Synopsis:
Set in 1854 in the Sicilian town of Catania, the story follows beautiful young Maria who is freed from a convent when the town is evacuated after 12 years of forced seclusion by her evil stepmother. She finds love in the form of Nino, a family friend, but eventually she must return to the convent…Read More »
Le Démon du passage (The Demon of Passage)
35 mm – 14’ – 1995
“Fictional” reconstruction of the chain of mental images that make the visions of the photographer Jean-Luc Moulène appear.Read More »
If postmodern marriage is between equals, Francesco (Alessandro Gassman) and Marta (Francesca d’Aloja) have been computer selected. He is slim, tall, charmless, cold. She is slim, tall, charmless, cold. He is irritable and insensitive to other people’s feelings. She is angry and sensitive to her own feelings. They bicker and fight and work for a design company (their own) in Rome. They fit neatly into the high-stress, workaholic, image-conscious lifestyle, in which eating and talking and loving is snatched between phone calls and client consultations.Read More »
Quote:
Mila (Serreau) lives in a leafy utopia in another neck of the galaxy but, with her part Earth ancestry, has a hankering to look the old place over. She’s dismayed to find inedible food, unbreathable air, noise and a bad idea called money. With her superior mental powers, though, she easily copes with bad tempered motorists, heartless social workers and the like, brainwashing them until they can appreciate the beauty in a lettuce leaf. The film offers acrobats, kittens, an orphan Serbian baby and an unwittingly offputting account of the Green Party line.Read More »
Wilder and Wallace are brothers and pyrokinetics. Ever since childhood they’ve been able to start fires with their minds but following a tragedy in which they accidentally killed a man, the brothers have grown up very differently. Wilder has become a regular 9-5 workaday joe but Wallace performs his feats with a traveling circus. When the circus comes to Wilder’s home town Wallace starts coming on strong to Wilder’s wife, Vida who, ironically, is a slight pyromaniac. Written by Stefan HalldorssonRead More »
“PAndroid” wrote:
I originally just got this film for it’s rarity as an online friend of mine managed to acquire a copy through a trade. When I put the VHS into the player I was presented with challenging slice of art-house genius that greatly exceeded my pretty much non existent expectations. Like the great works of lynch and jodorowsky it is a completely unstreamed celluloid capture of an artists consciousness,abandoning logic to assault the viewers senses with the directors own unique vision. This isn’t like any of other schiffs other films, which whilst highly enjoyable are ultimately extremely tacky gorefests. This is a stunning observation of a lonely mans descent into being unable to decipher relaity and fantasy. Words cannot do it justice in the slightest. It one of the most different and personal films I have ever seen, layered in gruesome yet poetic psychosexual imagery to portray the main characters(who remains nameless throughout the film)ever slipping mask of sanity. Whilst very open ended I partially see the film as a commentary on perception and how we see things. It simply defies genres and conventions, this is true art film-making. Made from real raw emotion and a daring mind it is perhaps unsurprising it has not seen an official release ever. But for anyone who likes bold underground cinema this is an absolute must see, and possibly the most underrated film of all time. A sublime,macabre masterwork of dream logic cinema.Read More »
Plot: A Tokyo Businessman with his wife and son are walking the high street when his son is kidnapped by a group of street thugs. While in pursuit of his son the father is shot by one of the thugs with a strange device. After the thugs oddly return his son, the father starts to notice odd changes with his body that occur in moments of anger. Only to be terrorized constantly by this, the father decides to locate the gang and kill them all.Read More »
Surrealist short feature about common tricks of uncle Pepin and the young Bohumil Hrabal. The harum-scarum young man pays his looney uncle a visit and his life changes at once. We can find out, where the snowmen lives in summer, what Franz Joe’s favorite food was, how to sell one half of a pair of shoes and fly in a cage.Read More »
Dave McDougall at MUBI.com
Last Monday night, MoMA played two installments from the series “Tous les garçons et les filles de leur âge…”, a series of one-hour television episodes “in which French directors were asked to contribute films based on their recollections of adolescence” (BFI). The first episode shown was Chantal Akerman’s Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 1960s in Brussels.
Akerman’s episode is an achievement of an entirely different level. It moves beyond being one of the great coming-of-age films; it is simply one of the great films. A moving, multifaceted, and magical hour, presented with honesty and subtle artistry.Read More »