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  • Jerome Hiler – Cinema Before 1300 (2023)

    2021-2030DocumentaryJerome HilerUSA
    Cinema Before 1300 (2023)
    Cinema Before 1300 (2023)

    Quote:
    In 2017 I invited Jerome Hiler to the Harvard Film Archive to present Cinema Before 1300, an illustrated lecture he had delivered on several occasions whose title and subject intrigued me. A talk on medieval stained glass, accompanied by Hiler’s own still images taken over the years, principally in those cathedrals in France and the UK that today remain among the last repositories of this now lost luminary art and craft. The event that unfolded was mesmerizing and moving, a meditation on stained glass as a popular and devotional art, and as a precursor to cinema.Read More »

  • William Berke – Girl in the Case (1944)

    William Berke1941-1950ComedyMysteryUSA
    Girl in the Case (1944)
    Girl in the Case (1944)

    William Warner is not only a crack defense lawyer, but he has an even more useful skill–he’s an expert at picking open any kind of lock, which comes in handy in his line of work. This asset gets him in trouble, however, when he finds himself being unwittingly used by Nazi spies trying to get him to open a locked chest with a secret formula they’re after.Read More »

  • Robert Frank – The Sin of Jesus (1961)

    Robert Frank1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseDramaUSA
    The Sin of Jesus (1961)
    The Sin of Jesus (1961)

    Quote:
    The Sin of Jesus was based on the story of Isaac Babel, a woman on a chicken farm who spends her days working at an egg-sorting machine. “I’m the only woman here.” She is pregnant, her husband spends his days lying in bed, and his friends encourage him to go out on the town with them. The woman talks to herself as she works, lost in the monotony of human existence. She counts the passing days in the same way she counts eggs. Even extraordinary events, such as the appearance of Jesus Christ in the barn, go under the stream of this melancholy solipsism.Read More »

  • David Mamet – State and Main (2000)

    1991-2000ComedyDavid MametDramaUSA
    State and Main (2000)
    State and Main (2000)

    A movie crew invades a small town whose residents are all too ready to give up their values for showbiz glitz.Read More »

  • Hal Hartley – The Sisters of Mercy (2004)

    Hal Hartley2001-2010DramaShort FilmUSA
    The Sisters of Mercy (2004)
    The Sisters of Mercy (2004)

    Hal Hartley reveals the tireless experimentation, curiousity and playfulness that lies behind his many feature films in his this short film, The Sisters of Mercy, starring Parker Posey and Sabrina Lloyd.Read More »

  • Charley Chase and Jefferson Moffitt – Nurse to You! (1935)

    Charley Chase1931-1940ComedyJefferson MoffittShort FilmUSA
    Nurse to You! (1935)
    Nurse to You! (1935)

    Nurse to You! is another big winner from Charley Chase’s two-reel comedy series. Directing himself towards the end of his run at Hal Roach, Chase injects a real freewheeling sense of fun into this, without losing any of the tightness and compactness of his comedy construction.Read More »

  • Deryn Warren – Black Magic Woman (1991)

    1991-2000Deryn WarrenRomanceThrillerUSA
    Black Magic Woman (1991)
    Black Magic Woman (1991)

    The owner of a suburban art gallery searches for someone to perform an exorcism after a witch casts a spell on him.Read More »

  • James Foley – At Close Range (1986)

    James Foley1981-1990CrimeDramaUSA

    Synopsis
    One of the overlooked films of the 1980s, perhaps because it is such a downbeat tale of an amoral family. Sean Penn plays a kid whose small-time criminal impulses are stoked to a new level when he falls in with his father (Christopher Walken), a vicious career criminal for whom no problem is so large that it can’t be solved by a murder. At first exhilarated by the attention from his father (and the jobs he gives him to do), he gradually catches on to just what a bad guy Dad really is. But when he tries to extricate himself, he discovers that Dad now has him squarely in his sights. Penn is terrific in a role of emotional complexity, while Walken, king of the creeps, is positively frightening as this soft-spoken but highly lethal patriarch. Read More »

  • Ulli Lommel – B.T.K. Killer (2005)

    Ulli Lommel2001-2010CrimeDramaUSA

    The B.T.K. killer harasses a news reporter with threatening letters as he ponders about the murders he committed 30 years ago.Read More »

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