• Weyler Hildebrand – Landstormens lilla Lotta (1939)

    1931-1940ComedySwedenWeyler Hildebrand

    It’s time for conscription training outside the small town of Lillköping. The bank clerk becomes an officer – the bank manager an ordinary soldier. Everybody seems to be trying to get a date with Elsa, who makes their food. Nobody takes the training seriously.Read More »

  • Anthony Mann – Bend of the River (1952)

    USA1951-1960Anthony MannWestern

    American Cinematheque wrties:
    James Stewart stars as a former border raider who narrowly escapes the hangman’s noose (he still smarts from the rope) and is trying to start over again in the wide-open Oregon country. Instead, he winds up involved with the wily and charming Arthur Kennedy in a wagon train that includes the eligible Laurie Baile (Julie Adams) and a load of supplies worth their weight in gold. One of director Anthony Mann’s finest films, combining action, character and landscape in a seamless and wildly satisfying package.Read More »

  • Krzysztof Zanussi – Serce na dloni aka And A Warm Heart (2008)

    2001-2010ComedyDramaKrzysztof ZanussiPoland

    Quote:
    In this moral fable from Poland, Konstanty (Bohdan Stupka) is a wealthy and amoral man who has made his fortune running a chain of supermarkets and has both the bank account and the lack of conscience to do anything he wants. One of Konstanty’s many employees is Stefan (Marek Kudelko), a kind and generous young man who runs a cash register at one of his markets. Stefan loses his job when a manager discovers he’s been undercharging groceries for senior citizens who can’t afford them; adding insult to injury, a few hours later Stefan loses both his girlfriend (Marta Zmuda-Trzebiatowska) and his flat. Falling into a deep depression, Stefan tries to kill himself, and is taken to the emergency room around the same time Konstanty is admitted to the hospital following a sudden heart attack.Read More »

  • Makoto Satô – Aga no kioku AKA Memories of Agano (2005)

    2001-2010DocumentaryEthnographic CinemaExperimentalJapanMakoto Satô

    Satō Makoto discovered documentary film when he visited Minamata (well known as the former site of an environmental disaster) as a student, and worked on Katori Naotaka’s The Innocent Sea. While touring Japan with the film, he met people who lived by the polluted Agano River in Niigata and decided to make a film about them. Living there with seven crew members for three years, Living on the River Agano was completed in 1992 and showed people who live with the river and work in agriculture and fishing, quietly probing the cruelty of nature destroyed. Ten years later, and after attending several funerals of people who appeared in the first feature, the team returned to the area. The resulting film Memories of Agano is a ghostly poem on people, fields, stories, songs and buildings receding into absence, the power of images and the strength of sound to revive the past.Read More »

  • Hynek Bocan – Cest a sláva AKA Honor and Glory (1968)

    1961-1970ArthouseCzech RepublicDramaHynek Bocan

    This historical film by Hynek Bočan touches upon the indecisiveness of the Czech nation, ready to bend the backbone in face of foreign rule. Situating the story at the close of the Thirty Year War enabled the depiction of the misery of the people that affects even an impoverished aristocratic milieu. Rudolf Hrušínský appears here in the role of an indecisive knight, persuaded for a long time and in vain to join the anti-Habsburg movement. The story does not only captivate through the depiction of manifold human characters, intrigues and sycophancy, but also through the circumstances ruling over the devastated farmstead, sunk in mud and crudeness. One of the best films with an updating tendency has come into being here, rightly being named along the such greats as Kladivo na čarodějnice (Witches’ Hammer).Read More »

  • Alain Guiraudie – Voici venu le temps AKA Time Has Come (2005)

    2001-2010Alain GuiraudieArthouseFranceQueer Cinema(s)

    The time has come when the warriors of Obitania are once again on the alert. They set out in pursuit of Manjas-Kebir, a bandit who has kidnapped Rixo Lomadis Bron’s daughter. Bron is a wealthy landowner who reigns over the shepherds of the Purple Mountain. The time has come when Rixo Lomadis Bron accuses Manjas-Kebir of killing his daughter and urges all the country’s inhabitants to track down the assassin. It’s the time when Radovan Remila Stoï, the land’s greatest warrior, rises up against this foolhardy act which has every chance of leading to war. The time has come when Fogo Lompla, a warrior whose search methods have no equal, begins to wonder about the untraceable Manjas-Kebir, his struggle in favour of the liberation of the shepherds, the life of perpetual wandering that his warrior existence leads to, and about unrequited love. —Cineuropa.orgRead More »

  • Marina Abramovic & Ulay – Relation Work (1976 – 1979)

    1971-1980ExperimentalMarina AbramovicSerbia and MontenegroUlayVideo Art

    Relation Work, 1976-1979: 14 performances
    Contents: Relation in space — Talking about similarity — Breathing in, breathing out — Imponderabilia — Expansion in space — Relation in movement — Relation in time — Light/Dark — Balance proof — AAA-AAA — Incision — Kaiserschnitt — Charged space — Three.

    Performance art pieces illustrating art in confrontation with life and the individual versus the universal by early performance artists, Ulay and Marina Abramovic. 1996. 148 min.Read More »

  • Shinsuke Ogawa – Nippon-koku Furuyashiki-mura AKA Furuyashiki: A Japanese Village (1984)

    1981-1990DocumentaryJapanShinsuke Ogawa

    Quote:
    This is Ogawa Productions’ first major film from their Yamagata period. They had already started photography on Magino Village: A Tale but they were drawn to this village deep in the high country above Magino when a particularly cold bout of weather threatened crops. Inevitably, their attention strayed from the impact of weather and geography on the harvest to the “life history” of Furuyashiki Village. On the one hand, Ogawa returns to his roots by playing with the conventions of the science film. At the same time, he discovers a local, peripheral space in which to think about the nation and the state of village Japan. From this “distant perspective” in the very heart of the Japanese mountains, Ogawa discovers a village still dealing with the trauma of global warfare and struggling for survival as their children flee for the cities.Read More »

  • Sergio Gobbi – Maldonne (1969)

    1961-1970FranceSergio GobbiThriller

    Synopsis:
    In this thrilling mystery of mistaken identity, Jacques (Pierre Vaneck) is a piano player in a nightclub who is approached by a man he never met before. The stranger offers him a job posing as the husband of a mentally challenged woman. He will be rewarded for taking care of the woman. Since his contract has expired at the club, he readily accepts the proposition. The stranger turns out to be the valet of the woman, who other than playing with decapitated dolls, seems quite normal. Jacques and the woman end up falling in love. He looks just like her husband who disappeared during an African safari. It turns out the missing man is a former Nazi hiding out from the international police. Soon agents converge on the house along with the man who had supposedly vanished, leading to an inevitable showdown.Read More »

Back to top button