Heddy Honigmann
October 1, 2003 - October 24, 2003
Heddy Honigmann was born in Peru to Austrian and Polish refugees, is a citizen of the Netherlands, and is at home in the world. In twenty-five years of filmmaking, she has crossed the globe several times over, following a nose for a good story that rivals any journalist's. But unlike the detached journalist, Honigmann always goes right to the heart of the matter, forging a bond of trust with her subjects, whom she terms "characters." At once patient and persistent, she garners the memories and reflections of individuals who survive what we cavalierly call "world events" through their innate creativity and humanity. From widows near Sarajevo who do their crying off camera, to middle-class Peruvians gamely surviving a failed economy by moonlighting as cabbies, to buskers in the Paris metro whose lively music is born of exile, to young Dutch U.N. peacekeepers who nurse memories of the horrors they have seen, Honigmann amasses for us what the critic Michael Tortorello termed "an archeology of experience."
Honigmann's documentaries have become familiar to PFA audiences primarily through their frequent appearances at the San Francisco International Film Festival; less known here are her fiction films, such as the deeply moving Mind Shadows. We are pleased to present our first ever retrospective tribute to this internationally admired filmmaker, who joins us in person on October 1 and 3.
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
7:30 a.m. CRAZY
Heddy Honigmann in Person. Dutch veterans of U.N. peacekeeping missions recalling their experiences through music, from Puccini to Guns 'n' Roses, show that neutrality does not mean indifference. "The mysterious power of these segments is a complex marriage of music and memory."—Toronto Film Festival
Friday, October 3, 2003
7:30 a.m. MIND SHADOWS
Heddy Honigmann in Person. "A finely made and very absorbing tragic drama about a man suffering from Alzheimer's disease....Honigmann handles the story with great delicacy and sensitivity, and is aided immeasurably by the intelligent and moving performance of Joop Admiraal."—Variety
Wednesday, October 8, 2003
7:30 a.m. Metal and Melancholy
This documentary about formerly middle-class people surviving Peru's economic collapse by driving cabs is "quite like the Peruvians themselves—relaxed, persevering, nakedly emotional, and tougher than seat leather."—Village Voice
Friday, October 10, 2003
7:30 a.m. O Amor Natural
Older residents of Rio de Janeiro give voice to the erotic poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade and recall passions of their own. "A touching fresco of art, memory, and desire."—Chicago Tribune. With short Four Times My Heart.
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
7:30 a.m. Good-Bye
Honigmann's fictional feature is "an achingly true account of consuming passion with an almost unbearably intense sexual and emotional charge running through it...a drama of rare observational acuity."—Variety
Friday, October 17, 2003
7:30 a.m. The Underground Orchestra
A portrait of the buskers of the Paris Métro—a Venezuelan harpist, an Algerian singer, a violinist from Sarajevo—becomes a document of survival in exile. "A splendid example of how illuminating and entertaining a documentary can be."—L.A. Times
Wednesday, October 22, 2003
7:30 a.m. 2 Minutes Silence, Please
Every year on May 4, the Dutch commemorate the victims of World War II. This sensitive documentary follows a diverse group of people through the day, considering remembrance and forgetting, speech and silence.
Friday, October 24, 2003
7:30 a.m. Private
A personal, wry, and affecting meditation on theft, from the petty to the metaphysical. Screening with Good Husband, Dear Son, in which the women of a village in the former Yugoslavia memorialize their dead, providing a deeply humanistic perspective on the devastation of war.
We wish to thank Jytte Jensen, Associate Curator, Department of Film and Media, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Claudia Landsberger, Holland Film; and Susanna Scott, Ideale Audience, Paris, for their assistance in organizing this series. We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the Consulate General of The Netherlands in New York and in Los Angeles; Holland Film; and the Journalism Department at UC Berkeley.
