1981-1990

Quote:
Between Broadway act, classical music and operetta – cinema never came that close to the good old mixtape!

In MY WIFE IN FIVE, Schlingensief composes tracks and takes to a shimmering cinematic music piece. The playlist changes constantly between the styles, as if this record had a jump – Irving Berlin’s This Is The Army, Mr. Jones, an Ave Maria Variation and Jacques Offenbach’s world-famous Infernal Galop can be heard. Equally to the music the pictures also have scratches.

The music film MY WIFE IN FIVE was created during a sound seminar by Christoph Schlingensief with students of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach. It already contains all forms of cinematic means and alienation, which he later used in his theatre and opera productions.Read More »

Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was a Renaissance man talented in many mediums, from photography and film to writing, music, and painting. He may be best known for directing the movie Shaft (1971) and creating moving works of documentary photojournalism with social justice themes. In many ways, Parks was an artist ahead of his times. His first film, The Learning Tree (1969, based on his autobiographical novel), was the first major motion picture with a Black director. In the 1980s, he made a film for PBS called Solomon Northup’s Odyssey based on the 1853 slave narrative that later inspired the movie 12 Years a Slave (2013). Parks also co-founded Essence magazine, published more than a dozen books, composed music for a ballet about Martin Luther King Jr., and received the Library of Congress’ “Living Legend” award.Read More »

Quote:
A man is murdered on a bus for trying to stop a pickpocket; no one lifts a finger to help him. He returns as a ghost and questions the empathy of the onlookers.

There are three spaces in this film. One of them is reality–like the incident on the bus. Another is the space of history, stretching back centuries to the matriarchal society of Banpo Village, outside Xi’an. You see the Mother, playing the drum. And there’s also the space of the imaginary–what the characters are thinking. In fact, it’s the space of the human soul.Read More »

Scatterbrained Polly gets a job as a secretary in Gabrielle’s art gallery. Polly aspires to be a professional photographer, and idolizes Gabrielle for her artistic ability. When Gabrielle rekindles an old romantic relationship with the younger painter Mary, Polly becomes jealous, and discovers Gabrielle is not who she claims to be.Read More »

Trance dances and out of body projection. In front of the camera, Parvaneh Navaï becomes a mediator who enters in contact with and immerses into the energies of Nature, while her own energy radiates and echos in the forest (“selva”). The camera amplifies and expands her presence, transforming the forest into an imaginary space. The camera becomes a painter’s brush.Read More »

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What is this piece of SOV madness? A not entirely convincing special effects how-to video? A fake documentary on a zombie/mutant sleazefest set in the year 2002? Who knows!Read More »

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Wagner is a giant, unwieldy beast. Eight hours devoted to the German composer, from the age of 35 to his death. Its sheer length allows the screen to play house to his politics, his person and his loves all within the frame of his music. Yet is enacts a precarious balance between the epic and the personal, between reverence and irreverence and between high art and high camp. Indeed, at its centre is not Wagner, nor Richard Burton who portrays the composer, but director Tony Palmer who grapples with the material throughout, sometimes succeeding and sometimes falling flat on his face.Read More »

Over 16 hours, in February, 1987, a man confronts jealously and rage as a love affair falters. Photojournalist Mel Hurley returns home to San Francisco on the eve of his birthday, expecting his lover, Carmen, to meet him at the airport and tell him if she will be exclusively his. She’s not there, she wants more time. Almost 20 years ago, he’d photographed civil war in Biafra, wanting to tell a story that would save people. He now equates that war with his personal struggle: can his photographs save this relationship? He goes to Carmen to talk to her; first he acts the fool, then they seem to connect. But, can he control his jealousy and not force things with her?Read More »

Synopsis:
Ah-Ching and his friends have just finished school in their island fishing village, and now spend most of their time drinking and fighting. Three of them decide to go to the port city of Kaohsiung to look for work. They find an apartment through relatives, and Ah-Ching is attracted to the girlfriend of a neighbor. There they face the harsh realities of the big city.Read More »