Raoul Ruiz’s rare version of Shakespeare’s “Richard III”.
Richard of Gloucester uses murder and manipulation to claim England’s throne.
“My mise-en-scène focused on the object: it’s about King Richard III and his vertiginous power. More than on a character, I was focusing on a mechanism: the play of power — with a bias, this time approaching caricature — I wanted to develop all of the parodic forms surrounding the representation of power. The result is somewhat akin to Ubu roi.Read More »
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After his business partner Robert Shriving is killed by an exploding computer, Duncan Free (Ian Ogilvy) sets out to uncover a network of powerful individuals who are using technology to collect personal data for their own ends.Read More »
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A sensitivity to sounds coming from the activities of an unwelcome guest in the close quarters of an apartment is only one important component in this atmospheric, avant-garde drollery by Chantal Akerman. When the apartment owner comes home, her guest is settled in and at first, the slightly reclusive host decides simply to eat her breakfast in her room instead of having to face morning conversation with her guest. Sounds of the toilet flushing, the bath water running and splashing, footsteps pacing, and furniture moving invade the hostess’ refuge in her bedroom like the frontrunners of an all-out offensive. She locks herself up for 28 days, life’s detritus accumulating around her, just so she does not have to go out to face the nemesis that lurks beyond her door.Read More »
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The Eustachian intervention within his Rosières would perhaps not be strictly that of a filmmaker behind the camera, but that of a collagist-editor who plays with the film material and temporality to make a meaning spring forth from it. And if there is an erasure in the director, Eustache makes a conscious gesture of a programmer affirming, at the time of making the second Rosières, that he prefers that his two documentaries be viewed in reverse chronology: the first last, and the last first. Read More »
Roots is a television miniseries in the USA based on Alex Haley’s 1976 novel, entitled Roots: The Saga of an American Family; the series first aired, on ABC-TV, in 1977. Roots received 37 Emmy Award nominations and won nine. It won also a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings for the finale, which still holds a record as the third-highest-rated US television program. It was produced on a budget of $6.6 million. The series introduced LeVar Burton in the role of Kunta Kinte. (wikipedia)Read More »
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In a French village near Bordeaux, Pessac, a young lady is chosen for her virtue by the townspeople.
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This is the first version that Eustache shot. The second version will be shot 10 years after. May ’68 will have been replaced in the conversations by the unemployment and crisis…Read More »
The Count of Monte Cristo tells the dramatic story of Edmond Dantes, a young French sailor who is falsely denounced as a political traitor and unjustly imprisoned for eighteen years without trial. After a daring escape, Dantes flees to the island of Monte Cristo where he finds a colossal treasure of gold and jewels bequeathed to him by a dying inmate. Using these riches, he assumes a new identity and devises a plan to take vengeance on all those who betrayed him.Read More »
Det Danske Filminstitut wrote:
A very special TV production: In the studio, Leth reads from several of his poetry collections, while a subtitle – as in ‘Life in Denmark’ – meticulously, but double-bound, records observations and describes the process. The subtext thus seems to function as a medium for the director’s reflections as the TV film progresses. (…) Alternating with the poetry reading in the studio, the second part of the film consists of snapshots from the 1970 Tour de France stage race, including the cobblestone roads of northern France, Mont Ventoux and the cathedral sprint in Rouen, which is shown three times.’Read More »
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Almost the entire hour and three-quarters of Jean Eustache’s 1971 film “Numéro Zéro” is filled with the director’s interview of his grandmother Odette Robert on Feb. 12th of that year. Eustache includes in the film the conditions of its production—the director himself is seated at the table with her, pours her some whiskey, speaks with the camera operator, manipulates the clapboard at the head and tail of the reels, and even takes a phone call from a foreign firm that wants to distribute one of his early short films. Odette Robert had come from her home in the provinces to live with Eustache in Paris and help care for his son Boris (who is seen, at the beginning of the film, helping guide her through the streets of Paris—she had recently had eye operations and had to wear dark lenses, including on-camera).Read More »