by Robert Alstead

A few years ago Czech director Jan Hrebejk mixed farce with the unlikely subject of Nazi collaboration in wartime Czechoslovakia in Divided We Fall. It made for a serious, moving and surprisingly funny movie. Hrebejk’s latest film, Up and Down (Horem Pádem), tackles the awkward subject of racism in his native Czech Republic with a similar dose of comic relief, but this time he is working without the comfortable distance of half a century of history. The result is a more bitter-tasting satire, although not without some of the elements that made Divided We Fall so watchable.
Hrebejk reveals a growing social unease and racism in modern Prague that surfaces in different guises across the social strata. This leads to subtly humourous, ironic observations on the absurd logic of some people’s ideas, whether it be a Russian immigrant mother’s complaints to her grown up son about the new wave of immigrants, or an upper-class aid worker who is blind to her patronizing attitude.
The characters in each of the three main stories also cross paths, in a universe that has a habit of playing private jokes on its inhabitants. However, even at its funniest there is an uncomfortable edge to the humour, like when Mila, a desperate, childless woman buys a two-month-old Indian baby on the black market, and brings it home to her husband Franta who is trying to put his soccer-hooligan days behind him. He is at once horrified that his white supremacist buddies will discover he has an infant with dark skin, overwhelmed with a sense of paternal love, and distressed because he knows that the baby was stolen and they will lose it. The film tries to show both the malaise and offer some hope, although there is a limited supply of the latter. Humour makes the truth more palatable, if ultimately the film ends up suggesting that some things shouldn’t be laughed off.
Sharks have had a bad rap. Ever since Jaws made its big splash in 1975, sharks have had trouble shaking off their monsters-of-the-deep image. Sure, if you are a seal look out: sharks are ferocious predators. But, looking at it from a selfish human point of view, more people die from lightning strikes than from shark attacks. Still, we've hardly batted an eyelid as numerous shark species have been hunted – as trophies, exotic food (like shark fin soup) or out of just plain fear – to the brink of extinction. Imax Sharks 3D tries to redress the balance over the course of 42 minutes, by revealing the true nature of these prehistoric creatures and by submerging us in the rich subaquatic realm of a variety of shark species from around the world including the great white, hammerhead and whale shark. It's safe now to go back in the water.
Still with the natural world, the makers of Microcosmos, which brilliantly captured the minutiae of insect life, are back with a visually dazzling new film called Genesis. Although the feature length film takes a very much Darwinist perspective in its depiction of the origins and history of life on Earth, its meditative pace and artistic presentation makes this more than just an educational work.
Adrien Brody, who was so good in The Pianist, plays another victim of war in The Jacket (out on March 4). The film is a reality-shifting story about a Gulf War veteran who survives a head wound, but suffers memory loss. Before he knows it, he finds himself transported to a mental institution undergoing shock therapy. The film warps time and place, as the straightjacketed protagonist struggles with inner confusion and blurring reality. John Maybury’s surrealist and edgy psychological thriller initially creates a tense viewing experience but, writes Elf on www.iofilm.ca, “despite its initial edginess, The Jacket treads a well-trodden road, tying up rather too neatly.”
Historical drama Silent Waters (Khamosh Pani) illustrates the dangers of an oppressive patriarchal, religious society that led to so much violence towards women in the 1947 partition of the Indian sub-continent into India and Pakistan. Tens of thousands of Muslim, Sikh and Hindu women were abducted, raped and killed in a kind of ethnic cleansing. The events of that era come back to haunt a Muslim widow in 1979 as she watches her beloved, teenage son drawn into an Islamic fundamentalist group. The film, from first time Pakistani director Sabiha Sumar, is at the Ridge from March 18 to 24.
Finally, one other film to look out for after March 4 is the documentary about chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov’s historic contest with Big Blue, an IBM computer, in Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine.
Please note dates may be subject to change.

Robert Alstead, who also writes for iofilm, is currently making a documentary about cycling called You Never Bike Alone.