A Dry White Season, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Black Orpheus

Lynn Whitehouse
Supervisor history/information/interlibrary loan-it, San Diego Public Library

I'd like to suggest a DVD that ties with our One Book One San Diego campaign for Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time. In the book, Greg Mortenson recounts how in 1993, after a failed attempt to climb K2, he got separated from his guide and stumbled into a remote village called Korphe in northeast Pakistan. Hearing the villagers lament that they didn't have a school, he promised he would return to build one for them. A decade later he became part of a nonprofit working to build schools in the remote mountain border villages of Pakistan and Afghanistan. The DVD of Osama, the first all-Afghan feature released since the end of the Taliban rule, relates well to Mortenson's story. Filmmaker Siddiq Barmak has said that Osama was partially inspired by a girl he once met who disguised herself as a boy in order to attend school.

Osama
(Afghanistan) 2003, MGM

Ralph De Lauro
Film curator, Central Library

I would like to plug Paprika , Satoshi Kon's mind-bending box of dreams. Follow the thrilling adventures of Dr. Chiba, a psychotherapist working on the cutting edge of science. Her alter ego is Paprika, a dream detective who enters people's sleep to battle the source of their neuroses. When an evil force steals her dream machine, waking life is overrun by nightmares, and Paprika is the only hope to save Tokyo. You can find this on DVD but you can see it at the Central Library on December 17.If you watch Paprika closely you'll see movie posters for Kon's earlier films Tokyo Godfathers and Perfect Blue . Tokyo Godfathers reworks the John Ford/John Wayne western Three Godfathers and is perfect for the holidays with its Christmas setting. If you want more of Kon's mind-bending storylines, check out Perfect Blue in which the line blurs between an actress and her role.

Paprika
(Japan) 2006, Sony Pictures

Tokyo Godfathers
(Japan) 2003, Sony Pictures

Perfect Blue
(Japan) 1998, Manga Video

Alan Bugg
Library assistant, Central Library

These three films make me think about how I see people --how preconceived notions, first impressions, and outward appearances so often belie the volumes of stories that we don't get in that initial glimpse. A Dry White Season -- the movie that I had to sneak into way back when -- made me want to read André Brink's book about a white South African's social awakening to the injustices of apartheid.Next, Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence , which deals with Australia's Aborigines Act that allowed the government to remove children of mixed Aboriginal and white parentage from their families and place them in white-run educational facilities.

Finally, Marcel Camus's Black Orpheus , which I first remember seeing on PBS as a child. The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is re-imagined in Rio de Janeiro's Carnaval. This may partially explain my love for Brazil.

A Dry White Season
(USA) 1989, MGM

Rabbit-Proof Fence
(Australia) 2002, Miramax

Black Orpheus - Criterion Collection
(Brazil/France) 1959, Criterion Collection