1991-2000

  • Barbara Kopple – American Dream (1991)

    1991-2000Barbara KoppleDocumentaryUSA

    Depicting the effects of a mid-1980s strike by the employees of a Hormel meat-packing plant in Austin, Minnesota, Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award-winning documentary American Dream observes both the daily struggles of the striking workers and the behind-the-scenes conflicts amongst the union leaders. Upset at a proposed pay cut, the local union chapter begins the strike against the advice of their parent organization, hiring an outside consultant who encourages the workers. This consultant’s aggressive, no-compromise approach turns the conflict into national news but also alienates management.Read More »

  • Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub – Von heute auf morgen aka From Today Until Tomorrow (1997)

    1991-2000Danièle HuilletGermanyJean-Marie StraubMusical

    Quote:
    Based on an unknown Schönberg opera from 1929, From Today Until Tomorrow explores one night in a not-quite loveless marriage. A husband and wife return from a party where she has flirted with another man, while he has cast an appraising eye toward an attractive, fashionably dressed acquaintance of his wife’s. Though each dreams, briefly, of leaving the marriage for the excitement and mystery of a new lover, in the end they decide stability and comfort are more important than the fleeting thrill of new romance. Read More »

  • John Erman – Our Sons (1991)

    1991-2000DramaJohn ErmanQueer Cinema(s)USA

    Quote:
    Donald is a young man dying of AIDS. His lover, James, asks his mother to go to Fayetteville, Arkansas and tell Donald’s mother, who has been estranged from her son for years.Read More »

  • Joe Gibbons – Sabotaging Spring (1991)

    1991-2000ExperimentalJoe GibbonsShort FilmUSA

    “It’s spring, it’s spring, and I feel I’m giving birth myself, to something monstrous, something ugly.” Gibbons enters the woods to begin his destructive campaign against spring, snapping the buds off trees while babbling maniacally. Sabotaging Spring is an impressionistic peek at Gibbons’s paranoid fancy; he explains to his dog, Woody the facts of life, evolution, and whistling.Read More »

  • Claude Chabrol – La cérémonie AKA A Judgement in Stone [Carlotta 4K Restoration] (1995)

    1991-2000Claude ChabrolCrimeDramaFrance

    A newly hired maid for a rich countryside family befriends a post-office clerk who encourages her to rebel against her employers.Read More »

  • Naomi Kawase – Ni tsutsumarete AKA Embracing (1992)

    1991-2000DocumentaryJapanJapanese Female DirectorsNaomi KawaseShort Film

    In this autobiographical documentary, filmmaker Naomi Kawase seeks to reach her mother and father who abandoned her at birth.Read More »

  • Ming Zhang – Wu shan yun yu AKA Rainclouds over Wushan (1996)

    1991-2000ChinaComedyDramaMing Zhang

    Mai Qiang is a 30-year old bachelor, withdrawn, with little in his life besides his job at an isolated signal station along the Yangtze River and his ink drawings he uses as toilet paper. Chen Qing is a hotel clerk, a widow with a young child and an undemanding relationship with her boss Lao Mo. Lao believes she has been raped, so he reports the crime to Wu Gang, the neighborhood cop. Wu investigates, but Chen is uncooperative. Lao then identifies Mai, who is detained and questioned. After Wu gets to the truth of the incident, Mai tries to break out of his loneliness and connect to Chen.Read More »

  • Sergei M. Eisenstein, Naum Kleiman – Neizvestniy “Ivan Grozniy” AKA The Unknown Ivan the Terrible (1998)

    1991-2000ClassicsDocumentaryNaum KleimanRussiaSergei M. Eisenstein

    Ivan the Terrible (Russian: Ivan Grozniy) is a two-part historical epic film about Ivan IV of Russia commissioned by Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, who admired and identified himself with Ivan, to be written and directed by the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. Part I was released in 1944 but Part II was not released until 1958, as it was banned on the order of Stalin, who became incensed over the depiction of Ivan therein. Eisenstein had developed the scenario to require a third part to finish the story but, with the banning of Part II, filming of Part III was stopped and what had been completed was destroyed. – wikiRead More »

  • Robert Lepage – Le Confessionnal (1995)

    1991-2000ArthouseCanadaDramaRobert Lepage

    In 1995 a then well known Québec theatre director named Robert Lepage made his first feature film, Le Confessional which, to my mind, remains one of the most impressive debut Canadian films ever. An intellectual and polyglot, Lepage carried his theatrical self-assurance over to the sphere of cinema without compromising cinematic language, and in fact expresses his ideas through formal means in the manner of an assured auteur. Thematically the film is not much of a stretch for a Québec film, centering on one of the constant themes in Québec cinema: sibling-parent tension. In this case, as in many other important Québec films, the tension revolves around an estranged father-son relationship [to name just a few Québec films dealing with troubled mother/father and daughter/son relationships, Les Bons Débarras (Francis Mankiewicz, 1980), Un Zoo la Nuit (Jean-Claude Lauzon, 1987), Les Invasions Barbares (Denys Arcand, 2003), and La Vie avec mon Père (Sébastien Rose, 2005)]. What makes the film impressive is not the story but its formal treatment across two time frames, weaving the past and the present and the personal and the historical.Read More »

Back to top button