Drama

  • Leon Hirszman – São Bernardo [+Extras] (1971)

    1971-1980ArthouseBrazilDramaLeon Hirszman

    Synopsis
    In the interior of Alagoas, the son of peasants Paulo Honório, is a peddler who wanders through the midlands negociating all sorts of things, from cow to religious artifacts. He grows an obsession: to take the São Bernardo farm from the hands of its inept owner, the indebted Luiz Padilha, making him his employee.Read More »

  • Herbert Achternbusch – Hick’s Last Stand [+Extras] (1990)

    1981-1990DramaExperimentalGermanyHerbert Achternbusch

    Synopsis
    [In Hick’s Last Stand] we witness yet another incarnation of a Last Bavarian Mohican, incoherently staggering across the badlands of South Dakota and Wyoming in white cowboy boots, black leather jacket, and a feather on his hat. Without dialogue, without other players besides Herbert Achternbusch, and with the most minimal narrative progression, the film consists only of an image track over which we hear Hick’s extended monologue, a declaration of love to the absent Mary, occasionally interrupted by songs by Judy Garland, Native American chants, and classical music. Read More »

  • Herbert Achternbusch – Das Andechser Gefühl aka The Andechs Feeling (1974)

    1971-1980ComedyDramaGermanyHerbert Achternbusch

    Synopsis
    In Achternbusch’s first feature, an anxious teacher (played, as is the lead role in all his films, by the director) sits in a beer garden on the hill of the Andechs monastery. While flies drown in his mug of beer, he confronts a life of failure: the wife he ignored, the child he neglected, the teaching duties he has shirked, and his doomed efforts at winning tenure from school officials. Only a dream from the past – the memory of a former liaison with a film star with whom he shared “the Andechs feeling, a feeling that we are not alone”, provides sustenance. Despite an unexpected series of events, longing in Achternbusch’s world ultimately remains stronger than fulfillment and thirst better than beer.Read More »

  • Eduardo de Gregorio – Sérail AKA Surreal Estate (1976)

    1971-1980DramaEduardo de GregorioFrance

    Synopsis:
    An English novelist is lured, with disconcerting and disorienting results, into purchasing a crumbling mansion by what he imagines are the deliberately ‘literary’ ploys of its housekeeper (Leslie Caron) and two mysterious, lurking women.Read More »

  • Marian Crisan – Morgen (2010)

    Drama2001-2010ArthouseMarian CrisanRomania

    Synopsis
    Nelu, a man in his forties, works as a security guard at the local supermarket in Salonta, a small town on the Romanian-Hungarian border. This is the place where many illegal emigrants try to cross, by any means possible, to Hungary and then further to Western Europe. For Nelu, days go by the same way everyday: fishing at dawn, then work, and finally home with his wife Florica. They live alone in an isolated farm in the fields outside of town. One morning, Nelu ”fishes” something different from the river: a Turkish man trying to cross the border… Unable to communicate verbally, the two men will somehow understand each other. Nelu takes the stranger to his farm and gives him dry clothes, food and shelter. In return, the Turkish man gives him all the money he has, asking him to help him cross the border. Eventually, Nelu takes the money and promises he will help him the day after…Read More »

  • Jon Jost – The Bed You Sleep In (1993)

    1991-2000DramaJon JostUSA

    In this independently produced drama, a timbermill owner is having great difficulty sustaining a livelihood due to overcutting and peculiarities of the international trade situation. Despite the damaging effect his mill has on the local environment, he appears to be someone who really enjoys the unspoiled wilderness, because he goes fly-fishing whenever he can. His troubled life edges veers into deeper waters when his daughter sends him a letter in which she accuses him of incest. Whether her story proves to be true or not, it is certain that his life is now ruined forever, as are the lives of those around him. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie GuideRead More »

  • Maurice Pialat – Van Gogh (1991)

    1991-2000ArthouseDramaFranceMaurice Pialat

    “allmovie” wrote:
    Running nearly three hours, Maurice Pialat’s VAN GOGH is a leisurely paced look at the famous painter’s final year. Pialat’s portrait differs from many other films in that he shows Van Gogh (Jacques Dutronc) as being reasonably sane and he focuses on the everyday events of the painter’s life and art.Read More »

  • Atif Yilmaz – Dul bir kadin AKA A Divorced Woman (1985)

    1981-1990Atif YilmazDramaTurkey

    Quote:
    Among those who made interesting women’s films in the 1980s, and in the centre of the controversy about a feminist cinema, was Atıf Yılmaz. “A Divorced Woman” is one of those films about a woman who in the past had no other role but being a pretty ornament and sex object. She discovers her new sexuality with another woman. And adaptation of Necati Cumalı´s story by the same name (note: his play “bir sabah gülerek uyan”), about a woman who frees herself from male-dominated conventions.Read More »

  • Claude Pinoteau – Le silencieux AKA Escape to Nowhere (1973)

    Drama1971-1980Claude PinoteauFranceThriller

    Shortly after a delegation of Russian nuclear physicists arrives in London, one of their number, a man named Haliakov, is abducted by the British security services. Haliakov is in truth Clément Tibère, a French scientist who was coerced into working for the Russians some years ago. The British agents compel Tibère to work for them, revealing the identity of two notorious spies. Tibère realises that his life is now in peril, that it is only a matter of time before the KGB takes its revenge…Read More »

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