” boy’s fit.

The policeman tells Antonio that his case is weak; he did not catch the thief red-handed, nor did he get the names of any witnesses, and the policeman is certain the neighbours will give the thief an alibi. Antonio gives up and walks away in despair, to the jeers of the crowd.

Sitting on the curb outside a packed football stadium, Antonio sees hundreds and hundreds of parked bicycles. As he cradles his head in despair, a fleet of bicycles speeds past him. After vacillating for some time, he tries to steal one outside an apartment. However, he is caught by a crowd of angry men who slap and humiliate him in front of his son. The bicycle’s owner sees how upset Bruno is and mercifully declines to press charges. Antonio and his son walk away, dejected.

Bicycle Thieves is the best known neo-realist film; a movement begun by Roberto Rossellini‘s Rome, Open City (1945), which attempted to give a new degree of realism to cinema Following the precepts of the movement, De Sica shot only on location in Rome, and instead of professional actors used nonactors with no training in performance; for example, Lamberto Maggiorani, the leading actor, was a factory worker. The picture is also in the Vatican’s Best Films List for portraying humanistic values.

City Of God

City of God (Portuguese: Cidade de Deus) is a 2002 Brazilian crime drama film directed by Fernando Meirelles and co-directed by Kátia Lund, released in its home country in 2002 and worldwide in 2003. The story was adapted by Bráulio Mantovani from the 1997 novel of the same name written by Paulo Lins, but the characters are not fictitious and the plot is based upon real events. It depicts the growth of organized crime in the Cidade de Deus suburb of Rio de Janeiro, between the end of the ’60s and the beginning of the ’80s, with the closure of the film depicting the war between the drug dealer Li’l Zé and criminal Knockout Ned. The tagline is “If you run, the beast catches; if you stay, the beast eats”, (a proverb analogous to the English “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t”).

Chickens are being prepared for a meal when a chicken escapes and an armed gang chases after it. The chicken comes to a stop between the gang and a young man named Rocket (Buscapé), who believes that the gang wants to kill him. In a creative move, the “Matrix” shot stops time and circles Rocket. Suddenly he’s a young boy playing soccer on a dirt field. It’s the 60s and this is how City of God came to be.

In the context of a military dictatorship, three impoverished thieves known as the “Tender Trio” – Shaggy, Clipper, and Goose – rob and loot business owners; Goose is Rocket’s brother. In Robin Hood fashion, they split part of the loot with the citizens of a favela called the City of God (Cidade de Deus), and are protected by them in return. Several younger boys idolise the trio and follow them around. One such hanger-on, known as Li’l Dice (Dadinho), convinces them to hold up a motel and rob its occupants. The gang agree but, resolving not to kill anyone, tell Li’l Dice that he is too young to accompany them and must serve as lookout. They give him a gun and tell him to fire a warning shot if the police arrive. Unsatisfied with this, Li’l Dice fires a warning shot mid-robbery and proceeds to gun down all the inhabitants of the motel once the gang have run off. The massacre brings on the attention of the police, forcing the Tender Trio to leave the slum. Clipper joins the church, and Shaggy is shot by the police while trying to escape with his girlfriend. Goose is shot by Li’l Dice after taking the younger boy’s money and his friend Benny (Bené), who have both been hiding out and committing crimes on their own since the motel incident.

The timeline jumps forward into the 70’s. Rocket has become a part of the “Groovies”, a group of young hippies who enjoy smoking marijuana. He develops an interest in photography by taking pictures of his friends, especially one girl that he is infatuated with, but his attempts to get close to her are ruined by a group of younger troublemakers known as “The Runts” (Caixa Baixa, “Low Gang”). Li’l Dice now calls himself “Li’l Zé” (“Zé Pequeno”), and along with his childhood friend Benny has established a drug empire by eliminating all of the competition, except for one dealer named Carrot, who is a friend of Benny’s.

A relative peace has come over the City of God under the reign of Li’l Zé, who avoids the police’s attention by having his henchmen kill one of the Runts, who had been committing petty crimes in the area. Zé plans to kill his last rival, Carrot, but is stopped by Benny. Eventually, along with the girl that he has wooed away from Rocket, Benny decides to leave the criminal life behind to live on a farm and throws a farewell party. Zé, unable to find a girl who will dance with him at the party, vents his sexual frustration by humiliating a peace-loving man named Knockout Ned. Later, Benny is gunned down by a former drug dealer, Neguinho, who was aiming for Zé. As Benny was the only man holding Li’l Zé back from taking over Carrot’s business, his death leaves Zé in danger and Carrot living in fear.

Following Benny’s death, Zé rapes Ned’s girlfriend, then kills his uncle and younger brother. Ned, looking for revenge, sides with Carrot. After Ned kills one of Li’l Zé’s men and wounds Zé himself, a war breaks out between the two rival factions that engulfs the City of God which marks the beginning of the 80’s. Both sides enlist more and more “soldiers”, with Zé providing weapons for the Runts on the condition that they will fight for him. Jealous of Ned’s notoriety in the newspapers, Zé has Rocket take photos of him and his gang. Unknown to Rocket, a female reporter named Marina decides to publish the developed prints in the daily paper. Rocket then fears for his life, mistakenly believing that Zé will want to kill him, although Zé is actually very pleased with his increased notoriety. After throwing a fit, Rocket reluctantly agrees to keep working with the newspaper and ends up sleeping with Marina.

The story has come around full circle to the start of the film. Confronted by the gang, Rocket is surprised that Zé is asking him to take a picture of the gang. Just as Rocket prepares to take the photograph, however, Carrot arrives and a gunfight ensues between the two gangs, and later the police. Ned is killed by a boy who has infiltrated his gang to avenge his father, a security guard who was killed by Ned in an earlier scene during a bank robbery. Li’l Zé and Carrot are arrested and Carrot is taken away to be paraded in front of the press. Zé is shaken down for money, humiliated, and finally released, all while being secretly photographed by Rocket. After the police officers leave, the Runts surround Zé and murder him in retribution for having killed one of their friends. Rocket takes pictures of the entire scene as well as Zé’s dead body and goes back to the newspaper.

Rocket is seen in the newspaper office looking at all of his photographs through a magnifying glass, and deciding whether or not to put the pictures of the crooked police officers in the newspaper, or the picture of Zé’s dead body. The photos of the cops would make him famous but put him in danger, while the photos of Li’l Zé would guarantee him a job at the paper. He decides to take the safe route, and the newspaper runs his picture of Zé’s bullet-ridden corpse.

The story ends with the Runts walking around the City of God, making a hit list of the dealers they plan to kill in order to take over the drug business. They mention that a Comando Vermelho (“Red Command”) is coming.

TSOTSI

Tsotsi is a 2005 film written and directed by Gavin Hood. The film is an adaptation of the novel Tsotsi, by Athol Fugard. The soundtrack features Kwaito music performed by popular South African artist Zola as well as a score by Mark Kilian and Paul Hepker featuring the voice of South African protest singer/poet Vusi Mahlasela.

Set in a Alexandra slum, near Johannesburg, South Africa, the film tells the story of Tsotsi, a young street thug who steals a car only to discover a baby in the back seat.

The film won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and was nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006.

His mother dying from a terminal disease, the young David (Benny Moshe) ran away from an abusive father and lived with other homeless children in a series of large concrete construction pipes. A few years later, David, who now goes by the name Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae), is leader of a gang including his friends Butcher (Zenzo Ngqobe), Aap (Kenneth Nkosi) and Boston (Mothusi Magano). After getting involved in a murder committed by Butcher during a mugging, Tsotsi and Boston get into a fight which leaves Boston badly injured. Later on Tsotsi shoots Pumla (Nambitha Mpumlwana), a young woman, while stealing her car, only to discover a three-month-old baby in the back seat. Tsotsi hastily strips the car of its valuables and takes the baby back to his shack. Pumla survives the attack and works with a police artist to create a composite sketch of Tsotsi’s face, which is then run in the newspapers.

Realizing that he cannot properly care for the baby on his own, Tsotsi spots Miriam (Terry Pheto), with a young child strapped to her back, collecting water from a public tap. He follows her to her shack and forces her at gunpoint to feed the kidnapped child. Meanwhile, rich gang leader Fela (Zola) begins attempting to recruit Aap, Boston and Butcher to work for him. After he takes the child to Miriam a second time, she asks Tsotsi to leave the child with her so that she can care for him on Tsotsi’s behalf, to which he agrees.Tsotsi soon becomes slightly more moral and is seen at one point giving a large sum of money to a crippled beggar he had previously agrevated.

Tsotsi decides to take care of the injured Boston, and has Aap and Butcher take Boston to his shack. Boston, who is called Teacher Boy by his friends, explains that he never took the teachers’ examination, and Tsotsi tells him that the gang will raise the money so that Boston can take the exam. To do so, they will have to commit another robbery.

Tsotsi, Butcher and Aap go to Pumla’s house; when Pumla’s husband John (Rapulana Seiphemo) returns from the hospital they follow him into the house and tie him up. Aap is assigned to watch John while Butcher ransacks the bedroom and Tsotsi collects items from the baby’s room. When Aap goes to raid the fridge, John activates the alarm. In panic, Butcher attempts to kill John with John’s pistol that he found, but Tsotsi shoots and kills Butcher with his pistol and he and Aap escape in John’s car moments before the security company arrives.

Traumatized by Tsotsi’s killing of Butcher and fearing that Tsotsi will one day harm him too, Aap decides to leave the gang and quit as Tsotsi’s friend. When Tsotsi goes back to Miriam’s house she reveals that she knows where he got the baby, and begs him to return the child to his parents.

Tsotsi sets off to return the baby. He reaches John’s house, tells John over the intercom that he will leave the child outside the gate. Meanwhile, an officer stationed at the house alerts Captain Smit (Ian Roberts), who rushes to the scene, arriving just as Tsotsi is about to walk away.

The police train their guns on Tsotsi, ordering him to return the baby. However, John urges them to lower their weapons so that he can retrieve the baby himself. Holding the baby in his arms, he is convinced by John to give up the baby. Tsotsi emotionally returns the baby to John, then is simply told to put up his hands when he turns himself in and the film ends.

FM4 : Urban Stories

So what are “Urban Stories”?
An urban story can be any film in which the city is a defining presence – in
which characters’ lives are defined by existence within the urban
environment. The words “power”, “poverty” and “conflict” all appear in the title
of this option. The films we will be studying for this unit are La Haine, Bicycle Thieves, City of God and Tsotsi. These are films with a contemporary edge which speak across national cultural boundaries – very often having in
common an exploration of youth cultures.

Here are some thematic suggestions:
– films focusing on the struggle within communites
– films focusing on the struggle between a community and the ruling power
structures
– films concerned with with ‘living with crime’ 
– films dealing with alienation produced by technology and social
organisation, including films set in the future
The films may also be linked by stylistic approach:
– films working from a neo-realist / documentary aesthetic
– films working with new wave / experimental techniques
– films based on genre cinema (for example, melodrama or comedy)

FM3 : Small Scale Research Project

This is your first piece of coursework. The challenge is to explore a particular area of film making and, using a focus film plus two additional films linked to the primary text, produce a detailed and sharply focused piece of research. The process of defining the area of investigation can be divided into
two stages:
The first is at a basic factual level, mapping out a broad potential field
of study: for example, with a particular focus on Unforgiven, how many other
Westerns has Clint Eastwood made as actor and as
director, when and under what production contexts?
Answers to these questions will lead to a tighter focus on just a small
section of the broader map: for example, the Westerns Eastwood
directed or the Westerns he acted in for Sergio Leone.
As the area of investigation becomes clearer, the second stage is
Entered where a critical framework will emerge as being especially
useful. For example, in this case an auteur study, a star study, a
genre study, an institutional study or a focus on, say, gender issues,
specifically masculinity, are all feasible.
Here are five different projects from the same starting point:
o The impact a film either starring or directed by Clint Eastwood has
had on the Western genre? (focus film: Unforgiven)
o The impact Eastwood’s performance in a Leone film has had on the
representation of western heroes subsequently? (focus film: The
Good, the Bad and the Ugly)
o The contribution of Eastwood’s star image to the ideology of films in
which he stars (focus film: The Outlaw Josey Wales)
o Influences of Leone on Eastwood as a director of Westerns? (focus
film: A Fistful of Dollars)

It cannot be emphasised too strongly that the Research Project is meant to
be small scale and focused. Students should resist any temptation toward
very generalist encyclopaedia-like surveys.
The focus on a particular film as a starting point should guarantee this. In
most cases it will be unnecessary for the student to extend beyond the
required reference to two further related films.
The other focus is on the area of investigation and on the critical framework
structuring it – which motivates and makes specific the kind of research
conducted.