WFC Zimbabwe: Neria

“Oh, look! Diplomats!”

Well, of course this is a very low budget film, and it looks like it. Was it filmed on video? In the early 90s? (imdb says that it’s from 1993, but the DVD cover says that it won awards in Egypt in 1991 and South Africa in 1992, so it’s all very confusing.) Or is just my DVD made from a Super-VHS copy? There’s a lot a typical VHS chromatic aberrations going on… Or perhaps just from converting from film to … whatever this was before it was digital?

Anyway! Rolling the die on a film like this, which has a lot of “technical flaws” and some, er, not very good actors, but has a lot of charm and is just rather interesting all over feels kinda random.

But I’ll do it anyway. Based on the charm mostly. Oh, and the music.

Neria. Godwin Mawuru. 1993. Zimbabwe.

Strawberry Tongo

  • 3 parts Tia Maria
  • 1 part Grand Marnier
  • 3 parts Kahlua
  • 3 parts gin
  • 1 part milk
  • strawberries
  • ice cubes

Run all ingredients through a blender and pour into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a strawberry.

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.

WFC Israel: למלא את החלל‎‎

It’s an interesting film, and I like the funny bits. There’s also squirmy embarassing bits that are very… squirmy.

Yeah, squirmy. I’ll go with squirmy. Where’s my thesaurus…

Anyway, while there are really good scenes in here, I feel like large parts of the film are fairly pedestrian. Good actors, though.

Fill the Void. Rama Burshtein. 2012. Israel.

Noah’s Ark

  • 1 part blue Curaçao
  • 1 part cream
  • 1 part lemonade

Stir ingredients with ice.

This looks kinda offputting, but it’s oddly refreshing. The lemonde does the trick.

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.

FF1993: Brain Capers

Brain Capers #1 by Mario Hernandez.

This book mainly collects various comics Hernandez had published in other Fantagraphics books (I think). I recognise pieces from Real Girl and Street Music, at least…

The original pieces are pretty light on story, but they’re interesting graphically. Here we seem to be going off in a slightly more ligne claire direction (while the story is a bit Mister X, which is appropriate since the Hernandezesses (is that the correct pluralisation?) wrote that book.

But it’s mostly pretty goofy…

… and lots of playing around with various art styles. Here Hernandez does a pretty nice emulation of Richard Sala (who is namechecked in the heading).

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

WFC Mauritania: Timbuktu

This is a very pretty film, and the way it portrays ISIS as buffoons is very amusing. And then it isn’t amusing any more.

Some of the actors are compelling, but most of them are really, really stiff. I assume they’re not-professionals, but still…

Timbuktu. Abderrahmane Sissako. 2014. Mauritania.

Mauretania Mauritania

  • peppermint tea
  • mint leaves
  • sugar
  • gin
  • lime
  • lemon

Brew the tea, add sugar, and cool. Add gin. Fill glasses with ice and pour the fluids over. Garnish with sliced lemon, lime and some mint leaves.

This isn’t really a Mauritanian cocktail, because I just couldn’t find any recipes. But they seem to drink a lot of mint tea, so I just brewed some and added some gin. So sew me.

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.