The world sometimes seems divided into two camps: those who recall their teenage years as having been an exhilarating dream, and those who remember them as having been an infernal, nightmarish hell. So it might do to describe Passe ton bac d’abord… [Graduate First… / Pass Your Bac First…] as Maurice Pialat’s “The Best Years of Our Lives”, while bearing in mind all that such a description might suggest: an unsparing portrait of the era when the words ‘sixteen candles’ still might have first conjured the image of flames.Read More »
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Maurice Pialat – Passe ton bac d’abord… aka Graduate first (1979)
1971-1980DramaFranceMaurice Pialat -
Paul Morrison – Solomon and Gaenor AKA Solomon and Gaenor (1999)
1991-2000DramaPaul MorrisonRomanceUnited KingdomA young Jew in 1911 Wales tries to make his living by selling fabrics door to door, but to do so he must hide his nationality. On one of his sales he meets and falls in love with a demure young woman with a strong-willed father and a Jew-hating brother. The two fall in love and she becomes pregnant, but only then does she learn of his ethnic background. When anti-Jewish riots break out, the two are forced to flee and become separated.Read More »
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Peter Whitehead – The Fall (1969)
1961-1970DocumentaryExperimentalPeter WhiteheadUnited KingdomQuote:
Considered by Whitehead to be his most important film, The Fall is an extraordinary piece of filmmaking, an extremely personal statement on violence, revolution and the turbulence within late sixties America. Filmed entirely in and around New York between October 1967 and June 1968, it features Robert Kennedy, The Bread and Puppet Theater, Paul Auster (fresh-faced as a Columbia student), Tom Hayden, Mark Rudd, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Arthur Miller, Robert Lowell, Robert Rauschenberg and The Deconstructivists. Richard Roud, co-director of the New York Film Festival wrote of the film, “…an attempt to come to grips with today, both in terms of its content as well as of its form.”Read More » -
Kenneth Anger – Eaux d’artifice (1953)
1951-1960ArthouseKenneth AngerQueer Cinema(s)Short FilmUSAQuote:
A woman dressed elegantly walks purposely through the water gardens at the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, as the music of Vivaldi’s “Winter” movement of “The Four Seasons” plays. Heavy red filters give a blue cast to the light; water plays across stone, and fountains send it into the air. No words are spoken. Baroque statuary and the sensuous flow of water are back lit. Anger calls it “water games.”Read More » -
Tex Avery – Tortoise Beats Hare (1941)
1941-1950AnimationShort FilmTex AveryUSA -
Peter Mullan – Neds (2010)
2001-2010DramaPeter MullanUnited KingdomQuote:
Encompassed by violent street gangs, neglectful parents, bullying teachers and a dearth of positive role models, a studious but emotionally abandoned kid turns thug.Read More » -
Tod Browning – The Unholy Three (1925)
1921-1930CrimeSilentTod BrowningUSALon Chaney — the Man of a Thousand Faces — used his makeup skills, astonishing physicality and profound empathy to create Quasimodo, the Phantom of the Opera and more of the Silent Era’s greatest horror roles. In this hypnotic mix of creepiness and crime, he plays a ventriloquist who dons a granny disguise to team with a strongman and a little person in a bizarre robbery scheme that ends in murder. The film marks an even more fateful alliance than that of the Unholy Three: the collaboration between Chaney and director Tod Browning, who would helm seven more Chaney movies before making Sound Era horror history with Dracula and Freaks.Read More »
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Victor Halperin – Torture Ship (1939)
1931-1940ClassicsHorrorUSAVictor HalperinA mad scientist performs experiments on “the criminal mind” on captured criminals on board his private ship.Read More »
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Franco Castellano & Giuseppe Moccia – Il bisbetico domato AKA The Taming of the Scoundrel (1980)
1971-1980ComedyFranco CastellanoGiuseppe MocciaItalyRomanceA grouchy farmer, known around his small Italian town as being wonderful to his employees, but actively driving everyone else away, is in for a surprise when a beautiful girl from the city, ends up on his stoop after her car breaks down in the rain.Read More »