Arthouse

  • Ildikó Enyedi – Az én XX. századom AKA My Twentieth Century [+extra] (1989)

    1981-1990ArthouseDramaHungaryIldikó Enyedi

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    Synopsis:
    Dorothy Segda essays three roles in the Hungarian-made My 20th Century. The film begins with the birth of twin girls to a Budapest mother (Dorothy Segda) in 1880. Orphaned early on, the girls are forced to sell matches on the streets until both are adopted by two separate families. Flash forward to 1900: Having lost track of one another, the grown-up twins take separate compartments on the Orient Express. One of the girls (Segda again) has become the pampered mistress of a wealthy man; the other (Segda yet again) is a bomb-wielding anarchist. Director Ildiko Enyedi evidently intended My 20th Century as an allegorical statement concerning the status of women in the modern mechanical age. The experiences of the twins are interspersed with shots of Thomas Edison (Peter Andorai), whom we see at the beginning of the film perfecting his incandescent light bulb on the very day that the sisters are born. The more technological advances made by Edison, the more confused the twins become in establishing their own roles in an advancing civilization. Adroitly avoiding cut-and-dried symbolism, Ildiko Enyedi keeps the audience wondering what she’s up to by including such surrealistic vignettes as a caged chimpanzee recounting the day of his capture!Read More »

  • Manoel de Oliveira – Acto da Primavera AKA Rite of Spring (1963)

    1961-1970ArthouseExperimentalManoel de OliveiraPortugal

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    Quote:
    Oliveira returned to the center of Portugal’s film scene in the 1960s with Acto da Primavera (Rite of spring; 1963), a work that marks a significant change in the director’s trajectory and that initiates some of the cinematic strategies that he would develop more fully in later films. In Acto da Primavera, Oliveira offers a version of a popular representation of the Passion of Christ, enacted by members of a rural community in northern Portugal, derived from the Auto da Paixão de Jesus Cristo (1559), by Francisco Vaz de Guimarães. He came across the annual Easter drama in the small town of Curalha when he was looking for locations for “O Pão,” and he was so taken by it that he wanted to return and register it on film.Read More »

  • Jun Ichikawa – Tony Takitani (2004)

    2011-2020ArthouseAsianJapanJun Ichikawa

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    Alone and self-sufficient since childhood, Tony shuns emotions as illogical and immature. After finding his true vocation as a technical illustrator, he becomes fascinated with Eiko, whom he marries. His life changes, he feels vibrantly alive, and for the first time, he understands and fears loneliness. But when Eiko’s all consuming obsession for designer clothes ends in tragedy, Tony finds himself alone again, sitting in his wife’s closet, gazing at her treasured couture pieces, the whispering ghosts of her soul. Finally, Tony places an ad in the paper searching for a woman who fits Eiko’s measurements perfectly.Read More »

  • Yannis Sakaridis – Wild Duck (2013)

    2011-2020ArthouseDramaGreeceYannis Sakaridis

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    Synopsis
    A bankrupt telecoms engineer, employed by his ex-boss to investigate a phone-hacking operation, gets trapped into paying off either his economic or his moral debts.

    ———————–

    “Wild Duck” is the story of Dimitris, a telecommunications engineer who’s forced to shutter his business after running up a considerable debt with a local loan shark. He and his buddy Nikos, another telecommunications expert working for a big outfit, decide to get to the bottom of a big scandal. Their research leads them to a certain apartment, whose tenant Panagiota becomes the focus of their attention. Dimitris is now facing some major dilemmas and a trip to his hometown will help him clear his head and look at himself under a different light.Read More »

  • Michelangelo Antonioni – La notte (1961)

    1961-1970ArthouseDramaItalyMichelangelo Antonioni

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    Quote:
    One of the masterworks of 1960s cinema, La notte [The Night] marked yet another development in the continuous stylistic evolution of its director, Michelangelo Antonioni — even as it solidified his reputation as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. La notte is Antonioni’s “Twilight of the Gods”, but composed in cinematic terms. Examined from a crane-shot, it’s a sprawling study of Italy’s upper middle-class; seen in close-up, it’s an x-ray of modern man’s psychic desolation. Two of the giants of film-acting come together as a married couple living in crisis: Marcello Mastroianni (La dolce vita, 8 1/2) and Jeanne Moreau (Jules et Jim, Bay of Angels). He is a renowned author and “public intellectual”; she is “the wife”. Over the course of one day and the night into which it inevitably bleeds, the pair will come to re-examine their emotional bonds, and grapple with the question of whether love and communication are even possible in a world built out of profligate idylls and sexual hysteria.Read More »

  • Jorge Mautner – O Demiurgo AKA The Demiurge (1972)

    1971-1980ArthouseBrazilCultJorge Mautner

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    O Demiurgo (1972)
    A colorful feature film that mixes exile with the figure of the poet Rimbaud and the feminist revolution. “It’s super-intellectual. A fable-musical-philosophical-chanchada”, Mautner says. He also affirms that the work focuses a lot on the longing for Brazil, on the will that the exiled had to return to their homeland. The idea came from conversations between the musician and his old father, “always talking about the pre-Socratics”, he recalls. Glauber Rocha states that “The Demiurge” is the best film “of” and “about” exile.Read More »

  • Ingmar Bergman – Såsom i en spegel AKA Through a Glass Darkly [+Extras] (1961)

    1961-1970ArthouseDramaIngmar BergmanSweden

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    A young woman, Karin, has recently returned to the family island after spending some time in a mental hospital. On the island with her is her lonely brother and kind, but increasingly desperate husband (Max von Sydow). They are joined by Karin’s father (Gunnar Björnstrand), who is a world-traveling author that is estranged to his children. The film depicts how Karin’s grip on reality slowly slips away and how the bonds between the family members are changing in light of this fact.Read More »

  • Andrei Tarkovsky – Solyaris (1972)

    1971-1980Andrei TarkovskyArthouseSci-FiUSSR

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    Quote:
    One of the most frequent charges against science-fiction is that it replaces emotion with intellect. Its characters are people who live by and for the mind, and their personal relationships are likely to be stifled and awkward, That’s probably true enough of most s-f novels (although exceptions range from Fredric Brown’s “The Lights in the Sky are Stars” to a lot of the work by Theodore Sturgeon), but it’s even more true of science-fiction movies.Read More »

  • Andrei Tarkovsky – Ivanovo detstvo AKA Ivan’s Childhood (1962)

    1961-1970Andrei TarkovskyArthouseDramaUSSR

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    Quote:
    The debut feature from the great Andrei Tarkovsky, Ivan’s Childhood is an evocative, poetic journey through the shadows and shards of one boy’s war-torn youth. Moving back and forth between the traumatic realities of WWII and the serene moments of family life before the conflict began, Tarkovsky’s film remains one of the most jarring and unforgettable depictions of the impact of violence on children in wartime.Read More »

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