• Raj Kapoor – Sangam aka A Meeting of Souls (1964)

    1961-1970AsianClassicsIndiaRaj Kapoor

    Winner of 4 Filmfare Awards: Best Actress (Vyjayantimala), Best Director (Raj Kapoor), Best Editor (Raj Kapoor), Best Sound Recordist (Allaudin).

    Ganga, Jamuna, Saraswati, three sacred rivers in India, meet at Allahbad, and this meeting place is known as Sangam.

    Sunder (Raj Kapoor), Gopal (Rajendra Kumar) and Radha (Vyjayantimala) are three childhood friends.Read More »

  • Renato Castellani – Mio figlio professore AKA Professor, My Son (1946)

    1941-1950ComedyDramaItalyRenato Castellani

    Aldo Fabrizi plays a widowed school janitor with an infant son. The film depicts the joys and sorrows of father and son, as they journey through life. Maybe we could say that this is something like an Italian Goodbye, Mr. Chips; it is certainly no less affecting. Watch for author/director Mario Soldati in a small, but crucial, part as one of the professors at the school, where father and son live, study and work.Read More »

  • Larry Gottheim – Horizons (1973)

    1971-1980DocumentaryExperimentalLarry GottheimUSA

    One of the greatest if all-too-often overlooked landscape films in American cinema, Larry Gottheim’s HORIZONS displays a sensitivity to the seasons that seems more in keeping with Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” than the typical nature documentary. HORIZONS was not only Gottheim’s first feature-length work, it was also his first film to deploy rhythmic editing after several single-shot works. Working with Virgil’s four-part poem “Georgics” and Antonio Vivaldi’s concertos “The Four Seasons” as models, Gottheim arranged his painterly compositions into four distinct sections, each edited according to its own exacting pattern. The seasonal flux thus informs both the form and content of the image, with the basic elements of trees, sky, hills and the occasional crisscrossing clothesline filmed in every imaginable light. The resulting work is at once rigorous and meditative: a film that demands repeated viewings but captures the eye from the first. – Max GoldbergRead More »

  • Pierre Jolivet – Strictement personnel (1985)

    1981-1990FrancePierre JolivetThriller

    Starring the dependable Pierre Arditi with a very bad case of unshakable hangdog expression, as well as Jean Reno, Pierre Jolivet’s first movie as a director (he had also co-written “Le Dernier Combat” with Luc Besson) , “Strictement Personnel” is – in some ways – a typical paranoid French thriller, in which the main character gets reunited with his estranged family, with some not-altogether-successful dream flashes.Read More »

  • Philippe Leclerc – Les Enfants de la pluie AKA The Rain Children (2003)

    2001-2010AnimationFrancePhilippe LeclercSci-Fi

    French filmmaker Philippe Leclerc directed the animated adventure Les Enfants de la Pluie (The Rain Children), based on the book A L’image du Dragon by Serge Brussolo. The fantasy story line involves a civilization split into two factions: the war-like Pyross who worship the sun and the peaceful Hydross who are nurtured by water. French jazz violinist Didier Lockwood provides the original musical score.Read More »

  • Various – The World at War (1973)

    1971-1980DocumentaryUSAVariousWar

    Quote:
    When this epic series was first broadcast in 1973 it redefined the gold standard for television documentary; it remains the benchmark by which all factual programming must judge itself.

    Originally shown as 26 one-hour programmes, The World at War set out to tell the story of the Second World War through the testimony of key participants. The result is a unique and unrepeatable event, since many of the eyewitnesses captured on film did not have long left to live. Each hour-long programme is carefully structured to focus on a key theme or campaign, from the rise of Nazi Germany to Hitler’s downfall and the onset of the Cold War.Read More »

  • Herbert Achternbusch – Picasso in Muenchen (1997)

    1991-2000ArthouseExperimentalGermanyHerbert Achternbusch

    The painter Picasso awakes from the dead, steals one of his paintings from a psychiatrist’s and his wife’s kitchen and wanders through Munich, where he meets the psychiatrist’s patient, Takla Bash, and falls in love with her. Ignoring that she is actually his daughter he plans a phenomenal love affair including a film about a blue cow. This surreal film includes many of director/writer/star Herbert Achternbusch’s own paintings.Read More »

  • Kwon Min-pyo & Han-Sol Seo – Jong chak yeok AKA Short Vacation (2021)

    2021-2030DramaHan-Sol SeoKwon Min-pyoSouth Korea

    Four first-grade middle school students in the same class are members of a photography club. Before leaving for summer break, the teacher hands out an old-fashioned analog camera to each of them and asks them to take pictures with them as a summer assignment. The assignment topic is the “end of the world.” What does the end of the world mean? What on earth are they supposed to take pictures of? They all have different opinions on it, but as one of the girls suggests, they decide to take a subway to Sinchang Station, the last station on Seoul Metropolitan Subway Line 1. That is the end of the world for these girls. They doze off on the subway, stop for a while due to rain showers, and feel drawn to an unfamiliar world.Read More »

  • Carlos Nader – A Paixão de JL AKA JL’s Passion (2015)

    2011-2020BrazilCarlos NaderDocumentary

    In January 1990, at the age of 33, the artist José Leonilson starts registering an intimate journal in a tape recorder. His views on events that shook both Brazil, such as the resignation of former president Collor, and overseas, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, permeate his confessions. He also talks about his impressions on the various movies he used to watch. The records of this sensitive artist in tune with modern life did not intend, at first, anything more than register the harmony that existed between his life and his peculiar and intimate work. However, J.L. suffers the unexpected blow of the discovery that he himself is HIV positive. The uncertainty and urgency in his life begin to permeate his reports.Read More »

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