1980s

This genre-bending sci-fi documentary from pioneering filmmaker Menelik Shabazz spans four hundred years to tell the story of the African liberation movement. Chronicling the tribulations and triumphs of people of African descent in and out of Africa, with a special focus on the struggles of the last century, TIME AND JUDGEMENT features extensive footage of movements in the Caribbean, Africa, America, and Europe and offers critical political analysis of leaders such as Maurice Bishop of Grenada; Walter Rodney of Guyana; Jesse Jackson, Kwame Ture (a.k.a. Stokley Carmichael), and Louis Farrakhan of the United States; Samora Machel of Mozambique; Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana; Haile Selassie of Ethiopia; Bob Marley and Marcus Garvey of Jamaica; and others. Through a blending of theater, poetry, music, and painting, the film establishes a connection between biblical prophecy and the times we are living in, leading to a final confrontation between the forces of greed and love.Read More »

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Gorky Park, in both the original novel by Martin Cruz Smith and the movie adaptation scripted by the legendary Dennis Potter (Pennies from Heaven and The Singing Detective), introduced one of the most intriguing fictional detectives of the last half century: Chief Investigator Arkady Renko of the Moscow police force in the former Soviet Union. Like all great detectives, Renko is committed to truth and justice, but he has to pursue them in a system that owes its very existence to secrecy, lies and concealment. This fundamental conflict runs through all of Renko’s cases, along with a conflict-ridden family history, including a famous general of a father who disapproved of his son’s choice to pursue a career in law enforcement.Read More »

Based on the true story of a band of gypsies in occupied Poland during World War II and their struggle againt the Nazi invaders. Half a million gypsies died as they fled in a vain attempt to escape. The film follows the story of Dymitr, a Polish gypsy violinist, as he tries to lead his family and friends to safety in Hungary. A tragic and moving film with a wonderful authentic soundtrack of Gypsy music.Read More »

A young boy is locked into his apartment when his mother goes out and must care for his baby brother and cope with various domestic catastrophes while his grandmother and a neighbor try to locate his mother or the key to the apartment.Read More »

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Kato (Ittoku Kishibe) is a small time TV producer. He has a wife Masako (Naoko Otani), and a young son Taro. Kato also has a friend Yamazaki (Akira Emoto) who he knew since college. Yamazaki has a girl friend Riko (Eri Ishida) who lives with her younger sister Yuko (Hitomi Takahashi) who’s an actress. Yamazaki is a lyric writer/womanizer and he starts to have an affair with Masako, but he’s still going out with Riko. Riko really isn’t too enamored with Yamazaki or to any man as for that matter. She has some deep rooted distrust for men in general. One day, Katoh comes home when Masako and Yamazaki is having an affair. Masako is in a skimpy negligee and claims that Yamazaki “just happened to drop by in the morning after getting drunk”. Read More »

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Two of Hong Kong’s most adored screen goddesses lend their girlish charm to Last Romance, re-released 29 years after it became a rare commercial hit in the career of art-house director Yonfan.

While its fashion and social setting are somewhat dated, the 1988 film still packs a punch with its deeply poignant tale of friendship and love that is repeatedly derailed by materialistic greed and lamentable life decisions.Read More »

Raúl Ruiz’s baroque mix of revolutionary politics, pop culture and semiotics is loosely based on the play La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream) by Pedro Calderón de la Barca. In this 17th-century classic, a young prince learns that life is but a dream from which we wake when we die, and that dreams may be as real as life.

Ruiz’s Prince is a Chilean revolutionary in hiding who spends his time in a run-down movie theatre watching old Flash Gordon serials while trying to remember a secret code he once memorized using Life is a Dream as a mnemonic device.Read More »

The story of Takeha, a free-spirited genius poet who lived through Taisho Romanticism, and the women who gave themselves over to his ambitions.Read More »

ASSA is set in Crimea during the winter in the mid eighties. A young musician (Bananan) falls for mobster’s (Krymov) young mistress (Alika). The parallel story line involves an 18th century assassination plot.Read More »