Cine Europa 11 Opens Today

Now on its 11th year, Cine Europa begins its series of Cebu screenings today, September 26 and will run until Sunday, September 28. Both contemporary and classical films from the European Union—from Denmark, The Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Austria to the United Kingdom—will be screened at the Onstage cinema of Ayala Center Cebu. Admission is free, on a first-come, first-seated basis. Non-English films will have English subtitles. Students are advised to bring their ID.

Friday, September 26

BELGIUM

A Perfect Match (PG-13)

10:30-12:10pm

On the day of his forced retirement, a grumpy school principal decides to look for a wife on the Internet. It’s not love he is after. Merely companionship. He meets scores of women but can’t seem to make up his mind. Until his new housekeeper arrives. She is almost 40 years younger than him and a total disaster at housekeeping. For the first time in what seems a lifetime, he falls totally and desperately in love.

CZECH REPUBLIC

Beauty In Trouble (R-18)

12:30-2:20pm

A young woman is faced with dilemma of loving two men at once; a dilemma between sexual dependence and assuring a future for herself and her children; a dilemma in her relationship to her mother and step-father and with her mother-in-law. Beauty in Trouble is full of unexpected situations, twists and humor with a paradoxical ending.

DENMARK

After The Wedding (PG-13)

2:45-4:45pm

Nominated in the 2007 Oscar Awards in the Best Foreign Film category. Jacob Petersen has dedicated his life to helping street children in India. When the orphanage he heads is threatened by closure, he receives an unusual offer. A Danish businessman, Jørgen, offers him a donation of $4 million. There are, however, certain conditions … Not only must Jacob return to Denmark, he must also take part in the wedding of Jørgen’s daughter. The wedding proves to be a critical juncture between past and future and catapults Jacob into the most intense dilemma of his life.

GERMANY

Children of the Moon (PG-13)

5:00-6:30pm

Astronaut Paul flies to the moon. Lisa, a scientist, accompanies him. Every afternoon, 12-year-old Lisa has an appointment with her 6-year-old brother Paul. He is suffering the incurable “Disease of the Moon” and has to stay inside the house. As a pastime, Lisa has invented a fantasy game, and in the siblings’ imagination, Paul is a spaceship captain who travels around, lost in space. But when Lisa falls in love for the first time, another appointment is getting in the way, and becoming more and more important. Brother and sister have to learn to adapt to the new reality.

FRANCE

Love Songs (R-18)

7:30-9:00pm

Les Chansons d’Amour is all about the intricacies and beauty of falling in love. It is about too many people loving a person, not surviving without love and saying sorry for love.

SPAIN

Un Franco, 14 Pesetas (R-13)

9:15-11:00pm

Two friends named Martin and Marcos decide to look for jobs in Switzerland. They leave their families behind in Spain and head off on their journey to the free, progressive part of Europe. They will have to adapt to very different way of life there, working as mechanics at a factory and living in a small industrial town. The arrival of Martin’s wife Pilar and son Pablo, and Marcos’ girlfriend Maria del Carmen, marks the end of the bachelor life they were living in a country with lost of freedom. Martin and Pilar’s everyday life is their work, while little Pablo starts going to school and making the new place his home. When Martin’s father dies, they realize they’ve already go what they went there for and it’s time to return. Much to their surprise, going home is much harder than leaving was.

Saturday, September 27

ITALY

Chemical Hunger (R-18)

10:30-12:10pm

With a backdrop set in a grim housing project of a Milan suburb teeming with social tension, three youngsters, Claudio, Manuel and Maja, face up to the passage from youth to adulthood.

Urban poverty, workers’ rights, and racial conflicts between Italians and Third World extracomunitari (people from outside the European Union) represent one set of related issues; Claudio’s career and romantic uncertainties and interactions with his more illegal pal Manuel are another. Italian rapper, Zulù, leader of the “99 Posse,” comments on the social situation in songs he sings like a Greek chorus.

One Hundred Steps (R-13)

12:30 - 2:25pm  

“I cento passi” (one hundred steps) was the distance between the Impastato’s house and the house of Tano Badalamenti, an important Mafia boss, in the small Sicilian town of Cinisi. The movie is the story of Peppino Impastato, a young left-wing activist that in the late seventies (when almost nobody dared to speak about Mafia, and several politicians maintained that Mafia did not even exist) repeatedly denounced Badalamenti crimes and the whole Mafia system using a small local radio station, with the arm of irony. In 1978 Peppino (30 years old) was killed by an explosion. The police archived the case as an accident or a suicide, but his friends never accepted this thesis.

THE NETHERLANDS

Night Run (PG-13)

2:45 - 4:15pm

Dennis van der Horst is a kind-hearted young entrepreneur. He lives by the rules of the street. The only people he feels any responsibility for are his brother Marco and his family, who are not very well off. When Dennis gets the chance to obtain an extremely expensive but lucrative taxi-license, he seizes it. In the presence of the manager of MOTAX, the only taxi company in Amsterdam, Dennis borrows a very large sum of money. Dennis is beside himself with joy. The hustling is over. Soon however Dennis finds out that there was a reason why it was so easy for him to obtain such a scarce license. The law is being altered, allowing competition on the taxi market. The licenses of Dennis and many of his colleagues all at once become worthless. As of that moment there is a war going on in the streets of Amsterdam. Dennis gets deeper into trouble when he finds out that he has unwittingly become part of the criminal organization behind MOTAX. Even the police turn out to have secret ties with MOTAX and there is only one thing left for Dennis to do in order to free himself: confront the man who is pulling the strings.

AUSTRIA

Mozart in China (G)

4:30 - 6:00pm

Danny and Li Wei, two ten-year-old boys from Salzburg, spend an adventurous summer on the southern Chinese island of Hainan. With the help of Mozart and a Chinese shadow princess they manage to save an old shadow theatre from a greedy hotel chain.

ROMANIA

The Paper Will Be Blue

(R-13)

6:15 - 8:00pm

Lieutenant Neagu’s armoured unit is ordered to patrol the suburbs. The unit’s radio functions intermittently and communications between the different armoured units and fragments of radio and TV broadcasts give vague reports of “terrorist” attacks on the national television station held by anti-Ceausescu forces. The members of the unit are thrown into confusion.

FINLAND

Colorado Avenue (PG-13)

8:15-10:15pm

Colorado Avenue tells the story of Hanna, a young woman who emigrates to America determined to make money in the Great West and later returns to her home country to face civil war, alcohol smuggling and humiliation. With her American dollars she buys a parcel of rocky land and opens a country store. The store becomes the village centre and the local people begin to respect the industrious Hanna – or Dollar-Hanna as they choose to call her. The film deals with humiliation, shame, respect and making peace with one’s past and is set in the early years of Finland’s independence.

Sunday, September 28

UNITED KINGDOM

And When Did You Last See Your Father? (PG-13)

3:00-4:40pm

The film is Blake Morrison’s moving and candid memoir of his father in the weeks leading up to his death. When Arthur Morrison was diagnosed with terminal cancer he had only a few weeks left to live. Morrison travelled to Yorkshire to stay with his mother in the village where he grew up. He visited his father at the hospital where he had spent so much time with his own patients as a GP. As his father’s condition worsened Morrison contemplated their shared experiences, the intimacies and the irritations of their relationship.

SWITZERLAND

Late Bloomers (PG-13)

5:00 - 6:30pm

Lisi encourages Martha (80), to realize a long-held dream: to open a boutique with her own hand-made lingerie. This news turns the placid Swiss Emmental village upside down. When Martha’s son, the vicar, orders her to close the shop, she and her best friends decide it’s high time to show the village what they are made of!

Vitus (G)

6:45 - 8:45pm

Vitus is a boy who almost seems to be from another planet: He has hearing like a bat, he plays piano like a virtuoso and studies encyclopaedias at the age of five. No wonder his parents begin to anticipate a brilliant future for him. They want Vitus to become a pianist. However, the little genius prefers to play in his eccentric grandfather’s workshop. He dreams of flying and of a normal childhood. Ultimately, with one dramatic leap, Vitus takes control of his own life.