KOCHI: Chavara Movie Circle will be screening four films on the theme ‘Invasion and Resistance’ today at Chavara Public Library Auditorium. The films Baler, Bang Rajan, White Light/Black Rain and Nanking Nanking deal with life during war and its consequent disasters.
Baler is an overwhelming tale of love between a young Filipina named Feliza Reyes (Anne Curtis) and Celso Resurrecion (Jericho Rosales). In 1898, a band of Spanish soldiers heroically defended Baler (which later became the capital municipality of Aurora) against Filipino forces for 337 long and gruelling days.
The battle, now referred to as the Siege of Baler, is the setting for this forbidden love between a Mestizo soldier and a Filipina lass who lived at the end of the 19th century.
There’s nothing like a historical epic, especially when it unveils a chapter of history not widely known in the West.
In 1765, the forces of the Burmese Empire descended upon Ayutthaya, capital of Siam (ancient Thailand), but the 100,000 soldiers invading from the north found themselves delayed for five full months by a force they hadn’t planned for.
Bang Rajan, The Legend Of The Village Warriors is a 2000 Thai historical drama film depicting the battles of the Siamese village of Bang Rajan against Burmese invaders in 1767. Seeking to block the invasion is a small band of villagers in Bang Rajan. The forces are at first led by Nai Taen, who is injured in an early battle.
The villagers then turn to an outsider, Nai Chan Nuad Kheo, a mustachioed, veteran warrior. He brings along a handful of other men who with the remaining men and women of Bang Rajan vow to put up a fight.
As global tensions rise, the unthinkable now seems possible.
The threat of nuclear weapons of mass destruction has become frighteningly real.
White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki looks at the reality of nuclear warfare with firsthand accounts from those who survived and whose lives were forever changed by the atomic bomb. Even after 60 years, those bombings continue to inspire argument, denial and myth. Surprisingly, most people know nothing or very little about what happened on August 6 and 9, 1945, two days that changed the world. White Light/Black Rain is an HBO documentary film that was released on August 6, 2007 marking the sixty-second anniversary of the first atomic bombing.
The film features interviews with fourteen Japanese survivors and four Americans involved in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This is a comprehensive, straightforward, moving account of the bombings from the point of view of the people who were there.
Nanking Nanking - City of Life and Death takes place in 1937, during the height of the second Sino-Japanese War. The Imperial Japanese Army has just captured the then-capital of the Republic of China, Nanjing.
What followed was known as the Nanking Massacre, or the Rape of Nanking, a period wherein tens of thousands of Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed. The film tells the story of several figures, both historical and fictional, including a Chinese soldier, a schoolteacher, a Japanese soldier, a foreign missionary, and John Rabe, a Nazi businessman who would ultimately save thousands of Chinese civilians.
The screening starts at 10 am.
kochi@epmltd.com
