1971-1980

  • Tabea Blumenschein & Ulrike Ottinger – Die Betörung der blauen Matrosen AKA The Enchantment of the Blue Sailors (1975)

    Tabea Blumenschein1971-1980ExperimentalGermanyUlrike Ottinger

    Quote:
    In THE BETRUCTION OF THE BLUE SAILORS, Tabea Blumenschein “plays four different roles in changing appearances and in fantastic costumes that structure the film: a mythical figure that permeates the film on desert sand with siren song; a bird that is killed; a Hawaiian girl and a Sailors. While the siren, accompanied by Asian music, strides along the desert, sailors and birds become the victims of perverted naturalness in the form of the wild Hawaiian girl.” (Claudia Hoff) In the collage principle, areas and quotations from commercialized everyday life and the music, which ranges from noises, sacred gongs, Hawaiian music, Schuricke melodies, musette waltzes to Burmese songs and cultic Ketchak rhythms, and the language – literary texts by Apollinaire, which already use the quotation method, phrases from the world of American show business (Hollywood veteran star), lamentations of a Russian silent film mother […], come satire, the grotesque, the caricature, the clown and the doll up; and it is the deep meaning of these forms of expression, through the demonstration of the marionette-ness, the mechanization of life, through the apparent and real torpor, to let us imagine a different life. (Raoul Hausman). (From the conversation between Ulrike Ottinger/ Tabea Blumenschein and Hanne Bergius)Read More »

  • Laurence Harvey – Welcome to Arrow Beach (1974)

    1971-1980HorrorLaurence HarveyThrillerUSA

    A hippie girl wandering on a California beach is taken in by a Korean War veteran who lives in a nearby mansion with his sister. The girl soon begins to suspect that the mansion is home to some very strange goings-on….Read More »

  • Dan Graham – Performer/Audience/Mirror (1975)

    1971-1980Dan GrahamExperimentalPerformanceUSA

    Quote:
    A performer faces a seated audience. Behind the performer, covering the back wall (parallel to the frontal view of the seated audience), is a mirror reflecting the audience.Read More »

  • Melvin Van Peebles – Don’t Play Us Cheap (1972)

    1971-1980Melvin Van PeeblesMusicalUSA

    Film version of Melvin Van Peebles’ Broadway musical. A pair of devil-bats take human form and crash a Harlem house party in an attempt to break it up. But somehow, their attempts to ruin the party fail.Read More »

  • Sutton Roley – Snatched (1973)

    1971-1980CrimeSutton RoleyThrillerUSA

    The wives of three wealthy men are kidnapped and held for a $3 million ransom, but one of the men doesn’t want to pay his share.Read More »

  • Egon Günther – Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1976)

    1971-1980ClassicsDramaEgon GüntherGermany

    Rebellious young Werther is passionately, but hopelessly, in love with Lotte. Although he knows that she is married to somebody who can offer her a secure future, Werther tries to be near her. Lotte cannot decide between these two men. She eventually rejects Werther, who does not survive her decision. Based on the novel by Goethe. Director Egon Günther and set designer Helga Schütz make cameo appearances.
    —DEFA Film LibraryRead More »

  • Sohrab Shahid Saless – Tabiate bijan AKA Still Life (1974)

    1971-1980DramaIranSohrab Shahid Saless

    PLOT
    An aging rail worker, living a mononously quiet life with his wife, is asked to retire. The second of the two austere-looking, deliberately paced films Shaheed Saless made in Iran proved to be one of the turning points of Iranian cinema in the 70s.Winner of numerous prizes at the Berlin Film Festival in 1974, including the Silver Bear for Best Director, STILL LIFE examines the lot in life of an old man who guards a railroad crossing and his wife, who brings in a meager income weaving carpets. After 30 years in the same job, the man is forced into retirement by the arrival of the new guard. Finally, he is forced to a bleak epiphany of society’s indifference to his fate.Read More »

  • Gérard Blain – Le pélican aka The Pelican (1974)

    Drama1971-1980FranceGérard Blain

    Paul Boyer (Gérard Blain), a jazz pianist in Paris, has lots of free time during the day, and spends it happily with his baby boy, Marc. But money is tight, and so, at his wife’s prompting, Paul takes a chance on running counterfeit dollars to New York for a big payoff. Caught at customs, he spends nine years in an American jail and returns home to find her remarried to a wealthy man and his own paternal rights revoked. The rest of the film—directed by Blain with the harrowing calm of an intimate confession—follows Paul in his obsessive, desperate, coldly calculated effort to see his son again. Though the story is part thriller, part family melodrama, part spiritual journey, part social drama, Blain purges it of all genre artifice: the purity of his method and his sentiments suggests the fresh, primal artistry of the early silent cinema. Released in 1973. In French. — Richard BrodyRead More »

  • Ralph Nelson – A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich (1977)

    1971-1980DramaRalph NelsonUSA

    Based on the young-adult novel by Alice Childress, this heartfelt social-issue drama follows the journey of Benjie (Larry B. Scott), a troubled teen growing up in South Central Los Angeles. Traumatized by his father’s desertion and unsettled by his mother’s (Cicely Tyson) relationship with a new boyfriend (Paul Winfield), Benjie begins experimenting with drugs—leading him down a dark path of heroin addiction. Now, Benjie’s family must navigate a host of challenges as they help him to overcome his dependency and get his life back on track.Read More »

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