1941-1950

Summary from IMDb:
The story centres around a border security team in 1935 Korea. Upon receiving new recruits they hold a welcome party including a restaurant owner and his daughter. The border’s commander has a wife (Hara Setsuko) who helps deliver a neighbour’s baby. One day a border guard is killed by a Chinese bandit who is hiding in the area. The dead man’s sister comes to visit and is given help to further her studies. The film was shot in Korea featuring many Korean actors and crew.Read More »

The only film by the visionary dancer and choreographer Uday Shankar is a utopian dream of cultural renewal and a celebration of Indian dance in all its variety. Unfolding as an epic film within a film, Kalpana tells the story of a dancer (the director himself) who is determined to open a cultural center and breathe new life into India’s traditional artistic forms. Meanwhile, the visible adoration between him and his lead dancer arouses the jealousy of his enterprising companion. A riot of ecstatic imagery—including swirling surrealist dance spectacles—is interwoven with anticolonial, anticapitalist commentary, making for a radical, proto-Bollywood work that is one of the most influential films in Indian cinema.Read More »

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Anastacio, a football fan supporting the Sporting Club, meets the Baratas while on vacation with his family. They make friends and when Anastacio, his wife and two kids decide to travel from Lisbon to Porto to attend the Invicta/Sporting soccer game, The Baratas invite them in their home. What they do not know is that Anastacio is not a nouveau riche like them and when Juju, Anastacio’s daughter falls in love with Eduardo, the Baratas’son, things get complicated…Read More »

The rise and rise of the Fabulous Dorsey brothers is charted in this whimsical step down memory lane, Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey play themselves in this vehicle for their excellent music. From being raised by their father who insists on them learning music, to the split that just saw their careers rise even further.Read More »

Germany 1934: The Nazi authorities in Hamburg need an executioner to put a group of political prisoners to death, otherwise Hitler won’t visit their town. Teetjen, the butcher, facing bankruptcy, agrees to do the dirty deed.
Adapted from the novel by German-Jewish author Arnold Zweig and co-scripted by Wolfgang Staudte (director of The Murderers Are Among Us, Rotation and The Kaiser’s Lackey) this important classic was directed by a former anti-Nazi resistance fighter, Falk Harnack.
Ironically the film, which starred concentration camp survivor Erwin Geschonneck in the lead role, was withdrawn after its release because its nuanced portrait of a Nazi perpetrator was considered too sympathetic.Read More »

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The most accomplished work of America’s foremost surrealist filmmaker. This is a hypnotic, obsessive nightmare of parricide and compulsive attempts to undo the deed. The basic images – the blood, the knife, the bread voraciously attacked – shock by their atavistic simplicity. The hallucinatory effect is reinforced by the extraordinary soundtrack, an enigmatic exploration of two old English ballads, scrambled in jam session style and interwoven with experimental sound.Read More »

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One of the few examples of Polish film production of the operation of entering Warsaw by the Soviet troops (with the Polish Army units)

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This short film depicting Bolesław Bierut and Michał Rol-Żymierski visiting the troops of the 1st Polish Army was produced by the Polish Army Film StudioRead More »

Shiftless Jeeter Lester (Charley Grapewin) and his family of hillbilly stereotypes live in a rural backwater where their ancestors were once wealthy planters. Their slapstick existence is threatened by a bank’s plans to take over the land for more profitable farming; subplots involve the affairs and marriages of son Dude (William Tracy) and daughter Ellie May (Gene Tierney).Read More »

From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
The explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their aftereffects are among the most widely photographed and most thoroughly suppressed events in history. While hundreds of thousands of feet were shot by scientific, military, and medical personnel, most of this material remains secreted in official archives. Significantly, this first official record (released only on a restricted basis) is confined to structural damage, and completely omits visual evidence of human casualties. The initially routine interview with a survivor (a Jesuit priest, also described in John Hersey’s book) becomes a horrifying reliving of the event when he recounts the actual bombing.Read More »