Heddy Honigmann

10/1/03 to 10/24/03

O Amor natural, October 10

Upcoming
Films
Upcoming
Events
Selected
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Past
Films
Past
Events

Past Films

Private
- Friday, October 24 7:30
A personal, wry, and affecting meditation on theft, from the petty to the metaphysical. Screening with Good Husband, Dear Son, in which the women of a village in the former Yugoslavia memorialize their dead, providing a deeply humanistic perspective on the devastation of war.
2 Minutes Silence, Please
- Wednesday, October 22 7:30
Every year on May 4, the Dutch commemorate the victims of World War II. This sensitive documentary follows a diverse group of people through the day, considering remembrance and forgetting, speech and silence.
The Underground Orchestra
- Friday, October 17 7:30
A portrait of the buskers of the Paris Métro-a Venezuelan harpist, an Algerian singer, a violinist from Sarajevo-becomes a document of survival in exile. "A splendid example of how illuminating and entertaining a documentary can be."-L.A. Times
Good-Bye
- Wednesday, October 15 7:30
Honigmann's fictional feature is "an achingly true account of consuming passion with an almost unbearably intense sexual and emotional charge running through it...a drama of rare observational acuity."-Variety
O Amor Natural
- Friday, October 10 7:30
Older residents of Rio de Janeiro give voice to the erotic poetry of Carlos Drummond de Andrade and recall passions of their own. "A touching fresco of art, memory, and desire."-Chicago Tribune. With short Four Times My Heart.
Metal and Melancholy
- Wednesday, October 8 7:30
This documentary about formerly middle-class people surviving Peru's economic collapse by driving cabs is "quite like the Peruvians themselves-relaxed, persevering, nakedly emotional, and tougher than seat leather."-Village Voice
MIND SHADOWS
- Friday, October 3 7:30
Heddy Honigmann in Person. "A finely made and very absorbing tragic drama about a man suffering from Alzheimer's disease....Honigmann handles the story with great delicacy and sensitivity, and is aided immeasurably by the intelligent and moving performance of Joop Admiraal."-Variety
CRAZY
- Wednesday, October 1 7:30
Heddy Honigmann in Person. Dutch veterans of U.N. peacekeeping missions recalling their experiences through music, from Puccini to Guns 'n' Roses, show that neutrality does not mean indifference. "The mysterious power of these segments is a complex marriage of music and memory."-Toronto Film Festival

Heddy Honigmann

10/1/03 to 10/24/03

Heddy Honigmann was born in Peru to Austrian and Polish refugees, is a citizen of the Netherlands, and is at home in the world. In twenty-five years of filmmaking, she has crossed the globe several times over, following a nose for a good story that rivals any journalist's. But unlike the detached journalist, Honigmann always goes right to the heart of the matter, forging a bond of trust with her subjects, whom she terms “characters.” At once patient and persistent, she garners the memories and reflections of individuals who survive what we cavalierly call “world events” through their innate creativity and humanity. From widows near Sarajevo who do their crying off camera, to middle-class Peruvians gamely surviving a failed economy by moonlighting as cabbies, to buskers in the Paris metro whose lively music is born of exile, to young Dutch U.N. peacekeepers who nurse memories of the horrors they have seen, Honigmann amasses for us...

Honigmann's documentaries have become familiar to PFA audiences primarily through their frequent appearances at the San Francisco International Film Festival; less known here are her fiction films, such as the deeply moving Mind Shadows. We are pleased to present our first ever retrospective tribute to this internationally admired filmmaker, who joins us in person on October 1 and 3.

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We wish to thank Jytte Jensen, Associate Curator, Department of Film and Media, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Claudia Landsberger, Holland Film; and Susanna Scott, Ideale Audience, Paris, for their assistance in organizing this series. We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of the Consulate General of The Netherlands in New York and in Los Angeles; Holland Film; and the Journalism Department at UC Berkeley.