• Johan van der Keuken – To Sang Fotostudio + Leven met je ogen aka Living with your eyes (1997)

    1971-1980DocumentaryJohan van der KeukenNetherlands

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    Description: Those familiar with van der Keuken’s films are aware of his extraordinary capacity to observe with a camera, to make the everyday magical and to slowly reveal the marvelous complexity of individuals’ lives. In his captivating new short, the delightful van der Keuken focuses on photography, in particular the extraordinary figure of a Chinese immigrant portrait photographer. A man of great authority, To Sang poses his various clients, all of whom work on the same street, with a precise sense of what constitutes a good photograph. He “directs” his clients into old- fashioned poses with a deft series of gestures: a Pakistani daughter stands between her visiting mother and father, a Kurdish son with his parents, a Surinamese travel agent sits alone. For van der Keuken, these photographs are “dream images,” more revealing of illusions and role-playing than reality. To Sang Fotostudio is not only a reflexive meditation on what an image is but also a complex portrait of a colorful, diverse neighborhood.Read More »

  • Johan van der Keuken – De Weg naar het Zuiden AKA The Way South (1981)

    1981-1990DocumentaryJohan van der KeukenNetherlands

    Quote:
    The coronation of Queen Beatrix on the eve of May Day in 1980 provides a salient point of departure for Johan van der Keuken’s The Way South, a cultural interrogation into the intertwined sociopolitical landscape of immigration, dislocation, underprivilege, and class division. Continuing on the prevailing theme of economic disparity between the continental north and south (in such essay films as Diary, The White Castle, and the The New Ice Age), van der Keuken encounters his first destination within a short distance from his home in Amsterdam, where a unused office building on Kinker Street has been converted to a communal squat by activists (who see their action as a pragmatic solution to the affordable housing shortage by making use of existing real estate that would otherwise remain unoccupied).Read More »

  • Arthur Maria Rabenalt – Am Abend nach der Oper AKA In the Evening After the Opera (1945)

    1941-1950Arthur Maria RabenaltDramaGermanyRomance

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    Quote:
    This totally forgotten film is adapted from a story by Franz Nabl who also provided the basis for Der verzauberte Tag. The story is about a rich murderer (Siegfried Breuer) who killed his wife out of jealousy nd tries to start a new life. He meets a young woman (Gusti Huber) and marries her without telling her the secret directly. She feels there’s something wrong and things get complicated when a dubious individual not only gets the legal papers which prove the husband has been a convict, but also falls in love with the young woman.
    The film not only boasts an intelligent script and great performances, but is very well shot and directed. The lighting is often elaborate, intertwining with the sumptuous set design, while an inquisitive camera slides through the rooms. This one is a must see and should be a strong incentive for German users to consider buying the box.Read More »

  • Gabriel Mascaro – Boi Neon AKA Neon Bull (2015)

    2011-2020BrazilDramaGabriel Mascaro

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    Quote:
    We tend to view sex as a private, forbidden theater that’s detached from the remainder of life, rather than the origin of our life that courses through other acts. Films reflect this sentiment, of course. In most cinema, sex scenes scan as movies onto themselves, cordoned off from the rest of the narratives, though Neon Bull offers a confident refutation to this literal-minded squeamishness. Everything in this film is sensual, understood to be a subsumed sex act, with actual sex serving as a contextualizing catharsis.Read More »

  • Stephen Poliakoff & Charles Sturridge – Runners (1983)

    1981-1990DramaStephen Poliakoff and Charles SturridgeTVUnited Kingdom

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    RUNNERS (1983)
    Produced in 1983, it was originally headed for a cinema release but apparently that never happened and it ended up being shown as a TV movie only.

    In Stephen Poliakoff’s first film script, Tom Lindsay (James Fox) searches for his 13-year-old daughter, Rachel (Kate Hardie), two years after she ran away from their Midlands home. After an anonymous tip-off, he spots her, but the reunion is not what he has expected or hoped for….Read More »

  • Hsiao-Hsien Hou – Xi meng ren sheng AKA The Puppetmaster (1993)

    1991-2000ArthouseDramaHsiao-hsien HouTaiwan

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    In the first half of this century, young Li Tienlu joines a travelling puppet theatre and subsequently makes a career as one of Taiwan’s leading puppeteers. During World War II the Japanese rulers of Taiwan use the traditional Chinese puppet theatre for their war propaganda. Only after the war street theatres start playing agaiN.
    Read More »

  • Maurice Tourneur – La Main du Diable aka Carnival of Sinners (1943)

    1941-1950FantasyFranceHorrorMaurice Tourneur

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    A man arrives at an isolated mountain inn clutching a small box. The man is panic-struck when, during a sudden blackout, the box disappears. To the assembled guests at the inn he tells his tragic story. The man, Roland Brissot, was once a penniless artist who, one day, bought a talisman from the owner of a restaurant for one franc. The talisman, a severed hand in a box, immediately transformed Brissot’s life and he became a hugely successful artist. Then, one day, he receives a visit from a small man in a suit who tells him that in buying the talisman, he has sold his soul to the Devil…Read More »

  • Louis Lumière – Débarquement du congrès de photographes à Lyon (1895)

    1891-1900FranceLouis LumièreShort FilmSilent

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    Débarquement du congrès de photographes à Lyon

    Maths Jesperson on IMDb wrote:
    Members of the French Photographic Society arrive from a riverboat to their congress venue in Neuville-sur-Saône on a summer day. They go ashore across a wooden landing stage. Among the many men in straw hats are also a few women in long skirts. Some of the men lift their hats toward the photographer when passing. Many of them are carrying their own cameras.Read More »

  • Eddy Saller – Liebe durch die Autotür (1973)

    Eddy Saller1971-1980EroticaExploitationGermany

    IMDB:
    Austrian sex comedy about the head of the Meier Automobile company who’s trying to sell his new talking sex cars to horny customers to have sex in them. He also has a sex robot modeled after his niece that helps customers test the cars.Read More »

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