USA

  • Mark Rappaport – From the Journals of Jean Seberg (1995)

    1991-2000DocumentaryMark RappaportUSAVideo Art

    Mark Rappaport’s creative bio-pic about actress Jean Seberg is presented in a first-person, autobiographical format (with Seberg played by Mary Beth Hurt). He seamlessly interweaves cinema, politics, American society and culture, and film theory to inform, entertain, and move the viewer. Seberg’s many marriages, as well as her film roles, are discussed extensively. Her involvement with the Black Panther Movement and subsequent investigation by the FBI is covered. Notably, details of French New Wave cinema, Russian Expressionist (silent) films, and the careers of Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave, and Clint Eastwood are also intensively examined. Much of the film is based on conjecture, but Rappaport encourages viewers to re-examine their ideas about women in film with this thought-provoking picture.Read More »

  • Edward Buzzell – Fast Company (1938)

    1931-1940ComedyEdward BuzzellMysteryUSA

    Plot:
    Joel Sloane is a rare book dealer and part time detective. He finds stolen or lost rare books for the insurance companies and gets a reward for their return. But this is a little different. Otto Brockler, a rare book dealer with questionable ethics, has been murdered. The list of suspects is long.Read More »

  • Benjamin Stoloff – The Lady and the Mob (1939)

    1931-1940Benjamin StoloffComedyCrimeUSA

    Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
    How could anyone dislike a film with the title Lady and the Mob? Sweet Fay Bainter stars as eccentric dowager Hattie Leonard, who takes it upon herself to smash a dry-cleaning racket. When the crooks and the cops laugh at her efforts, the resourceful Hattie sets about to organize her own mob, consisting of such soft-hearted yeggs as Warren Hymer and Joe Sawyer. With the help of her Runyonesque stooges-not to mention her grandson Jeff (Lee Bowman) and his sweetheart Lila (Ida Lupino)-Hattie manages to strike a blow for The American Way, bringing the villains to their knees. The supporting cast includes the ineffable Henry Armetta and versatile radio actor Tommy Mack, of “I’m not excited! WHO’S excited?” fame.Read More »

  • Lewis Klahr – Sixty Six (2015)

    2011-2020AnimationExperimentalLewis KlahrUSA

    Quote:
    Sixty Six began as a three minute, 16mm film I created in 2002– a pop poetic filled with the lush palette of Daylight Noir and primary color abstraction. For some undefined reason, I never took this little conjuring to the printing stage but would instead occasionally screen it publicly as tape-spliced workprint. In June of 2012, I felt compelled to finally complete this short. I decided to re-create it, shot for shot, in digital video, which in the intervening decade had replaced 16mm as my format of choice. But a surprising thing happened as I transposed some of the original shots into video, the piece kept expanding as new images and materials spontaneously folded in.Read More »

  • Philip Haas & David Hockney – A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China or: Surface Is Illusion But So Is Depth (1988)

    USA1981-1990David HockneyDocumentaryPhilip HaasPhilosophy

    Synopsis
    This famous Chinese scroll painting traces the Emperor Kangxi’s second tour of his southern empire in 1689. Painted by Wang Hui (1632-1717) and assistants, it was executed before Western perspective was introduced into Chinese art. Hockney contrasts the more fluid spatial depictions of this scroll with a later scroll painted by Xu Yang and assistants, The Qianlong Emperor’s Southern Inspection Tour (1764-1770), scroll four. This scroll illustrates the same tour, but now taken by the Qianlong emperor, grandson of the Kangxi emperor. Read More »

  • George B. Seitz – Under Cover of Night (1937)

    1931-1940CrimeGeorge B. SeitzMysteryUSA

    Plot Synopsis:
    For a studio specializing in glossy soap operas, costume pictures and musicals, MGM made an inordinate number of “B”-grade crime thrillers in 1937. The first on the docket that year was Under Cover of Night, starring Edmund Lowe as intrepid sleuth Christopher Cross. This time the killer is an overachieving psychopath who strikes only at night, and is unaware that he is a murderer. Thus, the question here is not “who done it,” but rather — when will Christopher Cross catch on to what the audience knows almost from the beginning. The best performance is rendered by Henry Daniell as the respectable college professor who literally moonlights as the killer. MGM would resurrect the “Christopher Cross” character as a female private eye (played by Joyce Compton) in 1939’s Sky Murder. by Hal EricksonRead More »

  • Sharon Lockhart – Pine Flat (2006)

    USA2001-2010DocumentaryExperimentalSharon Lockhart

    Quote:
    Lockhart began by constructing a portrait studio in a small rural community, and extending an open invitation to local children, and then by immersing herself in their environment and noting the complexity of their interactions. Her highly descriptive, almost painterly portraits, taken over the course of several years, abjure narration for the pleasure of the gaze and the notion of temporality. The studio remains a constant, its black backdrop, cement floor and natural lighting a theatrical setting that allows the children to develop a different kind of relationship to the camera. Those stills stand in stark contrast to the pictorialism of a series showing the community’s majestic natural surroundings, and to the portraits on 16mm film that accompany them, which are both literally and figuratively moving.Read More »

  • Adam Cooley – Me, Myself, and My Third Eye: 4 Enlightened Stories for 1 Imperfect God (2010) (DVD)

    2001-2010Adam CooleyArthouseUSA

    IMDB:
    Features four distinct, bizarre, existential tales about people whose lives are in transition, who are each asking questions about themselves, their environments, and about God(s).Read More »

  • Costa-Gavras – Music Box (1989)

    1981-1990Costa-GavrasCrimeThrillerUSA

    Quote:
    Armin Mueller-Stahl plays Hungarian family man Mike Laszlo, whose American citizenship is suddenly threatened when reports unearthed from a UN basement link him to horrific war crimes as part of an SS Death Squad.

    He immediately turns to his daughter, defense lawyer Ann Talbot (Jessica Lange) who dismisses the charge, assuming it to be a simple case of mistaken identity. When the case progresses quickly to court, Ann goes against the advice of her peers and represents her father to defend him against the onslaught of allegations thrown at him by the prosecution (Frederic Forrest). Read More »

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