1971-1980

Quote:
Yvonne Rainer’s landmark film is a meditation on ambivalence that plays with cliché and the conventions of soap opera while telling the story of a woman whose sexual dissatisfaction masks an enormous anger. (Zeitgeist FIlms)Read More »

Writer and ladies-man Yonosuke, who gives inept English lessons (using Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet), is ushered into a lonely woman’s house one rainy night. Her husband is at the front in the war with Russia and, as our hero will soon discover, she’s wearing a chastitity belt…Read More »

Plot:
In the conflict with the enemy in a already lost battle, at risk to die in vain, partisan Mitko Angelov, is leaving the battlefield. He boards on the train and goes to see his mother, who has just returned from internment. When he returned to the brigade, he was declared a deserter, disarmed and bound. Since he lost his weapon, the Commissioner sent him to patrol in action, to take a weapon from Germans. All partisans from the patrol were killed except Mitko and Vane, who was seriously wounded. Thinking that Vane is dead, Angelov returns was in the brigade. But the commander did not believe him, thinking that he had fled from the battle, and imprisons him in the basement. In the meantime, a wounded fighter Vane is showing up, and the story of the heroic struggle. But at the same time, a military court sentenced him to death for desertion.Read More »

Quote:
A quote from Bertolt Brecht ends this bitter and angry war film by Sam Peckinpah: “Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.” Peckinpah’s intense and belligerently non-commercial work, (based on the book by Willi Heinrich), is a World War II tale told from the German perspective, following a platoon of German soldiers in the Russia of 1943, when the German Wehrmacht forces had been decimated and the Germans were retreating along the Russian front. James Coburn is Steiner, a German corporal and recipient of the Iron Cross who feels that he owes his loyalty to his family and fellow soldiers and not to Hitler and the German war machine. But when a new commander, Captain Stransky (Maximillian Schell), takes over the platoon, Steiner and Stransky come into immediate conflict. Stransky is a career soldier, the complete opposite of Steiner, and a man who pledges himself heart and soul to Hitler and the war. But he envies Steiner for having been awarded an Iron Cross and deeply desires one himself. The problem is Stransky is a complete coward and recognizes that the only way he can be awarded an Iron Cross would be to get the bitter Steiner on his side.Read More »

At the turn of the twentieth century, three Australian army lieutenants are court-martialed for alleged war crimes committed while fighting in South Africa. With no time to prepare, an Australian major, appointed as defense attorney, must prove that they were just following orders and are being made into political pawns by the British imperial command. Director Bruce Beresford garnered international acclaim for this riveting drama set during a dark period in his country’s colonial history, and featuring passionate performances by Edward Woodward, Bryan Brown, and Jack Thompson; rugged cinematography by Donald McAlpine; and an Oscar-nominated script, based on true events.Read More »

A young man from north Italy named Amedeo decides to come to Rome. He has a crazy idea in his head to meet the pope.Read More »

Meiji period: Two peasants try to help a woman who is abused by police.Read More »

Originally made for German television, this film chronicles obsessions of a man who will do almost anything to avoid losing a chess game. Thomas Rosenmund (Bruno Ganz) learns how to play chess by watching his father in a friendly game with a neighbor. His competitiveness is keyed to such a high pitch that a series of close calls in matches precipitates a nervous breakdown and he swears off the game. Instead, he turns his skills to computers. When his company calls on him to be part of a team which is pitting a computer’s chess skills against the world champion of chess, he takes it personally when the computer loses. Fired by “his” humiliation, he vows to earn the right to take on the champion himself — and does.Read More »

Two families of Moroccan rug-makers are contrasted in this award-winning French-language film. The poor family makes its living by dyeing the wool used in the rugs made in the richer family’s factory. When the boss of the factory refuses to see the son of the poor family following an accident which has injured his father, the poor son breaks into the boss’s house. He is met by unsupportable abuse from the rich wife, who flogs him for dirtying her carpets.Read More »