Gainsbourg’s second film. Booed when screened out of competition in Cannes 1983, the film was a commercial and critical failure. It’s a fascinating mess of a film, apparently plagued by troubles during the on location shoot in Africa and it shows.
The film tells the story of Timar, a man who arrives in Gabon and falls in love with Adele. He is astonished at the conviction of an African for a murder which, in fact, had been committed by Adele.Read More »
“Mother, come and see how beautiful Damascus is!”, little Omar cries out to his mother, a young woman drained by mourning. The widely acclaimed, partially autobiographical, Dreams of the City marks the turn towards auteur Syrian cinema, resurrecting the memories of childhood of the working poor. A young widow and her two sons are forced to move from their native Quneytra to Damascus, where her father forces them to fend for themselves. Against the backdrop of successive military coups that punctuated the turbulent 1950s in Syria, Adib, the eldest of the boys comes of age in the vast and overwhelming urban magic of Damascus. The image of mosques, faces and the greenery of Damascus swirl by as Adib witnesses a dizzying and violent day in the city. At last, the wounded child gazes at the full moon; the city shatters against it.Read More »
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In a remote Norwegian mountain-area in the thirties, two 12 year old girls Siss and Unn meets. They are friends, but for Unn it is more serious, she admits to have secret and indecent fantasies about her girlfriend.Read More »
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In this film, director Margarethe Von Trotta presents an inspiring and impressionistic portrait of the European socialist leader (1870 – 1919) who spent much time in prison as a result of her unpopular political views. In a performance which won her the Best Actress nod at the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, Barbara Sukowa reveals Rosa’s multifaceted personality which encompassed a love of nature, a sensitivity to suffering, an unflagging hatred of militarism, and a yearning for peace. After viewing this screen biography, many will no doubt agree with Helen Deutsch’s evaluation of Rosa Luxemburg: “She was too great to be considered ‘only a woman,’ even by her enemies.”Read More »
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The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing Koker Trilogy takes a simple premise—a boy searches for the home of his classmate, whose school notebook he has accidentally taken—and transforms it into a miraculous child’s-eye adventure of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns, aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes both a revealing portrait of rural Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Sensitive and profound, Where Is the Friend’s House? is shot through with all the beauty, tension, and wonder a single day can contain.Read More »
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An unschooled young man, one of the countless victims of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, is labouring in the countryside when he is suddenly assigned to teach in a near-by village school. Gradually, he finds the confidence to ditch the Maoist textbook and encourage the barely literate kids to write about their own lives and feelings. At the same time, through a series of dream-like meetings with a young cowherd, he begins to sense the possibilities of a life beyond the parameters of traditional education.Read More »
Chain Letters is Rappaport’s most deliciously lush and Byzantine work, It poses a mystery, but while most mysteries want us to dive down and excavate secrets, Rappaport insists that we ice skate the fractured, opaque surfaces. Strange puzzles, symmetries, and coincidences abound. Doppelgangers and mirror-image anti-types lurk around every corner. But you would have to be paranoid to try to connect the dots. Or would you? Could there be a key that unlocks the mysteries of life? Or is that the real mystery? Can you break the chains of code? One character in the film believes all of life is a plot orchestrated by a vast government bureaucracy, but Rappaport tells us that the bureaucracy of the imagination puts that of the Pentagon to shame. The real plots are in our brains–the plots that form the haunted graveyard of Western civilization.”Read More »
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The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child.Read More »
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The First Eden: The Mediterranean World and Man is a BBC documentary series written and presented by David Attenborough, first transmitted in the United Kingdom from 8 March 1987.
It comprises four programmes, each of 55 minutes’ duration, which describe man’s relationship with the natural habitats of the Mediterranean, and is a glorious portrait of the landscape, wildlife and plants of the Mediterranean. From the earliest human settlements to the cities of today, from the forests of the North African shore and the Middle East to Southern Europe, this series tells the dramatic story of man and nature at work.Read More »