1981-1990

The film in a metaphorical form demonstrates a model of self-devouring in a closed spiritual system, it explores intermediate state between a human and a non-human: a subhuman deprived of a divine spark.
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The hero of the film is a collective image of a criminal consciousness in which we all exist. Since childhood, we live one way or another in a criminal environment.
But this criminal consciousness, criminal law, or rather, criminal lawlessness, criminal thinking, criminal morality, criminal language, hierarchy of values, in fact, also criminal – all that is our film. The film is so sad because it is a film about Russia…Read More »

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Hank (Marshall) lives contentedly with his wild animals: four tiger cubs, two elephants, and 110 lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, and cheetahs. One day his family (wife and three children) arrive to visit him. The only trouble is he is not at home, but all his animals are. The visiting family is in for one shocking experience.Read More »

BeyondHollywood wrote:
Originally released back in 1986, Taiwanese drama Dark Night was based upon a novel by noted feminist writer Li Ang and was directed and scripted by Fred Tan, who previously worked as an assistant director for the legendary King Hu on the likes of Raining in the Mountain and Legend of the Mountain. Interestingly, the film was not Tan’s only literary adaptation, as in 1988 he brought Lust, Caution novelist Eileen Chang’s book Rouge of the North to the screen. Given the source material, it should come as no surprise that the film deals with themes of adultery and sexual repression, offering up a scathing depiction of the role of women in modern relationships.Read More »

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An essay on contemporary Italian poetry with the works of Dario Bellezza and Amelia Rosselli.Read More »

Marc, a troubled teenager, becomes aware of the existence of a sister he has never met. Armed with a pistol his mother found, he goes out to find his sister. After stealing from a shop, he is stopped by a policeman. Marc threatens him with his gun and demands that he helps him in his search.Read More »

The spirit, hopes, and failures of a troupe of itinerant performers in the 1950s create a poignant, humorous leitmotif in this drama by Fernando Fernan-Gomez. The story of the wandering players is told in flashbacks, as Carlos Galvan (Jose M. Sacristan) reminisces about the good times while under therapy with a psychiatrist in a senior citizens’ home. Carlos and his lover Juanita (Laura del Sol), his teenage son, his father, and a few other actors try to eke out a living by putting on shows in small towns and villages. No one has very much money, but life is lived to the hilt, and Carlos himself has some pretty tall tales.Read More »

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Routine Pleasures makes of its investigation of “men and imagination” in 1980s America “a small-scale epic,” in Gorin’s words, a remake of Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939). Gorin’s principal subject is a group of model train enthusiasts who meet weekly at the Del Mar Fairgrounds in Southern California: their miniature landscapes preserve a lost, perhaps illusory America, and their obsession curiously entwines work and childhood. Gorin weaves this subject with another: his friend and mentor Manny Farber. Farber doesn’t appear, except in photographs; but his paintings and words (and such preoccupations as Jimmy Cagney) do; and Gorin, again assuming the persona of bemused investigator, shuttles between these strands with effortless ingenuity.Read More »

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RASPAD is a hard-hitting Ukrainian film that details the horrors and aftermath of the Russian Chernobyl nuclear-reactor incident.

In April 1986, Soviet journalist Alexander Zhuralev (Sergei Shakurov) returns from assignment in Greece to his home in Kiev, only to discover, via an anonymous note, that his wife Ludmilla (Tatiana Kochesmasova) has been having an affair with his bureaucrat friend Shurik (Alexii Gorbunov). To consol himself, Alexander plans a visit with his friend Anatoli Stepanovich (Georgi Drozd), but before they can meet, a fiery explosion rips through one of the Chernobyl reactors, where Anatoli works, and he is one of the first victims. However, no announcements are made by the government, and life continues normally.Read More »

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Set in a rugged little Algerian mountain village, in a moslem culture, where male and female society works under a strongly patriarchal controlling influence. Insensitive and brutish Sidi has three wives, one-near suicide, and an adoptive son whom he beats and intends to force into a farcical marriage. Simple-minded Kaddour cannot find a bride and is eventually married to a mannequin dummy…Read More »