Arthouse

  • Pierre Földes – Saules aveugles, femme endormie AKA Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2022)

    2021-2030AnimationArthouseFrancePierre Földes

    A giant talkative frog, a lost cat, and a tsunami help a bank employee, his wife and a schizophrenic accountant to save Tokyo from an earthquake and find a meaning to their lives.

    2 wins, 9 nominations

    Based on short stories by Haruki Murakami.Read More »

  • Ken Russell – Omnibus: Dante’s Inferno (1967)

    1961-1970ArthouseDramaKen RussellUnited Kingdom

    Quote:
    Like the dissertation on Duncan, Russell’s look at painter/poet Rossetti and his own personal Hell (a clear allusion to the Dante of Divine Comedy fame) can be tough going at times. His relationship with Elizabeth Siddal is very upsetting, especially when we learn of her terminal illness and Rossetti’s mere indifference to it. There is also another woman, a dark haired succubus who seems to bring out the worst in the artist, constantly turning causal outings into turmoil even where situations finally seem settled. As mentioned before, Russell seems obsessed by the way women of the age interacted with men. There is a contemporary twist of course, but the overall interpretation seems wrapped up in an intricate combination of need, nurturing, and novelty. As played by Reed, Rossetti is a ruthless cad, treating everyone with determined disdain. At least in this situation, we see how the personalities of everyone involved influenced the art.Read More »

  • Shôhei Imamura – Kuroi Ame AKA Black Rain (1989)

    Arthouse1981-1990Hiroshima at 75JapanShohei ImamuraWar

    Quote:

    A somber, visually distilled, and deeply affecting portrait of the human toll and uncalculated tragedy of nuclear holocaust. In contrast to Shohei Imamura’s characteristically unrefined, primitivistic, and subversively bawdy cinema, the film is shot in high contrast black and white, creating a spare and tonally muted chronicle of dignity, survival, community, and human resilience. Through recurring literal and figurative images of regression, Imamura conveys a dual meaning, not only in the community’s noble attempt to rebuild Hiroshima and return to a semblance of normal life after the annihilating bombing but also in their collective gradual and systematic erasure from Japanese society through long-term effects of radiation sickness, infertility, cultural (and geographic) isolation, and social stigmatization.Read More »

  • Louis Skorecki – Les Cinéphiles 2 – Eric a disparu (1989)

    Louis Skorecki1981-1990ArthouseFrance

    Suite of the essay on Louis Skorecki’s cinema through the relations of some young cinema enthusiasts.Read More »

  • Roy Stuart – Glimpse 19 (2017)

    2011-2020ArthouseEroticaFranceRoy Stuart

    The Glimpse films will soon count as many numbers as our century. But the number 19 is really a special delicacy, made by a Roy Stuart at the top of his art. At the heart of this new Glimpse is a long torrid scene in which we witness the slow seduction of a magnificent young woman, never photographed or filmed naked before, and who is slowly drawn to unsimulated sex. Novice maybe, but not: no vice!Read More »

  • Makoto Satô – YMO Propaganda (1984)

    Arthouse1981-1990JapanMakoto SatôMusical

    Starring Yellow Magic Orchestra and David Brooks Palmer, YMO Propaganda is a 1984 musical film directed by Shin Saito. The film originally premiered theatrically throughout Japan in 1984 and is considered by some to be the best visual work from ‘Y.M.O.’Read More »

  • Ali Khamraev – Triptikh AKA Triptych (1979)

    1971-1980Ali KhamraevArthouseDramaUSSR

    Triptych is the story of three women: an illiterate girl who wants to build a house, a school teacher representing authority who goes to a northern Uzbekistan village where traditions and strict Moslem practices have kept the people subjugated, and an old woman kidnapped in her youth by a poor peasant thereby making her his property.Read More »

  • Jean Eustache – Mes petites amoureuses AKA My Little Loves (1974)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaFranceJean Eustache

    Quote:
    After the success of The Mother and the Whore, French director Jean Eustache was finally able to make Mes petites amoureuses, an equally personal but vastly different film — a portrait of his childhood in the south of France in which every footstep, every gesture, and every visual detail feels as though it’s been drawn directly from the filmmaker’s memory.Read More »

  • Bertrand Bonello – De la guerre AKA On War (2008)

    2001-2010ArthouseBertrand BonelloDramaFranceQueer Cinema(s)

    Quote:
    Spiritual disciplines span the spectrum from quiet personal self-reflection to physically militant offensives against the ego that tyrannizes us all. Writer/Director Bertrand Bonello’s latest film On War deals with the latter.

    On War is a film about purging—the purging of self, of attachment to the world, and of attachment to assumptions about one’s self in the world. As the characters in the film suggest, it is only through this purging that a person may fully release into the immediacy of joy and pleasure. And it is joy and pleasure, things real and authentic, that our protagonist Bertrand (Mathieu Amalric) is searching for.Read More »

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