1981-1990

Macho Dancer is a 1988 Philippine film, directed Lino Brocka, which explores the harsh realities of a young, poor, rural gay man, who after being dumped by his American boyfriend, is forced to make a living for himself in Manila’s seamy red-light district. Based on a true story, the film frank depiction of homosexuality, prostitution, drag queens and crooked cops, porno movie-making and sexual slavery, and drugs and violence caused the Filipino government censors to order extensive edits of the film, forcing an uncensored edition to be smuggled out of the Philippines and shown to a limited number of international film festivals. This print is now part of the permanent collection at The Museum of Modern Art in New York [Images in the Dark: An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video. 1994. Raymond Murray]Read More »

Ardiente Paciencia, or El Cartero De Neruda, is a 1983 film directed by Antonio Skármeta. It was remade in 1994 as Il postino. It tells the story of Mario Jiménez, a fictional postman in Allende’s revolutionary-era Chile, who befriends the real-life poet Pablo Neruda in the years before Neruda’s death.Read More »

A young girl growing up in Bergen, Norway just after the 2nd world war, is trying to deal with the father’s adultery and mother’s deep depression, as she befriends a boy.Read More »

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Dorothee, a would-be writer and journalist, leaves Germany for the Oz of San Francisco, searching for her long-lost mother and a cure for the malady of love. Installed in the Tenderloin, she peeps in on neighbors’ bizarre sex rituals as well as does sightseeing of the more traditional kind. But encounters with male impersonator Ramona, charming Hungarian bohemian Dominique, and Susie Sexpert, barker for an all-girl strip show, lead to exploratory adventures of self-discovery and fun. When Dorothy surfaces like a dazzled tourist on the wilder shores of the city’s lesbian community, she has discovered her true sexuality and left some illusions behind. (Written by Monika Treut)Read More »

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It was the movie that stunned audiences, shocked the MPAA and marked the debut of one of the most uncompromising filmmakers in modern horror. Golden Globe winner Dylan McDermott (The Practice) stars as a post-apocalyptic scavenger who brings home a battered cyborg skull for his metal-sculptor girlfriend. But this steel scrap contains the brain of the M.A.R.K. 13, the military’s most ferocious bio-mechanical combat droid. It is cunning, cruel and can reassemble itself. Tonight, it is reborn….and no flesh shall be spared. Stacey Travis (Ghost World) co-star – along with appearances by Iggy Pop, Lemmy of Motorhead and much by Ministry and Public Image Ltd. – in the kick-ass sci-fi thriller from Richard Stanley (Dust Devil) that Fangoria calls “gritty, trippy and frightening….Hardware is one of the best horror movies you’ve never seen!”Read More »

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Werner Herzog looks at the young soldiers who make up the Miskito Indian rebel army. The Indians are an abused minority who sided with the Sandinistas in the Nicaragua civil war. However once the Sandinistas won the Indians were once more an abused minority and had to fight once more for their rights.Read More »

Matteo Scuro is a retired Sicilian bureaucrat (responsible mainly for the writing of birth certificates), a widower with five children, all of whom live on the mainland and hold responsible jobs. He decides to surprise each with a visit and finds none as he imagined. The film is a veritable travelogue across contemporary Italy, as Matteo journeys to Napoli, Roma, Firenze, Milano, and Turino to search for each of his children; he even spends one night on the streets among the homeless. Scuro returns to Sicily, visits his wife’s grave, and reports with irony that “stanno tutti bene.”Read More »

In this powerful short film, the renowned William Shakespeare play is stripped down to the bare essentials, consisting of two lengthy shots.Read More »

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Robert Cole, a film editor, is constantly breaking up with and reconciling with long-suffering girl friend Mary Harvard, who works at a bank. He is irrationally jealous and self-centered, while Mary has been too willing to let him get away with his disruptive antics. Can they learn to live with each other? Can they learn to live without each other? The movie also provides insight into film editing as Robert and co-worker Jay work on their current project, a cheesy sci-fi movie.Read More »