TV

  • Bo Widerberg – Vildanden AKA The Wild Duck (1989)

    Bo Widerberg1981-1990DramaSwedenTV

    “Every generation needs Ibsen” says Bo Widerberg and presents his version of the classic drama “The Wild Duck” from 1884. As in a thriller we get to follow how the family happiness of the Ekdahls is driven towards a tragic disintegration.Read More »

  • Alan Clarke – Scum [BBC Version] (1977)

    Alan Clarke1971-1980DramaTVUnited Kingdom

    This is the original version made for the BBC but banned by them and never screened until 15 years later. The BBC said that they banned it because “There was too much incident packed into too short a time and that they doubted the veracity.” So they thought it was pure fiction. But they also said that it “looked too much like a documentary.”

    A brutal depiction of life in the borstal system where order is maintained through violence and intimidation. Carlin’s journey up the pecking order from new boy to ‘Daddy’ earns him the respect of inmates and officers alike.Read More »

  • Peter Watkins – Edvard Munch [TV version] (1974)

    Peter Watkins1971-1980DramaSwedenTV

    Quote:
    The entire point of Peter Watkins’s cinematic career, so he seems to indicate in his interview with himself in the liner notes for New Yorker Video’s Edvard Munch DVD, is to directly challenge the perception deadening (at best) and enslaving (at worst) effects of the hegemony of 20th-century media, the conception of which was arguably the arrival of the moving picture. Strangely enough, two of his most acclaimed films take place decades before the Edison’s kinetoscope, but Watkins seems to use the anachronism of creating a hypothetical “first-person cinema” in the B.C. years to accentuate his impassioned appeal for elevated media consciousness. His recent six-hour millennial masterwork La Commune (Paris, 1871) was blunt about it, framing a rag-tag experimental theater ensemble attempting to reenact a moment of French social resistance with televised coverage from within (two community reporters practically serving as the film’s tour guides) and without (daily reports from the State-suckling network distorting the public’s all-but-assigned opinion).Read More »

  • Georges Franju – En passant par la Lorraine (1950)

    Georges Franju1941-1950DocumentaryFranceTV

    This Government-commissioned documentary was intended to reflect the modernisation of French industry. However, in Franju’s hands it became an ode to fire and a fascinating portrayal of industrial architecture.Read More »

  • Bill Melendez – You’re in Love, Charlie Brown (1967)

    Bill Melendez1961-1970AnimationTVUSA

    With the help of Linus and Peppermint Patty, Charlie Brown tries to pluck up the courage to talk to his crush, the Little Red-Haired Girl.Read More »

  • Yoshihiko Okamoto – Watashi wa Kai ni Naritai AKA I Want to Be a Shellfish (1958)

    1951-1960DramaJapanTVYoshihiko Okamoto

    On a post-war peaceful day in Japan, Toyomatsu Shimizu, a barber as well as a good father and husband, is suddenly arrested by the Prefectural Police as a war criminal and sued for murder. According to the accusation by GHQ, Toyomatsu “attemped to kill a US prisoner”, which was nothing but an order by his superior and failed after all with hurting the prisoner by weak Toyomatsu. Also, Toyomatsu was driven to corner at the trial by the fact that he fed the US prisoner some burdock roots to nourish him. Toyomatsu believes nothing but being not guilty, but he is sentenced to death by hanging. Prior to the execution, Toyomatsu writes a long farewell letter to his family, the wife and the only son: “If I ever incarnate, I hate to be a human being any more…. Oh yes, I would like to be…a shellfish living on the rock-bottom of the sea.”Read More »

  • Morten Arnfred & Lars von Trier – Riget II AKA The Kingdom II [+Extras] (1997)

    Morten Arnfred1991-2000DenmarkDramaTV

    Danish television mini-series, created by Lars von Trier in 1994, and co-directed by Lars von Trier and Morten Arnfred.

    The series is set in the neurosurgical ward of Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet, the city and country’s main hospital, nicknamed “Riget”. “Riget” means “the realm” or “the kingdom” and leads one to think of “dødsriget”, the realm of the dead. The show follows a number of characters, both staff and patients, as they encounter bizarre phenomena, both human and supernatural. The show is notable for its wry humor, its muted sepia colour scheme, and the appearance of a chorus of dishwashers with Down Syndrome who discuss in intimate detail the strange occurrences in the hospital.Read More »

  • Sergio Sollima – La tigre è ancora viva: Sandokan alla riscossa! (1977)

    Sergio Sollima1971-1980AdventureItalyTV

    Quote:
    Following on from the successful television adaptation of Sandokan in 1976, a year later Kabir Bedi gave life to the big screen incarnation in this Sergio Sollima-directed film.Read More »

  • Gordon Hessler – Scream, Pretty Peggy (1973)

    1971-1980Gordon HesslerThrillerTVUSA

    A sculptor hires young college girls to take care of his elderly mother and his supposedly insane sister, both of whom live in the old family mansion with him.Read More »

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