Merlyn Sprankling (merlynsprankling)

Among the many virtues of Rosa Luxemberg is the aesthetic and political sense it makes of the beliefs and behaviour of people who once lived to make a better world. The film personifies the ideals of the radical movements that swept Europe at the turn of the century.

The film directed by perhaps the best-known female director Margarethe von Trotta and featuring Barbara Sukowa as Luxemberg, avoids what might have been mere propaganda, not only to deal with history in all its messy complexities but also portray its heroine as a tragic figure who inadvertently unleashed the forces that destroyed her.

Rosa Luxemberg (1871-1919) was one of the most talented women of her era. Having been born in Russian Poland to a family of wealthy merchants, she became interested in socialism and, at 18, was forced to flee to Switzerland because of her revolutionaty activities.

A symbol of courage and rectitude, she fought against every prejudice and handicap. Born with a deformed foot, Luxemberg walked with a limp , and in the film she refers to herself as a 'lame duck' and was regarded as too young to be a serious political thinker. (to be continued, not enough time)

Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans is a third-generation fiction: a film adapted from a film that was adapted from a novel.

Chingachgook (Russell Means), his son Uncas (Eric Schweig), and Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis), his adopted white son; Cora Munro (Madeleine Stowe) and her sister Alice (Jodhi May), their father, Colonel Edmund Munro (Maurice Roëves), and a native guide named Magua (Wes Studi) are all creations of James Fenimore Cooper and his novel of the same title. What everybody read about in the Last of the Mohicans was a romance of the forest, of Indians and Natty Bumppo (the white man who learned from them), of a society barely gone.

The 1992 movie, however, is a romance, with a mixture of period setting and fictional characters, and a dose of twentieth-century spirituality to bring the noble savages up-to-date. It's a film with history as vivid and real and immediate as if it were being lived right now.

Mann's new plot now explains, for instance why it needed a revolution: to protect the democratic, freedom-loving, interracial society from supercilious twits. Nathaniel (Day-Lewis), the white raised by Indians, is the emblem of this egalitarian society. Cora symbolizes the rejection of her dead (quite literally, by the end) European past. In its place, she embraces Nathaniel and America.

From the earliest years of European settlement in Australia, there is evidence of Aboriginal children being taken from their families as the authorities believed it was for their own good. In the first half of the 20th century, it was official policy in most states to remove half or quarter caste Aboriginal children. This movie is the true story of Doris Pilkington Garimara's mother Molly, who in 1931 led her two sisters on a 1,600 kilometre walk across remote Western Australia. At their tender age, they escaped the confinement of a government institution for Aboriginal children removed from their families. Barefoot, without provisions or maps, tracked by Native police and search planes, the girls followed the rabbit-proof fence, knowing it would lead them home. It's one of my favourites.

This is a highly realistic story of two Australian Aboriginal teen-agers, Samson and Delilah. Filmed in Alice Springs, Warwick Thornton has drawn on personal experiences to create what is essentially a love story. Picturesque sunsets across wild plains and deserts are contrasted with the ugly reality that is true for so many indigenous communities across Australia. Through Thornton's film, the audience is brought to a sympathetic view of the problems of physical abuse, substance abuse and poverty that attack the indigenous way of life by trying to modernise it. Adding to the film's authenticity, Thornton has developed the story using very little dialogue. Neither Samson and Delilah say one single word to each other throughout the 101 minutes of the film, and yet both Rowan Mcnamara (Samson) and Marissa Gibson (Delilah) show exceptional performances, given that they are untrained, raw talent. Surprisingly, the story lies in its reference to the biblical tale of Samson and Delilah, connecting a loss of strength with loss of hair. Yes, this is not an easy film to watch, yet this truly memorable film is unexpectedly comical, dramatic, romantic, and most of all, hope-inspiring.