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13 SOFIA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
21.03. - 20:45,
Lucky Cinema - Plovdiv

Director:  Jim Jarmusch
Cinematography:  Robby Muller
Screenplay:  Jim Jarmusch
Producer:  Alan Kleinberg
Music:  John Lurie and Tom Waits
Cast:  Tom Waits , John Lurie , Roberto Benigni , Nicoletta Braschi , Ellen Barkin
Production:  Black Snake/Island Pictures
Down By Law
Down By Law
Down By Law
USA , 1986, 107 min, black & white
Awards:  Cannes 1986 - "Competition" ; “Silver Ribbon” for best actor to Roberto Benigni

Jack and Zack, super-cool no-hoppers, meet up in a New Orleans jail. Initially at odds with one another, they are soon distracted by the arrival of Roberto, whose pidgin English, memories of old movies, and quotations from Robert Frost in his native Italian keep them both irritated and amused. Finally, however, it is this garrulous and eternally optimistic little man who leads the two self-appointed tough guys to freedom. Jarmusch’s fairy tale amalgam of prison movie, noir thriller and off-beat comedy bears some resemblance to his earlier Stranger Than Paradise: both are in three parts; both describe jaded Americans transformed by contact with a foreign innocent; both are shot in stunning, sharp black-and-white. And again music and mood are essential components to Jarmusch’s poetry. But what makes this more accessible (and perhaps less ambitious) is the emphasis on humour; after the initial establishment of character and atmosphere, the laughs come thick and fast, most notably from the marvelous Benigni.

Geoff Andrew

Jim Jarmusch
With his trademark shock of white hair and ultra-cool rock star persona, Jim Jarmusch is the archetypal auteur of American independent film. Steadfastly resisting the sirens of Hollywood, Jarmusch has fashioned stylish, worldly, and thoroughly hip movies that have been the toast of the international film circuit.
Born on January 22, 1953, in Akron, OH, Jarmusch was the son of a former film critic for the Akron Beacon Journal. As a child, he spent much of his time watching B-movie triple features. After graduating from high school in 1971, he ended up in New York before venturing to Paris one summer on an exchange program. He loved the place so much that he stayed there for a year, soaking up French culture, literature, and particularly films, spending much of his time going to the cinématheque instead of to classes. At that time, the hallowed French New Wave movement was still a recent memory and such luminaries as François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and Jean-Luc Godard were still regularly making movies. Upon his return to New York, Jarmusch transferred to Columbia University, where, though he eventually received a degree in English literature, his love of film continued to inspire him. With no film experience, he was accepted into New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and soon found himself a teaching assistant to legendary maverick filmmaker Nicholas Ray. Ray helped him get funding for his thesis project, Permanent Vacation (1980). Though the film was later released to critical acclaim, his professors were underwhelmed by his final project and Jarmusch never got a degree from N.Y.U.
The stamp of Jarmusch is his tendency to a gently absurdist, understated comedy, which affectionately punctures the cool, hip pretensions and delusions of his self-consciously laconic loners. The compositions are uncluttered, often static and oddly formal, stressing the essential solitude of characters seemingly obsessed with self-definition. The sparing dialogue, generally minimalist performances and a preference for long takes evoke lives plagued by problems of communication, misunderstanding, rootlessness and inertia. At the same time, Jarmusch’s elliptical, dedramatised, episodic narrative style is symptomatic of his restlessly experimental interest in the method and structure of cinematic storytelling. Crucially, however, this interest in formalism is balanced by subtle wit, the warmth he clearly feels for his characters and a bemused, intelligent interest in the unfamiliar backroads of American life (the underrated Dead Man was a decidedly different western), so that he remains one of the most accessible, original and influential of that country’s independent film-makers.
1980  Permanent Vacation
1984  Stranger Than Paradise
1986  Coffee and Cigarettes
1986  Down by Law
1989  Coffee and Cigarettes II
1989  Mystery Train
1991  Night on Earth
1993  Coffee and Cigarettes III
1995  Dead Man
1997  Year of the Horse
1999  Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
2002  Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet
2003  Coffee and Cigarettes
2005  Broken Flowers
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