1971-1980

Synopsis:
Cinecitta, the huge movie studio outside Rome, is 50 years old and Fellini is interviewed by a Japanese TV crew about the films he has made there over the years as he begins production on his latest film. A young actor portrays Fellini arriving at Cinecitta the first time by trolley to interview a star. Marcello Mastroianni dressed as Mandrake the Magician floats by a window and Fellini followed by TV crew takes him to Anita Ekberg’s villa where the Trevi fountain scene from Dolce vita, La (1960) is shown on a sheet that appears and disappears as if by magic.Read More »

First of all, You have to give points for pulling off using humouristic elements as brilliantly as this, to describe something as dreadful as war. There aren’t many movies that have achieved that without feeling constrained, or more or less morally repulsive. Kubrick and Coppola were masters of that section, and Veli-Matti Saikkonen doesn’t come far behind with his interpretation of Veijo Meri’s classic novel.
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Three guys are living in a Dagestan aul, and all three are in love with the blue-eyed Serminaz. According to a mountaineers’ tradition, a young man seeking the hand and the heart of a beloved girl has to make her a present that she would remember for the rest of her life. The friends set out in search of the special gift…Read More »

Impulse (1977)
An early experimental abstract animation, made by drawing directly on to 16mm filmRead More »

The history of the Armenian nation from a Marxist point of view.
Illustrated by Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”.

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Artavazd Pelechian’s Seasons of the Year (1975), a film-essay about the contradiction
and the harmony between man and nature, was the the 2nd and the last collaboration
with Vartanov, who had directed Autumn Pastoral (1971) from Peleshian’s screenplay.
In the Seasons of the Year (1975), for the first time, Artavazd Pelechian did not use any
archival footage likely due to the exquisite cinematography by Vartanov. Peleshian’s
Seasons of the Year (1975) is one of the 3 most important documentary films made in
Armenia, along with Sergei Parajanov’s Hakop Hovnatanian (1967) and Vartanov’s
Paradjanov: The Last Spring (1992).Read More »

Quote:
The second Biblical epic to be turned into a musical by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyricist Tim Rice, this box-office disappointment recounts the last week in the life of Jesus Christ in rock-opera format and from the surprising point of view of Christ’s betrayer, Judas Iscariot. Carl Anderson stars as Judas, who has begun to believe that Jesus (Ted Neeley) has sold out and started buying into the mythology that’s quickly springing up around him. Particularly disturbing to Judas is the relationship between Jesus and his friend Mary Magdalene (Yvonne Elliman), a prostitute. When Jesus throws a temper tantrum at the moneylenders in a temple, Judas determines to work with the Pharisees who want to put Jesus on trial as a false prophet. Following his success with the adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof (1971), director Norman Jewison experimented with a hippie-influenced sensibility on Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). Among such touches are depictions of the cast arriving via bus to mount the show, modern high-tech weaponry in the hands of the ancient Romans, and on-location filming in Israel.
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“Unlike the landscape painters and photographers of the nineteenth century, I have avoided the objective view point implicit in panoramic vistas or depictions of homogeneous pictorial space. I have instead concentrated on ‘close up’ detail and the more transient aspects of the landscape, using the flickering, luminous characteristics of the film and video mediums, and their respective technologies, to suggest both the beauty and fragility of the natural world.”Read More »

Quote:
An ex-’60s radical now working as a private eye is hired by an old flame to investigate a political smear campaign. The case becomes more dangerous as it unfolds.Read More »

A fight broke out in Mishimishimabowei-teri on the second day of Chagnon and Asch’s stay in this village in 1971. The conflict developed between the villagers of Mishimishimabowei-teri and their visitors from another village. The visitors had formerly been part of Mishimishimabowei-teri, and many still had ties with members of that village. Their friends in Mishimishimabowei-teri had invited them to return, but other factions were not pleased with this, reflecting a persistent tension in this large village of over 250 people. The visitors refused to work in their hosts’ gardens, yet they demanded to be fed. One visiting man beat a woman who refused to give him plantains from her garden. She ran screaming and crying back to the village, where her sister comforted her while her brother, her husband, and his relatives attempted to settle the dispute, first with clubs and then with axes and machetes.Read More »