1971-1980

In his earliest work, German director Werner Schroeter was inspired by opera, and made several short 8mm films about the prima donna Maria Callas. This film focuses on Maria Malibran, a legendary Spanish-French opera singer who died in 1836 at the age of 28. She forms the starting point for a series of stylised tableaux introducing variations on different levels, including in the form of musical phrases. The spectator is thrown into fragments of stories that take place in a non-existent country, in which the characters do not have any clear identity and are mutually interchangeable. The film, a reflection on the 19th century cult for geniuses and divas, was regarded by Schroeter, who died last year, as his most important work. It focuses on acting, including that of Magdalena Montezuma (regular Schroeter actress), Candy Darling (from the Warhol stable) and Ingrid Caven.

Werner Schroeter mixes Stravinsky, Beethoven, Brahms, Maria Callas and Janis Joplin in this delirious biography of the doomed nineteenth-century mezzo-soprano.Read More »

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Grace and Virginia are young San Diego twins who speak unlike anyone else. With little exposure to the outside world, the two girls have created a private form of communication that’s an amalgam of the distinctive English dialects they hear at home. Jean-Pierre Gorin’s polyphonic nonfiction investigation of this phenomenon looks at the family from a variety of angles, with the director taking on the role of a sort of sociological detective. It’s a delightful and absorbing study of words and faces, mass media and personal isolation, and America’s odd margins.Read More »

The small town of Vavilon hears of the recent Russian Revolution, but attempts to communize it are met with resistance from the rich people living in the town. The Red Army finally puts down the resistance.Read More »

An absolute classic English horror series here from the master Nigel Kneale.

“Animals can be cuddly, friendly, faithful… but beasts are nightmarishly different…” This was how the TV Times heralded the arrival of Beasts, Nigel Kneale’s anthology of six plays – each focusing around a particular “creature” – produced by Nicholas Palmer for ATV in 1976. The warning was to be a timely one. Over the next six weeks, those in the audience brave enough to watch were treated to some classic Kneale horrors, and a lot else besides… To those lucky enough to see it first time around, the series still remains memorable, and, thanks to these DVDs Beasts is finding a whole new audience of fans today.Read More »

In 20’s Spain, young low-class women want to be hired as nannies by rich families. To get milk, these women ask help to young worker Paco to be pregnant. Paco, whose wife is sterile, accepts and earns money that way.Read More »

Start with Psycho, then throw in some raunchy footage Hitchcock could have never gotten away with in 1960. Private Parts is an excellent black comedy/horror film by cult director Paul Bartel (The Naughty Nurse, Death Race 2000). The main actress is pretty cute… an added bonus (and she gets naked!).Read More »

DVD 1
Les disparus de Rambouillet – 53 min
That’s the first episode I Watch from this old french TV series from the seventies. I don’t remind it when I was a kid. Well it’s not charmless, but it grew very old, if I explain it in the right way. A story of mystery, with much senseless and humor, a show for the whole family, kids, parents grand parents…I am sure to see all of them, but am not sure if I’ll comment them all. This episode is about disappearing folks in Rambouillet forest, near Paris. So a special squad from the police headquarters is in charge of those missing persons. What could I add more ? One little weird thing, in line of this TV series: the director – Claude Guillemot – himself went in the twilight zone – disappeared – during seventeen years, between 70 and 87, before a comeback. Where the hell did he go during all that time. In Rambouillet forest? by IMDB user GUENOT PHILIPPERead More »

Wrongly convicted for the death of a guard during a robbery, Tininha arrives at the women’s prison and is soon the target of a dispute between Rafaela, the cruel and corrupt director, and Nadir, the leader of the inmates, who organizes a mass escape plan.Read More »

50 year old house wife Ingrid is unsuccessful in her first job after the kids have grown up. Her husband sends her to stay at a summer hotel, where she returns to spirit and goes back home only to find him in bed with a lover.Read More »