1991-2000

  • Raymond Red – Sakay (1993)

    Drama1991-2000PhilippinesRaymond RedWar

    Quote:
    “Filipinas, farewell! Long live the Republic and may our independence be born in the future!”

    Those were Macario Sakay’s last words before he was executed by hanging on September 13, 1907 for treason. His real crime was patriotism, breaking rank with the leaders who sold out the Philippine Revolution to the United States and waging a guerrilla resistance against the American colonial government. They called he and his soldiers “banditos,” a label which has stuck in the minds of many Filipinos generations later (that is, if they even remember his name). His existence in Philippine history negates the official narrative that the Philippine-American war ended in 1902. True patriots continued to invoke his name as a symbol of the unfinished revolution. It would take nearly 90 years after his death before director Raymond Red’s “Sakay” (1993), one of the most accessible and well-crafted bio-pics ever made in the Philippines.Read More »

  • Yue Lu – Zhao xiansheng AKA Mr. Zhao (1998)

    1991-2000ComedyDramaFifth Generation Chinese CinemaHong KongYue Lu

    From the Chicago Reader
    A watershed in the history of Chinese cinema, this first feature (1998) directed by Lu Yue–the remarkable cinematographer of Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl and several recent features of Zhang Yimou, including Shanghai Triad–is an eye-opening comedy about adultery in contemporary Shanghai. Much of the dialogue is improvised by the talented actors–Shi Jingming as the husband, a professor of traditional Chinese medicine; Zhang Zhihua as his factory-worker wife; and Chen Yinan as his mistress and former student–and both the shooting style and the emotional directness of the performances suggest the filmmaking of John Cassavetes.Read More »

  • Marcelo Piñeyro – Cenizas del paraíso aka Ashes from Paradise (1997)

    1991-2000ArgentinaCrimeDramaMarcelo Piñeyro

    Ashes of Paradise (Spanish: Cenizas del Paraíso) is a 1997 Argentine film from director Marcelo Piñeyro. It tells in cutbacks how the untroubled private happiness of a family – a judge and his three grown-up sons – crumbles between loyalty and betrayal, blind trust and suspicions.

    The film won several awards, among them a renowned Goya Award, for Best Spanish Language Foreign Film (Mejor Película Extranjera de Habla Hispana). It was Argentina’s official submission for the 1997 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film (“Oscar”), but did not receive a nomination for the award.Read More »

  • Sharon Lockhart – Goshogaoka (1997)

    1991-2000DocumentaryExperimentalSharon LockhartUSA

    arsenal-berlin.de wrote:
    Filmed in a middle school gymnasium in suburban Japan, GOSHOGAOKA takes as its ostensible subject the exercise routines and drills of a girls baskettball team. The film consists of six ten minutes takes, shot with a fixed camera at court level in which the various cadences of chanting voices and bodily movements digress into distinct studies. Taken together they construct a subtle and multi-layered social portrait, a portrait framed within a study of choreographed movement (the routines etc.) and therefore one in which documentary values soon become inseparable from aesthetic ones.Read More »

  • Toshihiro Tenma – Kyôso tanjô AKA Many Happy Returns (1993)

    1991-2000AsianComedyJapanToshihiro Tenma

    Quote:
    A young man, Kazuo, joins a new cult religion even though he sees through the initial recruitment pretense, and participating in the activities of a new social phenomenon, some of whose members genuinely believe in the principles and practice as preached, while others have more Machiavellian motives. (imdb)Read More »

  • Rosa von Praunheim – Der Einstein des Sex AKA The Einstein of Sex: Life and Work of Dr. M. Hirschfeld (1999)

    1991-2000DramaGermanyRosa von Praunheim

    The Einstein of Sex: Life and Work of Dr. M. Hirschfeld (German: Der Einstein des Sex) is a 1999 German film directed by Rosa von Praunheim. The plot follows the life of the Jewish doctor Magnus Hirschfeld who was a sexologist and gay socialist. In 1897, Hirschfeld founded the first political gay group in history.

    In the film three of Hirschfeld’s closest friends are portrayed: Baron Hermann von Teschenberg, Karl Giese and Dorchen (a transsexual). They establish the first Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in Berlin in 1919. They try to keep the institute open during the rise of the Third Reich in the early 1930s.Read More »

  • Veit Helmer – Tuvalu (1999)

    1991-2000ArthouseComedyGermanyVeit Helmer

    PLOT: Anton is a lowly, mistreated assistant at a bathhouse run by his blind father; he falls in love with Eva, the daughter of a sea captain. His real estate developer brother wants to tear down the bathhouse, and also seeks the hand of Eva. After a piece of rubble falls from the ceiling and kills Eva’s father while he’s swimming in the pool, an inspector gives the family a few weeks to bring it up to code or face demolition.Read More »

  • Takashi Miike – Chûgoku no chôjin aka The Bird People of China (1998)

    1991-2000ComedyDramaJapanTakashi Miike

    Synopsis
    A salaryman and yakuza are each sent by their bosses to a remote Chinese village but discover more then they expected.Read More »

  • Kar-Wai Wong – Dung che sai duk AKA Ashes of Time Redux (1994)

    1991-2000DramaEpicHong KongKar Wai Wong

    Two years after forming his own production company, Jet Tone, Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai released ASHES OF TIME, a martial-arts epic based on THE EAGLE-SHOOTING HEROES, a series of novels by Louis Cha writing under the pseudonym Jin Yong. The film was set in jianghu, an imaginary world with its own views of good and evil. In 2008, unhappy with the many alternate versions of ASHES OF TIME available, Wong reedited and restored the film, working with the original negative and soundtrack, which were in severe disrepair. The new version, called ASHES OF TIME REDUX, which screened at such prestigious international gatherings as the Cannes, Toronto, and New York Film Festivals, is a breathtaking example of Wong’s masterly storytelling technique, combined with the stunning cinematography of Christopher Doyle and gorgeous new cello solos recorded by Yo-Yo Ma. Read More »

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