Arthouse

  • Julie Dash – Illusions (1982)

    1981-1990ArthouseJulie DashShort FilmUSA

    from the Women Make Movies description:
    “The time is 1942, a year after Pearl Harbor; the place is National Studios, a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio. Mignon Duprée, a Black woman studio executive who appears to be white and Ester Jeeter, an African American woman who is the singing voice for a white Hollywood star are forced to come to grips with a society that perpetuates false images as status quo. This highly-acclaimed drama by one of the leading African American women directors follows Mignon’s dilemma, Ester’s struggle and the use of cinema in wartime Hollywood: three illusions in conflict with reality.”Read More »

  • Yevgeny Yufit – Pryamokhozhdenie AKA Bipedalism (2005)

    2001-2010ArthouseRussiaSci-FiYevgeny Yufit

    Yufit continues themes from Silver Heads, this time featuring an artist who paints insects, and who discovers evidence of scientific experiments aimed at understanding and controlling the progress of man. Specifically, what caused man to stand upright, thus moving away from a more practical and natural lifestyle and into a modern, intellectual one. The experiments attempt to recreate this effect or fuse the advantages of both. He moves into an old house with his family, is haunted by strange visions and dreams, but when his children uncover a film archive documenting the experiments, and a strange old man disturbs his peace, he loses his simple pleasures and his mind regresses into a form of insanity. While he slowly unravels the truth, experimental bipedals (naked crouched men) roam and terrorize the countryside chased by the government. By far Yufit’s most conventional narrative, with odd, mildly interesting but simplistic meditations on humankind.

    — The Worldwide Celluloid MassacreRead More »

  • Michelange Quay – Mange, ceci est mon corps AKA Eat, for This Is My Body (2007)

    2001-2010ArthouseDramaFranceMichelange Quay

    Michelange Quay’s stunning first feature seductively begs the viewer to abandon the rules of traditional storytelling and instead embrace a poetic,… Michelange Quay’s stunning first feature seductively begs the viewer to abandon the rules of traditional storytelling and instead embrace a poetic, cinematic language. Eat, for This Is My Body tells of the evolution of power in Quay’s native Haiti and the colonial relationship between black boys and white women.Read More »

  • Antoine d’Agata – Aka Ana (2008)

    2001-2010Antoine d'AgataArthouseDocumentaryFrance

    Renowned French photographer and Nan Goldin disciple Antoine D’Agata offers this visual essay of Tokyo prostitution circuits that isn’t for the easily offended. By exploring the prostitutes’ filthy working rooms and capturing the sex workers as they service clients, shoot heroin, and masturbate with their own blood, D’Agata effectively shatters the standard perception of the porn industry. ~ Jason Buchanan, RoviRead More »

  • Vladimir Maslov & Yevgeny Yufit – Serebryanye golovy AKA Silver Heads (1999)

    1991-2000ArthouseRussiaSci-FiVladimir MaslovYevgeny Yufit

    Synopsis:
    Deep in the woods, in a secret bunker, a group of scientists is working on an experiment to crossbreed a human with a tree. In this low-tech science fiction film, experiments aimed to produce a better, purer human being appear as strange allusions to the films of David Cronenberg, with virtuality and cerebral dimension replaced by pure physicality. Machines stripped of any glamour and reduced to mere function resemble medieval torture chambers powered by electricity. With dark humor and raw visual aesthetic, Silver Heads is a major work from the Saint Petersburg underground art scene.Read More »

  • Guy Maddin – Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002)

    2001-2010ArthouseCanadaGuy Maddin

    Quote:

    By turns voluptuous, whimsical and exceedingly strange, Guy Maddin’s film “Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary” suggests that silent movies and ballet may have always been natural dancing partners. At least they seem that way when folded into each other by a quirky visionary like Mr. Maddin, the Canadian experimental filmmaker whose work has acquired a fervent cult following.Read More »

  • Various – Seven Women, Seven Sins (1986)

    1981-1990ArthouseBette GordonChantal AkermanFranceHelke SanderShort FilmUlrike Ottinger

    Quote:
    What constitutes a deadly sin today? Seven of the world’s best-known women directors produce their own version of celluloid sin in this omnibus film. Helke Sander (THE GERMANS AND THEIR MEN) reverses GLUTTONY with her vision of Eve forcing her apples into the hands of a reluctant Adam. Bette Gordon (VARIETY, EMPTY SUITCASES) finds GREED during a fight in the ladies’ room of a luxury hotel over a lottery ticket. Strangers reply to director Maxi Cohen’s ad in a newspaper to share their litanies in ANGER. Award-winning director, Chantal Akerman, battles to overcome her SLOTH in order to complete her film, while Valie Export (INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES) strips bare notions of the skin trade in LUST. Read More »

  • Manoel de Oliveira – Party (1996)

    1991-2000ArthouseComedyManoel de OliveiraPortugal

    Quote:
    The battle of the sexes? The forces of despair and seduction? On S. Miguel in the Azores, Rogério, a young man with old money, and his enigmatic wife Leonor host a garden party at their villa. The intriguing guests are an older unmarried couple, the philosophical and observant Irene, and Michel, a roué;. While Rogério and Irene talk, Michel and Leonor go down to the sea. The conversations upset Rogério and capture Leonor’s imagination. Five years later, the four dine at the villa. Michel and Leonor again leave the other two. Intentions and undercurrents are subtle. One of the four proves strong, one weak, and two must choose. Wind and rain bring down the curtain on both acts.Read More »

  • Peter Greenaway – The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 3: From Sark to the Finish (2004)

    2001-2010ArthousePeter GreenawayUnited Kingdom

    Quote:
    In the third film of the Tulse Luper Suitcases, Luper, writer, collector and archivist, continues his adventures as a professional prisoner during the later years of the Second World War and its aftermath, the Cold War. Luper is shipwrecked on the Paradise Island of Sark and spends three months in self-imposed imprisonment on an idyllic beach until betrayed to the Germans by the Contumelys, a trio of jealous sisters. Pursued by a bounty-hunting jailer, Luper escapes to Barcelona to support and protect the lesbian marriage between the widow Mathilda Figura, of one murdered jailer, and Madame Plens, the mistress of another.Read More »

Back to top button