1970s

Synopsis
Madame Rosa, a former prostitute, lives in a top floor apartment in a mixed race district of Paris. Although her health is failing, she manages to look after the abandoned children of prostitutes, including a rebellious young Arab boy named Momo. An Auschwitz survivor, Madame Rosa imagines that the Nazis are still around and instructs Momo to protect her from them. Momo faithfully repays his guardian’s kindness by raising money to support her in her dying days, but he is curious to find out about his own origins…Read More »

IMDB:
A man named Clint enters a solar-powered van called Vandora into a competition called Freakout.Read More »

A mockumentary-style adaptation of the gothic 1764 novel of the same name, which includes Terry Gilliam-like animations throughout.Read More »

Animated drawings inspired by Leonardo da Vinci are intercut with seemingly unrelated (but in fact strangely similar) live-action scenes.Read More »

Lewis Carroll’s poem is read and followed by a free-form animated depiction of images and toys from childhood, repeatedly overturned by a live cat.Read More »

The age-old story of Don Juan, played by giant puppets.Read More »

Tamara and Sasha were separated during the war. Now (1957) Sasha is visiting Moscow for five days and by chance recognizes the house where Tamara used to live. She is still living there with her nephew Slava.Read More »

Quote:
Jane Arden’s The Other Side of the Underneath is a seriously disturbing film. It is also an uncharacteristically bold one. I think that in a lot of ways it is quite similar to Bernardo Bertollucci’s Partner (1968), a film about a young revolutionary, played by Pierre Clementi, whose life changes dramatically when a double appears and foils his plan to commit suicide. In the opening scene of The Other Side, a schizophrenic woman (Sheila Allen, The Legend of Spider Forest) is pulled out of a lake and placed in an asylum.

The film is based on director Arden’s “A New Communion for Freaks, Prophets and Witches”, a play she staged with the Holocaust women’s theatre troupe. It is comprised of a number of different episodes, each exploring a specific theme – female exploitation, voyeurism, sexual deprivation, etc. The Other Side is also a reflection of its creator’s brush with madness.

The key concept behind The Other Side is intriguing. The film argues that madness is part of a cycle that leads to sanity. It also stresses that this complex process is often misunderstood by those who have never experienced madness. Cultural and societal taboos are cited amongst the main reasons for its existence.Read More »

From allmovie.com
What makes an athlete compete? How can he be made to endure the gruelling training most sports require? In this image-rich combination documentary and poetic drama, participants in sports including foot-racing, wrestling, speed-skating, swimming and gymnastics are seen in their daily lives and in all stages of training and competition. Their regimens are contrasted with the efforts of ordinary people to train some life into their limbs as they exercise to lose weight, or, as aging people, in order to stay active. In one episode, a marathon runner competing on a hot summer day in Philadelphia literally runs himself to death, and in a later dramatic re-enactment, medieval warriors hold a competitive joust. As one image piles upon another in this unique film, answers to questions about competition begin to suggest themselves.Read More »