| Isle of Flowers | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Jorge Furtado |
| Written by | Jorge Furtado |
| Produced by | Nora Goulart and Monica Schmiedt |
| Starring | Júlia Barth |
| Narrated by | Paulo José |
| Edited by | Giba Assis Brasil |
| Music by | Geraldo Flach |
Release date |
|
Running time | 12 min 31 sec |
| Country | Brazil |
| Language | Portuguese |
Isle of Flowers (Portuguese : Ilha das Flores) is a 1989 Brazilian short film by Jorge Furtado. It tracks the path of a tomato from grower to the child who collects it as food from a dump with the help of voiceover and a collection of illustrative images. The director stated the film was inspired by the works of Kurt Vonnegut and Alain Resnais, among others.
In 1995, Isle of Flowers was chosen by the European critics as one of the 100 most important short films of the century.
A constant and verbose off-camera narrator guides the viewer through the life of a tomato. Beginning at Mr Suzuki's tomato field, the tomato is then sold to a supermarket, where it is acquired by Mrs Anete, a perfume salesperson, together with some pork. Each exchange requires the presence of money, which is, together with the tomato, the constant element in the story.
Mrs Anete intends to prepare a tomato sauce for the pork, but, having considered one of Mr Suzuki's tomatoes inadequate, she throws it in the garbage. Together with the rest of the garbage, the tomato is taken to Isle of Flowers (Ilha das Flores), Porto Alegre's landfill. There, the organic material considered adequate is selected as food for pigs. The rest, which is considered inadequate for the pigs, is given to poor women and children to eat.
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The scene of the perfume factory was actually shot in a high school laboratory (Colégio Anchieta).
The film combines Vonnegut's humor with Resnais' cinematic experiments for a unique and powerful result. [1]
Since its release, Isle of Flowers has become one of the most acclaimed pseudo-documentary short films of all time. For a number of years, users of the Internet Movie Database voted it the best Brazilian short film [2] and documentary film [3] ever made.
Isle of Flowers was very well received by film festivals all over the world when first released. It won a Silver Bear for Best Short Feature at the 1990 Berlin Film Festival as well as nine awards at the 1989 Gramado Film Festival, including for Best Short Film.
Chris Marker was a French writer, photographer, documentary film director, multimedia artist and film essayist. His best known films are La Jetée (1962), A Grin Without a Cat (1977) and Sans Soleil (1983). Marker is usually associated with the Left Bank subset of the French New Wave that occurred in the late 1950s and 1960s, and included such other filmmakers as Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda and Jacques Demy.
Cat's Cradle is a satirical postmodern novel, with science fiction elements, by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's fourth novel, it was first published in 1963, exploring and satirizing issues of science, technology, the purpose of religion, and the arms race, often through the use of morbid humor.
Alain Resnais was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct short films including Night and Fog (1956), an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps. He proceeded to make feature films. His films frequently explore the relationship between consciousness, memory, and the imagination, and he was noted for devising innovative formal structures for his narratives. Throughout his career, he won many awards from international film festivals and academies, including one Academy Award, two César Awards for best director, three Louis Delluc Prize and one Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Studio Ghibli, Inc. is a Japanese animation studio based in Koganei, Tokyo. It has a strong presence in the animation industry and has expanded its portfolio to include various media formats, such as short subjects, television commercials, and two television films. Their work has been well-received by audiences and recognized with numerous awards. Their mascot and most recognizable symbol, the character Totoro from the 1988 film My Neighbor Totoro, is a giant spirit inspired by raccoon dogs (tanuki) and cats (neko). Among the studio's highest-grossing films are Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001), Howl's Moving Castle (2004), Ponyo (2008) and The Boy and the Heron (2023). Studio Ghibli was founded on June 15, 1985, by the directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata and producer Toshio Suzuki, after acquiring Topcraft's assets. The studio has also collaborated with video game studios on the visual development of several games.
Last Year at Marienbad, released in the United Kingdom as Last Year in Marienbad, is a 1961 French New Wave film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet.
Corvo Island, literally the Island of the Crow, is the smallest and the northernmost island of the Azores archipelago and the northernmost in Macaronesia. It has a population of approximately 384 inhabitants making it the smallest single municipality in the Azores and in Portugal. The island lies on the North American Plate.
Robert B. Weide is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. He has directed a number of documentaries and was the principal director and an executive producer of Curb Your Enthusiasm for the show's first five years. His documentaries have focused on four comedians: W. C. Fields, Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, and Woody Allen. His latest documentary, Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time (2021), explores the life and works of Kurt Vonnegut.
Hiroshima mon amour, is a 1959 romantic drama film directed by French director Alain Resnais and written by French author Marguerite Duras.
Providence is a 1977 French/Swiss film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by David Mercer. It explores the processes of creativity through a portrayal of an ageing novelist, played by John Gielgud, who imagines scenes for his latest novel which draw upon his past and his relationships with members of his family. The film won the 1978 César Award for Best Film.
Jorge Alberto Furtado is a Brazilian film and television director and screenwriter.
Deliver Us from Evil is a 2006 American documentary film that explores the life of Irish Catholic priest Oliver O'Grady, who admitted to having molested and raped approximately 25 children in Northern California from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. Written and directed by Amy J. Berg, it won the Best Documentary Award at the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, though it lost to An Inconvenient Truth. The title of the film refers to a line in the Lord's Prayer.
Our Daily Bread is a 2005 documentary film directed, co-produced, and with cinematography by Nikolaus Geyrhalter. The script was co-written by Wolfgang Widerhofer and Nikolaus Geyrhalter.
Van Gogh is a 1948 short French documentary film directed by Alain Resnais. It won an Oscar in 1950 for Best Short Subject (Two-Reel).
Night and Fog is a 1956 French documentary short film. Directed by Alain Resnais, it was made ten years after the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. The title is taken from the Nacht und Nebel program of abductions and disappearances decreed by Nazi Germany. The documentary features the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek established in occupied Poland while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps. Night and Fog was made in collaboration with scriptwriter Jean Cayrol, a survivor of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. The music of the soundtrack was composed by Hanns Eisler.
Food, Inc. is a 2008 American documentary film directed by Robert Kenner and narrated by Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser. It examines corporate farming in the United States, concluding that agribusiness produces food that is unhealthy in a way that is environmentally harmful and abusive of both animals and employees. The film received positive reviews and was nominated for several awards, including the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and the Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary Feature. A sequel, Food, Inc. 2 was released on April 12, 2024.
Je t'aime, je t'aime is a 1968 French science fiction film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Jacques Sternberg. The plot centres on Claude Ridder who is asked to participate in a mysterious experiment in time travel when he leaves the hospital after a suicide attempt. The experiment, intended to return him after one minute of observing the past, instead causes him to experience his past in a disjointed fashion.
Toute la mémoire du monde is a documentary short film by Alain Resnais released in 1956.
Waste Land is a 2010 British-Brazilian documentary film directed by Lucy Walker, co-directed by João Jardim and Karen Harley, and produced by Angus Aynsley and Hank Levine. The music for the film was created by Moby, who is a friend and frequent collaborator of Walker. The film follows artist Vik Muniz as he travels to the world's largest landfill in Jardim Gramacho, just outside Rio de Janeiro, to collaborate with a lively group of "catadores" to make contemporary art using some of the materials they have "picked". Muniz donated the proceeds from the sale of his pictures of the artworks to the ACAMJG, which is a co-operative founded and led by Sebastião "Tião" Carlos Dos Santos, one of the catadores involved in the art project; the prize money from the awards won by the film was also donated to the organization.
Statues Also Die is a 1953 French essay film directed by Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, and Ghislain Cloquet about historical African art and the effects colonialism has had on how it is perceived. The film won the 1954 Prix Jean Vigo. Because of its criticism of colonialism, the second half of the film was banned in France until the 1960s.
Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie is a 2010 Canadian documentary film, directed by Sturla Gunnarsson. The film profiles Canadian science broadcaster and environmental activist David Suzuki.
