Slow Moves is a bluesy lyrical romance of two ugly-ducklings who meet on the Golden Gate Bridge and after a brief and awkward courtship, live together with the usual problems of money and work, take flight to an illusory freedom on the road, and dances inexorably to a drab doom. At once funny, grubby, beautiful, lyrical, tragic and sad. (Jon Jost)Read More »
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In 1798, Napoleon lands his army in Egypt, defeats the Mameluke warlords (the remnants of Ottoman rule), and goes on to Cairo. Three brothers, who are Egyptian patriots, chafe under Mameluke rule and reject the prospect of French domination. Bakr, the eldest, is a hothead, quick to advocate armed rebellion; Ali is more philosophical and poetic; Yehia is young and impressionable. One of Napoleon’s generals, the one-legged intellectual Caffarelli, wants to make Frenchmen out of Ali, Yehia, and other Egyptians, opening a bakery where their father works, becoming a tutor, and declaring his love for them. Is tragedy the only resolution of these conflicting loyalties?Read More »
Franca and her husband Antonio decide to sell a yellow rug, which was a gift of Franca’s stepfather. One day, while Antonio is out, a strange man rings, saying he wishes to buy the rug. But the man’s visit becomes a nightmare. He kidnaps Franca and says he killed his wife on that same yellow rug. Then Franca kills the man. But is that really all that has happened? And who was that strange man?Read More »
Yulian Kalisher ( 1935-2007) was a relative late-bloomer in the field of puppet animation. Coming from the field of puppet theatre, where he had worked in Tasjkent, Uzbekistan and in Moscow. He was hired by the Soviet TV organisation Ecran to direct puppet-plays for TV in 1971. In 1974 he was teamed up with Youri Trofimov and co-directed 3 episodes of The Wizard of Emerald City ( see DVD 17) In 1977 he realized his first solo-direction: a feature film puppet animation after a puppet play. From then on his work always stood out for its originality and inventiveness. “A New Year’s Adventure” on DVD 20 is a good example of his work between 1977 and 1982.
Russian animation uses the words Puppets and flat Puppets (in English called Cut-out) for stop-motion techniques, and cell animation for drawn animation. Read More »
Here is a nice little student film directed by Richard Stanley (Hardware, Dust Devil). A future love story set amidst the decline of society and the rise of devastating mech wars. Stanley’s prototype for Hardware. The story and setting are consistent with Hardware for the first half, then diverge a bit more into the future wars behind the torrid love affairs and relationships of the story. Explains how Max’s (Moses’) robotic hand came to be. No killer robots, but there is a cameo of a Robotech action figure!Read More »
Here is a nice little Super-8 student film directed by and starring Richard Stanley (Hardware, Dust Devil). “Rites of Passage” feels like the result of what might happen if Derek Jarman attempted to adapt Kubrick’s 2001 into a short.
As a primordial man (Richard Stanley) wanders in the plains and forests of the Dark Continent, seemingly at the dawn of the human race, a narrator reminisces on past lives, all of which he remembers. These outspoken thoughts seem to be with the primordial man as he travels towards an unknown destination; the two co-exist simultaneously despite the gap of thousands of years. Their lives are intervowen – as they’ve always been…Read More »
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‘Stanley, a pianist, lives in a cheap boarding-house near the sea and never talks about himself. But the past catches up with him when Mr. Goldberg and Mr. McCann arrive – clearly, they don’t wish him well.’
– IMDbRead More »
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The wife of a barbaric crime boss engages in a secretive romance with a gentle bookseller between meals at her husband’s restaurant. Food, colour coding, sex, murder, torture and cannibalism are the exotic fare in this beautifully filmed but brutally uncompromising modern fable which has been interpreted as an allegory for Thatcherism.Read More »
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A woman’s terribly dull life is upended by a one-night stand pregnancy, causing her to seek retribution.Read More »