1971-1980

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Shot in 1972, first shown in 1975, and newly restored by the Cineteca di Bologna, Alberto Grifi and massimo Sarchielli’s ANNA is an astonishing nearly four-hour documentary about a 16-year-old homeless junkie, eight months pregnant, whom the filmmakers discovered in Rome’s Piazza Navona. Mainly shot on then-newfangled video (which at times gives the black-and-white images a ghostly translucence), it documents the interactions between the beautiful, clearly damaged, often dazed teenager and the directors, who take her in partly out of compassion and partly because she’s a fascinating subject for a film. Read More »

The conflict between the generations is a recurring theme in the cinema of Claude Sautet. Often as not, it is peripheral to the main drama, but in Un mauvais fils it is absolutely central, the lightning conductor in a raging emotional thunderstorm. The fraught relationship between a middle-aged father and his estranged son Bruno is mirrored by one of a gentler hue, that between a gay bookshop owner and his attractive employee Catherine, who is his adopted daughter in all but name. Bruno appears to have more in common with Catherine, a perfect stranger, than with his father, and so whilst one relationship withers, another flourishes.Read More »

An English girl and an Indian elephant, born on the same day, share a common destiny.

Tusk review contributed by Steve Puchalski at Shock Cinema

Even though my print of this ultra-obscure Jodorowsky pic was in French with NO subtitles, you really don’t need a translation in order to get the gist of this self-termed “fable panique.” Set in turn of the century India, Jodorowsky drops most of his crazed mystical/religious/hallucinogenic stylings in order to tell a relatively straightforward story of a little girl, Elise, and a little elephant, Tusk, both of whom are born at the same time, and how their lives interconnect over the years (yawn). It begins on a good note, with Jodorowsky intercutting an elephant and a woman, each giving birth.Read More »

Synopsis:
A rehabilitation hospital in the Italian countryside, which offers treatment for women suffering from various psychological disorders, is stalked by a mysterious cloaked killer.Read More »

When the film Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert was initially shown in 1976, many viewers found it hauntingly beautiful but deeply perplexing. Some, seeing it as a sign of Duras’ inability to separate herself from the making of India Song, even ascribed the film to a kind of postpartum depression. Since that time, the film has been placed in perspective as an inseparable component of the India cycle as a whole, although little has been written, with certain notable exceptions, on its specific relation to the other works. Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert is a purely metanarrative epilogue that culminates the progressive decomposition of spectacle as well as the dismantling of the neocolonial subject conceived as specular identity that was initiated by previous works in the India cycle.Read More »

A psychotic man, troubled by his childhood abuse, loose in New York City, kills young women and takes their scalps as his trophies. Will he find the perfect woman in a photographer, and end his killing spree?Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Two men, arty though somewhat staid, are drawn to the spirited and quixotic Rosemonde, a young working-class woman whom they meet because they’re writing a teleplay about a minor but curious event in which either her uncle was wounded while cleaning his rifle or she shot him. Pierre is a free-lance journalist hired to write the script; he’s short of time so he asks a Bohemian novelist friend, Paul, to help. Pierre wants facts and tracks down Rosemonde for interviews that lead to other explorations; Paul only wants to imagine her and needs little more than her name to do so. But he does meet her, and she entangles him, too. Did she cause the shooting? Is she venomous or innocent?’Read More »

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A Stranger rides into in the dusty mining town of Lago, where the townspeople are living in the shadow of a dark secret. After a shootout leaves the town’s hired-gun protectors dead, the town’s leaders petition the Stranger to stay and protect them from three ruthless outlaws who are soon to be released from prison. The three have their sights set on returning to Lago to wreak havoc and take care of some unfinished business. A series of events soon has the townspeople questioning whether siding with the Stranger was a wise idea as they quickly learn the price that they each must pay for his services. As the outlaws make their way back into Lago, they discover that the town is not exactly as they had left it, and waiting in the shadows is the Stranger, ready to expose the town’s secret and serve up his own brand of justice.Read More »

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Made for the American Film Institute while Eraserhead was in financial limbo. The AFI was testing two different stocks of black and white video and enlisted Frederick Elmes to test each one. Lynch asked Elmes if he could shoot something with this stock and so he and Catherine Coulson stayed up all night writing script. The result was a one shot scene with Catherine Coulson about a woman attempting to write a letter while a female nurse (played by Lynch) tends to her leg stumps. (Two versions, 5 minutes/4 minutes)Read More »