Arthouse

  • Jesús Franco – Paroxismus AKA Venus in Furs (1969)

    1961-1970ArthouseJesus FrancoThrillerUnited Kingdom

    In Istanbul, a jazz trumpeter pulls the murdered body of a young woman from the surf. He remembers her from the night before, when he saw her at a millionaire playboy’s party and then later watched as she was assaulted by the party’s host and two of his friends. In confusion, Jimmy, the musician, leaves for Rio where he finds the sympathetic ear of Rita, a singer who invites him to live with her and helps him recover his equilibrium and his musical ability. Then, into the room walks a woman who looks like Wanda, the murder victim. Jimmy pursues her, not caring if she’s alive or dead. What’s going on?Read More »

  • Jean-Luc Godard – Prénom Carmen AKA First Name: Carmen (1983)

    1981-1990ArthouseExperimentalFranceJean-Luc Godard

    PLOT: The protagonist is Carmen X (Maruschka Detmers), a female member of a terrorist gang. She asks her uncle Jean, a washed-up film director (played by Jean-Luc Godard himself) if she can borrow his beachside house to make a film with some friends, but they are in fact planning to rob a bank. During the robbery she falls in love with a security guard. The film intercuts between Carmen’s escape with the guard, her uncle’s attempt to make a comeback film, and a string quartet attempting to perform Beethoven.Read More »

  • Jacques Rivette – Va savoir (2001)

    2001-2010ArthouseDramaFranceJacques Rivette

    Quote:
    The first years of the new millenium have marked something of a revival for the French New Wave, with Nouvelle Vague directors Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette all releasing major works which achieved both popular success and critical acclaim. Rivette’s offering is a charming romantic comedy which reminds us of the director’s passion for the theatre seen in his earlier works, such as Paris nous appartient (1961).Read More »

  • Alberto Cavallone – Afrika [Uncut] (1973)

    1971-1980Alberto CavalloneArthouseCultItaly

    Philippe, a bisexual painter, is living through a crisis. He is torn between his love for his wife and his attraction for young men. In Ethiopia, he meets Frank, a young homosexual.Read More »

  • Márta Mészáros – Napló gyermekeimnek AKA Diary for My Children (1984)

    Drama1981-1990ArthouseHungaryMárta Mészáros

    Quote:
    Fourteen year old Juli returns with her adopted grandfather and grandmother to Budapest in 1947 having spent the war in Moscow, as communists escaping the Nazi regime. They return to find the country in an effective puppet dictatorship and under extreme Stalinist rule. They are billeted with Magda, a self-styled ‘aunt’ who is also a high ranking official in the state police, though was once a radical revolutionary. Juli immediately distrusts her and rebels at every opportunity, but she befriends Janos, another old time radical who has escaped before and who is always under threat of arrest.Read More »

  • Don Askarian – Ararat: 14 Views (2007)

    2001-2010ArmeniaArthouseDon AskarianDrama

    Synopsis :
    A series of controlled improvisations. They focus on the holy Armenian mountain Ararat that is out of reach in Turkey. The filmmaker looks at his mountain as a poet, a dancer, a painter. And of course, eventually also as a filmmaker.
    Ararat is a holy mountain for Armenians. According to Biblical tradition, Noah saw the first land here again after the Great Flood. So it is difficult for Christian Armenians that the mountain is just over the border in Islamic Turkey. They can only look at it. That is also what Don Askarian does with great dedication and using all his visual inventiveness. Askarian worked for at least five years on this film, which is hard to label. It is not a drama or a documentary and it can’t be put in the tradition of the experimental film, for that he puts up too much resistance to what we now understand as ‘modern’. However, the filmmaker studies his mountain from every conceivable angle, just as the great French painter Cézanne once studied Mont Sainte-Victoire, or like the equally great Japanese print maker Hokusai studied Mount Fuji. Read More »

  • Bill Douglas – My Way Home (1978)

    1971-1980ArthouseBill DouglasDramaUnited Kingdom

    Set in the 1950s, the film follows Jamie from a children’s home in Scotland to Egypt where he is billeted after being conscripted to the RAF. There he meets Robert, a self-sufficient type surrounded by books and an uneasy friendship develops. It is, however, through this friendship, and the confidence that it gives him, that his artistic talents begin to emerge.Read More »

  • Bill Douglas – My Ain Folk (1973)

    1971-1980ArthouseBill DouglasDramaUnited Kingdom

    When Jamie’s maternal grandmother dies, he and his brother Tommy are separated – Tommy is taken off to a welfare home and Jamie goes to live with his other grandmother and uncle. His life is far from happy, filled with silence, rejection and bouts of violence.
    My Ain Folk (1973) was made immediately after Bill Douglas’ My Childhood (1972), again with the support of the BFI Production Board. An increased budget of £12,000 allowed a 55 minute running time, and an opening Technicolor extract from Lassie Comes Home (US, d. Fred M. Wilcox, 1943). This quickly gives way to black-and-white shots of Newcraighall at its bleakest.Read More »

  • Bill Douglas – My Childhood (1972)

    1971-1980ArthouseBill DouglasDramaUnited Kingdom

    Storyline
    The first part of Bill Douglas’ influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-’40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape – he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars – and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an eight-year-old living on the breadline with his half-brother and sick grandmother in a poor mining village.Read More »

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