Films with: Cowie, Peter

Här har du ditt liv Here is your life /

This mesmerizing debut by the great Swedish director Jan Troell (The Emigrants, The New Land) is an epic bildungsroman and a multilayered representation of early twentieth-century Sweden. Based on a series of semi-autobiographical novels by Nobel Prize winner Eyvind Johnson, the film follows a working-class boy's development, from naive teenager to intellectually curious young adult, from logger to movie projectionist to politically engaged man of the people--all set against the backdrop of a slowly industrializing rural landscape. With its mix of modernist visual ingenuity and elegantly structured storytelling, this enchanting film--presented here in its original nearly three-hour cut--is a reminder that Troell is one of European cinema's greatest and most sensitive illuminators of the human condition.

DVD 13006

Jungfrukällan The virgin spring /

A peasant girl is raped and murdered in 14th century Sweden. When her killers seek shelter in her father's house, he kills them to avenge her death. Soon a spring appears from where the girl was killed and her father sees this as a sign from above.

DVD 4299

Seven samurai

Tells the story of a sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire seven out-of-work warriors to protect them from invading bandits.

DVD 6

Wild strawberries Smultronstället /

A distinguished professor emeritus who lives alone with his housekeeper can only come to terms with his egocentricity by traveling back in time to his earliest youth, finding there the seeds of his failure as husband, lover, father. This film deals with the phenomena of old age wherein childhood memories return with ever-increasing clarity while great stretches of the prime of life vanish into obscurity.

DVD 1597

Z

A Greek pacifist leader is murdered at a rally. Despite the official police report of accidental death, a journalist's persistent questioning leads to a full-scale investigation, revealing corruption in high places.

DVD 7069