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Hiroshima Mon Amour: Resuscitate after Annihilation

When we think of films addressing devastation and disaster, graphic imagery replete with dramatic plotlines are what first come to mind. From tension-filled, post-apocalyptic sci-fi to explosion-ridden war films, the theme of suffering becomes upscaled and unrealistic. Films that carry the highest emotional impact of destruction tend to be subtle and artistically experimental, like Schindler’s […]

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Feature

Rebirth and reconciliation in Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp

After the capitulation of the Empire of Japan on 15 August 1945, Private Mizushima (Shoji Yasui) does not join the rest of his former unit in a British prisoner-of-war-camp in the Burmese countryside but becomes a Buddhist monk. The story of the young soldier who decides to stay in Burma after the war in order […]

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Feature Screengem

Screengem: The bridge in The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957)

Spare a thought for Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) in David Lean’s World War II drama, at the mercy of his Japanese captors in a deep jungle POW camp, tortured, baked in the sun in a tiny corrugated “oven” after procedural and ethical clashes in the lead-up to the construction of the titular monument – an […]