MOVIES/GERMANY

AGONY AND ECSTASY

Brother of Sleep; Written by Robert Schneider; Directed by Joseph Vilsmaier

A DIVINELY INSPIRED MUSIcal genius sends his audiences into a religious ecstacy, but proves unsuited for the physical world he inhabits: his involvement in a love triangle destroys everyone involved. The 1992 novel Schlafes Bruder (Brother of Sleep) won international acclaim not just for this tragic plot but also for author Robert Schneider's impassioned prose and philosophical ruminations. So when Schneider and director Joseph Vilsmaier decided to collaborate on a film adaptation, they knew the challenge would be formidable. For one thing, how can a filmmaker represent music as a religious experience? "We agreed it was a mad idea," says Vilsmaier. "It was going to be a total flop or simply magnificent." Though reviews have been mixed, the $9 million movie was named Germany's submission for the Academy Awards' foreign-language-film category.

Set in a backward village in the Austrian Alps in the early 19th century, Schlafes Bruder tracks the rise to fame of Elias, and then his downward spiral after he loses the simple peasant girl Elsbeth because he cannot express his love for her. Elsbeth's brother Peter, who worships Elias, jealously tries to kill her and burns down the village. Most effective in capturing the intensity of Schneider's novel are the lonely landscape that drives home Elias' isolation and the haunting film score that combines classical orchestral compositions and old folk tunes. Like Elias' mystical music, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung noted, the movie "is strange and gripping, like an irreverent liturgy that casts a spell."

MOVIES/CANADA

CELLULOID PIONEER

The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blache; Directed by Marquise Lepage

LONG BEFORE THE FRENCH INVENTED the term, a secretary for the film company Gaumont was cinema's first auteur. Alice Guy-Blache joined the Paris firm at 21 because of her stenographic skills but immediately sensed the storytelling possibilities of the new form and in 1896 made her first short movie from a fairy tale. As writer, producer and director, she went on to make nearly 700 dramas, comedies and westerns in France and the U.S., where she started her own studio, Solax, in 1910. Very few of her films have survived, and Guy-Blache, who died in America in 1968 at age 95, is virtually unknown to all but academics and film historians.

On the 100th anniversary of cinema, the Canadian National Film Board paid tribute to Guy-Blache with a one-hour documentary, The Lost Garden, that is currently being screened in Canada, and will be shown on national TV in French and English. "A compelling story,'' said the Ottawa Citizen, and the high points are her rare black-and-white footage and a TV interview made when she was in her 80s. "You are very young,'' she recalled being told at Gaumont when she applied. "I'll get over that,'' she retorted. She did, triumphing as a practical visionary who has been too long forgotten.

BOOKS/UNITED STATES

WONDERFUL TOWN

The Encyclopedia of New York City; Edited by Kenneth T. Jackson; Yale University Press; 1,350 pages

YOU GOTTA LOVE THIS TOWN! shout its admirers, and they are legion. But so are its detractors: they label it rude, dangerous and dirty, serving up the great-place-to-visit-but cliche. Adore it or abhor it, it's New York City. Known for having everything for everybody, the metropolis has only now become the subject of its own encyclopedia. Edited by Columbia University history professor Kenneth T. Jackson, the 7.5-cm-thick, 3.3-kg tome would make an Olympic weight lifter strain.

Admirably, the book surveys the city since its 1626 purchase from Native Americans until the present day. The useful along with the recondite are found in the more than 4,300 entries, where the city's major institutions and landmarks are described with the same dry exactness as obscure historical characters from the past. Mayors, Broadway stars, political bosses and titans of industry receive their due, as does Taki 183, the Greek American whose spray-painted tag was imitated by thousands of teens in the graffiti spree of the 1970s.

The surging waves of human immigration that have constantly enriched the city and shifted its demographics get generous and intelligent treatment. The arrival of an unwelcome immigrant group is handled gingerly and with a straight face: "New York's cockroach population,'' the encyclopedia soberly records, "was inadvertently introduced by trade.''

The more than 650 contributors to this impressive volume have been all inclusive, if humorless. Nonetheless, locals who have thumbed through it have objected when they found a favorite subject omitted or given insufficient attention. But complaining is what makes them true New Yorkers--and should have had an entry all its own.

MUSIC/BRITAIN

ANCIENT VOICES, MODERN BEATS

Sacred Spirit; Virgin Records

AFTER THE STUNNING INternational success of Chant, the recording of Gregorian melodies sung by Benedictine monks, no one could predict what other offbeat musical act would hit the radio airwaves next--only that one would. Sure enough, perched on the European charts alongside Oasis and Janet Jackson is Sacred Spirit, a collection of archival recordings of Native American ceremonial chants, some from the early 1900s, set to a synthesizer-driven dance beat. After reaching the Top 20 in France, Spain, Germany and Belgium, Sacred Spirit has entered the British charts. Music fans snapped up 100,000 copies in the first nine days of release in October.

A German producer determined to publicize the plight of today's American Indians first came up with the idea to combine plaintive voices from the past with modern rhythms. Virgin Records is donating part of the royalties to the Native American Rights Fund, and the video for the first single pointedly contrasts the dignified Indian cultural heritage with the less spiritual modern life. But the simple spirituality of the vocals is the primary attraction. "The record is not some National Geographic artifice," says Virgin deputy managing director Ashley Newton. "It's inspired by the emotion behind the chants."