Love Is All: 100 Years of Love & Courtship

Love is a topic most of us never tire of. Director Kim Longinotto (previously at IDFA with and ) dedicates this whole film to the subject. She shows us a collage of a hundred years of love, from from 1899 to contemporary gay marriage. Musician Richard Hawley composed the music that links the scenes together. His robust, modern songs support the primarily black-and-white images from films and news reports. Now and again a scene comes to life and we get a glimpse of the past, including the morals and values of a bygone era. The man to the shop girl: “Oh Betty, kiss me!” Her startled reply: “Not in the shop!” Jumping forward in time, we see an angry mother berating her daughter and her boyfriend. The daughter suddenly realizes why: “You mean it’s because… he’s black?” Other scenes speak volumes without words, such as the dreamlike images of a man in a suit who misses his boyfriend and is vaguely reminiscent of Colin Firth's character in Tom Ford’s . suggests that there are many different kinds of love, but leaves it up to us to decide if this is true. Does love change, or is it the world around us?