Synopsis
“Criterion” wrote:
In his last film, legendary writer/artist/filmmaker Jean Cocteau portrays an 18th-century poet who travels through time on a quest for divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he meets several symbolic phantoms that bring about his death and resurrection. With an eclectic cast that includes Pablo Picasso, Jean-Pierre Leáud, Jean Marais and Yul Brynner, Testament of Orpheus (Le Testament de Orphée) brings full circle the journey Cocteau began in The Blood of a Poet, an exploration of the torturous relationship between the artist and his creations.Read More »
Fantasy
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Jean Cocteau – Le testament d’Orphée, ou ne me demandez pas pourquoi! AKA Testament of Orpheus (1960)
1951-1960ArthouseFantasyFranceJean CocteauQueer Cinema(s) -
Achim Bornhak – Der Nachtmahr AKA The Nightmare (2015)
2011-2020Achim BornhakFantasyGermanyThrillerQuote:
After a night of partying in a mansion with a swimming pool, teenager Tina starts to experience weird things. She hallucinates a violent deja-vu, and hears discomforting sounds. At home she is haunted by a mysterious creature that only she can see. The film suggest several explanations for her visions. Is she overly tense? Psychotic? Drugged? Jealous? Her parents and friends seem to think she is going through a phase. Tina is convinced that the creature is for real, and she starts identifying with in a way that prompts her parents to take drastic measures on her behalf.Read More » -
Reinhold Schünzel & Albert Valentin – Les Dieux s’amusent AKA Amphitryon (1935)
1931-1940Albert ValentinComedyFantasyGermanyReinhold SchünzelThird Reich CinemaSynopsis
Jupiter comes down from Mount Olympus and disguises himself as a mortal to romance a woman…Read More » -
Raoul Ruiz – L’Île aux merveilles de Manoël AKA Manuel on the Island of Wonders (1984)
1981-1990FantasyFranceRaoul RuizTVQuote:
This three part French TV serial for children (alternate versions exist as a feature, Manoel’s Destinies, and a 4 part Portuguese TV serial, Adventure in Madeira) is the favourite of many devotees of Raúl Ruiz. This is because it ties the enchantment and mystery of Lewis Carroll, Carlo Collodi and the Brothers Grimm to the filmmaker’s experiments with narrative strategies and what he calls the pentaludic model of storytelling (where characters are thrown dice-like into combinations and situations governed by the play of Chance and Destiny).Read More » -
Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt – Palácios de Pena AKA Palaces of Pity (2011)
2011-2020Daniel SchmidtDramaFantasyGabriel AbrantesPortugalQuote:
Haunted by their own directionless lives, two pre-adolescent girls reunite while visiting their ailing grandmother. In the midst of her fantasies of a medieval past – one consumed by fear and desire – the two girls are transformed and confront a legacy of oppression.Read More » -
Walter Lima Jr. – Ele, o Boto AKA He, the Dolphin (1987)
1981-1990BrazilDramaFantasyWalter Lima Jr.“Ele, o Boto” is based on an old legend of a water spirit who takes on form of Amazon river dolphin. He only takes on his humanoid form when he wants a mate. However, the village men hate the water sprite and want him dead. All he wanted was some mates, due to his loneliness…Read More »
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Pierre Zucca – Roberte (1979)
Drama1971-1980FantasyFrancePierre ZuccaQuote:
Unlike the erotic surrealism mastery of his peer-filmmakers such as Buñuel, Robbe-Grillet and even Raúl Ruiz, Pierre Zucca in his Roberte (adapted from Pierre Klossowski’s novel) tends mostly toward a “non-professionalism” and aesthetical economy. Where the enchanting force of his work is driven by an atmospheric sense of strangeness and oddity, an ambient surreality: a complex simplicity, when precisely less is more!Read More » -
Ali Abbasi – Gräns AKA Border (2018)
2011-2020Ali AbbasiDramaFantasySwedenA customs officer who can smell fear develops an unusual attraction to a strange traveler while aiding a police investigation which will call into question her entire existence.Read More »
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Guillermo del Toro – El Laberinto Del Fauno aka Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
2001-2010DramaFantasyGuillermo del ToroSpainIn 1944 falangist Spain, a girl, fascinated with fairy-tales, is sent along with her pregnant mother to live with her new stepfather, a ruthless captain of the Spanish army. During the night, she meets a fairy who takes her to an old faun in the center of the labyrinth. He tells her she’s a princess, but must prove her royalty by surviving three gruesome tasks. If she fails, she will never prove herself to be the the true princess and will never see her real father, the king, again.Read More »