
"I am lost to the world..." (Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen...), the title is quoted from a poem by Friedrich Rückert. This German romanticist poet wrote of the sadness of disappearance. An anonymous amateur cineaste shot some scenes in Kyoto in 1934. This footage has since suffered from typical vinegar syndrome (Hydrolysis) resulting from improper storage. The films were falling into decay and would probably eventually disintegrate without being seen again by anyone. "Film" is not a immortal document, but a vanishing existence. The film which we can know may be merely slight.

"I am lost to the world..." (Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen...), the title is quoted from a poem by Friedrich Rückert. This German romanticist poet wrote of the sadness of disappearance. An anonymous amateur cineaste shot some scenes in Kyoto in 1934. This footage has since suffered from typical vinegar syndrome (Hydrolysis) resulting from improper storage. The films were falling into decay and would probably eventually disintegrate without being seen again by anyone. "Film" is not a immortal document, but a vanishing existence. The film which we can know may be merely slight.
2003-05-17
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7.9Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.
6.7Lucy Harmon, an American teenager is arriving in the lush Tuscan countryside to be sculpted by a family friend who lives in a beautiful villa. Lucy visited there four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with an Italian boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted.
6.4A man becomes haunted by his past and is presented with a mysterious legacy that causes him to re-think his current situation in life.
6.3Ming Wang is an impoverished Chinese prodigy who flees Communist China to become a pioneering eye surgeon in America. When tasked with restoring the sight of an orphan in India, who was blinded by her stepmother, Wang must confront the trauma of living through the violent uprising in his youth, the Cultural Revolution.
6.7In an attempt to forget his lost sweetheart, Buster takes a long trip at the sea when he's caught by pirates.
7.4Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
7.4As a young couple stops and rests in a small village inn, the man is abducted by Death and is sequestered behind a huge doorless, windowless wall. The woman finds a mystic entrance and is met by Death, who tells her three separate stories set in exotic locales, all involving circumstances similar to hers.
5.9A screener at the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), who has earned an unsavory reputation for being the strictest censor of violent films, begins to spiral out of control after viewing a low-budget horror with similarities to the disappearance of her sister.
6.9A group of dated appliances, finding themselves stranded in a summer home that their family had just sold, decide to seek out their eight year old 'master'.
6.1A virtuous and passionate girl falls in love with a cynical but a dashing aristocrat.
7.6In the years before World War II, a penniless Japanese child is torn from her family to work as a maid in a geisha house.
7.3Ben Sanderson, an alcoholic Hollywood screenwriter who lost everything because of his drinking, arrives in Las Vegas to drink himself to death. There, he meets and forms an uneasy friendship and non-interference pact with prostitute Sera.
5.9When a Hollywood star mysteriously disappears in the middle of filming, the studio sends their fixer to get him back.
6.1Jack Slavin is an environmentalist with a heart condition who lives with his daughter, Rose, on an isolated island. While Jack fights against developers who wish to build in the area, he also craves more contact with other people. When he invites his girlfriend, Kathleen, and her sons, Rodney and Thaddius, to move in, Rose is upset. The complicated family dynamics makes things difficult for everyone in the house.
6.5Mike, a rough sleeper in London, is trapped in a cycle of self-destruction as he attempts to turn his life around. Along the way, he encounters unexpected chances for a fresh start.
5.8Set in a near future where mining conglomerates have turned Canada into a wasteland. Two brothers must travel the same road that claimed their sister's life in their quest to deliver mysterious cargo. En route they must contend with road pirates, rebel gangs, and each other.
8.3A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity.
6.5A young, beautiful prostitute named Sadie Thompson arrives on the South Pacific island of Pago Pago looking for honest work and falls for Timothy O'Hara, an American sailor who is unfazed by her unsavory past. However, Mr. Davidson, a missionary who arrived on the island at the same time, aims to "save" Sadie from her sinful life and petitions to have her separated from her beau and deported back to San Francisco.
6.2Five men wake up in a locked-down warehouse with no memory of who they are. They are forced to figure out who is good and who is bad to stay alive.
6.8After being stood up, Abbey gets inspired to open her heart in a letter, put it in a bottle and toss it out to sea. Months later, a man fishing discovers it and opts to reach out.