MOVIES: Korean & German

We've watched two great international movies this week--Good-bye Lenin! and A State of Mind. Charissa got them both from the local library. I highly recommend them both.

Good-bye Lenin! (East Germany)
"Plot Synopsis: East Germany, the year 1989: A young man protests against the regime. His mother watches the police arresting him and suffers a heart attack and falls into a coma. Some months later, the GDR does not exist anymore and the mother awakes. Since she has to avoid every excitement, the son tries to set up the GDR again for her in their flat. But the world has changed a lot... "

A State of Mind (North Korea)
"British filmmaker Daniel Gordon's beautifully photographed 2003 documentary certainly takes us deeper into the culture of this isolated land that any Westerner has been in the past half century. In focusing on two female gymnasts, aged 11 and 13, and their preparations for the "socialist realism extravaganza" known as the Mass Games, Gordon shines a light on their daily existence; although the people are hardly prosperous, life in Pyongyang, the capital city, seems reasonably normal (except perhaps for the state radio broadcasts that are pumped into every resident's home and can be turned down, but not off). What's more, the discipline and dedication of young Kim Song Yun and Pak Hyon Sun, as well as the thousands of others who participate in the Mass Games, results in a performance of astonishing skill and splendor (captured in A State of Mind's final and most impressive sequence). Still, it's safe to say that a government as secretive as North Korea's wouldn't have granted "unrestricted access" to a foreign film crew if they anticipated that anything controversial might be revealed."

Quotes from Amazon.com.