• Gustaf Edgren – Valborgsmassoafton AKA Walpurgis Night (1935)

    1931-1940DramaGustaf EdgrenSweden

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    Synopsis:

    ‘Lena Bergstrom works in an office and is unhappily in love with her boss, Johan Borg. She decides to quit. Borg’s wife won’t have any children, and when she becomes pregnant she has an illegal abortion. For some reason, Lena’s father believes that it is Lena who has had an abortion.’
    – Mattias Thuresson (IMDb)Read More »

  • Jean-Pierre Limosin – Abbas Kiarostami – Verités et songes (1994)

    1991-2000Abbas KiarostamiArthouseDocumentaryFranceJean-Pierre Limosin

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    Description: This documentary by French director Jean-Pierre Limosin is the first Spanish edition of the renowned “Cinéma, de notre temps” series. In this episode, Abbas Kiarostami talks about his life and work. Summarising his approach to filmaking, Kiarostami said:

    “A filmmaker has to be conscious about his responsibility. I always wish to remind the audience that they are watching a film. You see, it is very dangerous to make the audience more emotionally engaged than they need to be. In the darkness of the cinema, people are so innocent. It makes them feel that everything is closer and stronger. That is why we should not make them even more emotional: People need to think when they watch films, not to be robbed of their reason … I make half movies. The rest is up to the audience to create for themselves.”Read More »

  • Cecil B. DeMille – The Cheat (1915)

    1911-1920Cecil B. DeMilleClassicsSilentUSA

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    Description: One of the early De Mille’s melodramas: love triangle, fruvolous wife, demonic Japanese tempter… But besides all that melodramatic rubbish it’s one of the most innovative films of the era. De Mille actively experimented with lighting, cutting, and framing to extend narrative technique. “The Cheat” featured probably the first use of so called “psychological editing: cutting not between two simultaneous events but to show the drift of a character’s thoughts. A must see.Read More »

  • Yôji Yamada – Otôto AKA About Her Brother (2010)

    2001-2010AsianDramaJapanYôji Yamada

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    Quote:
    Ginko (Yoshinaga Sayuri) seems to be living the good life: She’s the respectable owner of a neighborhood drug store in Tokyo, and her daughter Kaharu (Aoi Yu) is about to get married to a doctor. However, Koharu’s wedding day also brings homes Ginko’s younger brother Tetsuro (Tsurube Shofukutei), a failed actor and a hard drinker who shows up causing trouble. Having covered for him all her life, Ginko is ready to disown her burdensome younger brother, but some things are easier said than done…Read More »

  • Melvin Frank & Norman Panama – Above and Beyond (1952)

    1951-1960ActionDramaHiroshima at 75Melvin Frank and Norman PanamaUSA

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    Plot:
    The story of Colonel Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, the bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Although unaware of the full potential of this new weapon, he knows that it is capable of doing tremendously more damage than any other weapon used before, and that the death toll resulting from it will be enormous. He is reluctant to be the person who will end so many lives, but if using it may bring an end to the war, then not doing so may result in even more lives being lost in continued ground assaults as the fighting goes on. At the same time, the intense secrecy surrounding this mission leaves him with no one he can express his thoughts and doubts to, not even his wife. As time goes on, the pressure upon him only increase. Written by Jean-Marc RocherRead More »

  • Paolo Taviani & Vittorio Taviani – Kaos (1984)

    1981-1990CultDramaItalyPaolo Taviani and Vittorio Taviani

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    THIS VERSION IS COMPLETE (3h 09′) AND INCLUDES EPISODE ‘JAR’.

    The film consists of four stories plus epilogue, set in 19th-century Sicily. THE OTHER SON – A mother spends her life waiting for news from her two sons (emigrated to America) while ignoring her third, because he is the reincarnation of the bandit who raped her. MOON SICKNESS – a newly-wed peasant girl discovers that her husband goes mad every full moon. She arranges for a male friend to protect her, but they end up in bed together just as the moon emerges from behind a cloud. THE JAR – a rich landowner hires a master craftsman to repair a giant olive jar, but the craftsman gets trapped inside. REQUIEM – villagers band together in an attempt to force their landlord to let them bury their dead. CONVERSATIONS WITH MOTHER – the writer Luigi Pirandello talks with his aged mother about a story he always wanted to write, but which he never managed to capture in words.Read More »

  • Merzak Allouache – Harragas AKA Burn (2009)

    2001-2010African CinemaAlgeriaArthouseDramaMerzak Allouache

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    Description from IMDB:
    “Set in the northern Algerian port city of Mostaganem. The title refers to the hordes of refugees, the ‘Harragas’, who smuggle themselves out of the country via any means possible. Here we meet one such group, Rachid, Nasser and Imene who pay a smuggler, Hassan, to take them to Spain in his rickety boat. Along with a group of African and Arab migrants, they are risking all they have to cross the stormy Straits.”Read More »

  • Rupert and Ulrike Pöschl – Vimbuza Chilopa (1991)

    1991-2000DocumentaryGermanyRupert and Ulrike Pösch

    “Shows different healing ceremonies among the Tumbuka of Malawi, who attribute illness (vimbuza) to spirit possession. Documents nightlong exorcism rituals of singing, clapping, and drumming during a full moon, culminating in an animal sacrifice (chilopa) at dawn. Portrays the interaction of patients, healers, and village community, and includes an interview with a patient”Read More »

  • Andres Veiel – Wer wenn nicht wir AKA If Not Us, Who? (2011)

    2011-2020Andres VeielDramaGermany

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    West Germany in the early 1960s. The country is quiet – for the time being. Bernward Vesper takes up his studies in Tübingen where he is attending Walter Jens’ seminar on rhetoric. Bernward wants to be a writer and spends his nights bashing the keys of a typewriter. At the same time he is keen to defend his father, the poet Will Vesper who was celebrated by the Nazis as a proponent of their ‘Blood and Soil’ ideology. The land where Bernward lives is being suffocated by its past. The war has only been over for fifteen years, old Nazis are back in positions of power, and nobody is prepared to talk about war crimes; the Republic is standing to attention. One day Bernward meets Gudrun Ensslin and her friend Dörte. Before long, the three friends are living together in a ménage à trois. But their three-way relation- ship doesn’t last long. It soon transpires that Gudrun and Bernward are twin souls.Read More »

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