1981-1990

An emblematic film having as a guiding thread the clothes spread on the poles.Read More »

continuing with liner notes by Michel Barthelemy :
“This is probably a good time to mention Dwoskin’s use of comedy : Outside in is a film that deals with disability but is also funny and even burlesque. Of course, only the disabled can use this mode to stage themselves as disabled characters.
Bergson states not only that “a deformity thay may become comic is a deformity that a normally built person, could succesfully imitate” but also that “the impression of the comic will be produced (…) when we are shown the soul tantalised by the needs of the body : on the one hand, the moral personnality with its intelligently varied energy, and on the other, the stupidly monotonous body, perpetually obstructing everything with its machine-like obstinacy. The more paltry and uniformly repeated these claims of the body, the more striking will be the result”Read More »

From Jordi Torrent’s program notes for “Raúl Ruiz: works for and about French TV,” at Exit Art (Nov 1987):

LA PRESENCE REELLE works through four axes of plot which are intercut throughout the film:
1. Adam Shaft, an out-of-work actor who recently worked on an interactive video disk documentary about the Avignon Theatre Festival, and who is now in a studio watching the program with the help of a computer specialist. Through conversations between Shaft and the computer specialist we find out that only 10% of time-space images in the video disk have been recorded from actual footage and the rest of the disk has been created by the computer using the ‘real presence’ of living beings. At one point Shaft complains because in the video disk his images are saying things that he never said. The computer specialist explains to him that his words have been used to create an entity that thinks and talks by itself, but that will not necessarily say things that Shaft would have thought or said.Read More »

from the Women Make Movies description:
“The time is 1942, a year after Pearl Harbor; the place is National Studios, a fictitious Hollywood motion picture studio. Mignon Duprée, a Black woman studio executive who appears to be white and Ester Jeeter, an African American woman who is the singing voice for a white Hollywood star are forced to come to grips with a society that perpetuates false images as status quo. This highly-acclaimed drama by one of the leading African American women directors follows Mignon’s dilemma, Ester’s struggle and the use of cinema in wartime Hollywood: three illusions in conflict with reality.”Read More »

SYNOPSIS
The film style of Robert Bresson is the subject of this documentary tribute to the French director and screenwriter, and to his minimalist auteur films about sensitive individuals (or even animals) trying unsuccessfully to survive in a cruel world. Weg Naar Bresson is divided into several segments with specific themes, such as “camera” or “theory,” that are illustrated by film clips, and interviews with Bresson himself (a coup), and also with acclaimed directors Andrei Tarkovsky, Louis Malle, and Paul Schrader (who also wrote a book on three directors, including Bresson).

– Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »

Quote:
What constitutes a deadly sin today? Seven of the world’s best-known women directors produce their own version of celluloid sin in this omnibus film. Helke Sander (THE GERMANS AND THEIR MEN) reverses GLUTTONY with her vision of Eve forcing her apples into the hands of a reluctant Adam. Bette Gordon (VARIETY, EMPTY SUITCASES) finds GREED during a fight in the ladies’ room of a luxury hotel over a lottery ticket. Strangers reply to director Maxi Cohen’s ad in a newspaper to share their litanies in ANGER. Award-winning director, Chantal Akerman, battles to overcome her SLOTH in order to complete her film, while Valie Export (INVISIBLE ADVERSARIES) strips bare notions of the skin trade in LUST. Read More »

Quote:
Rémi Chauveau, 10 years old, lives in a divided family. He first experiences life in a severe boarding school before living with a strict and domineering nanny. As a teenager, he assists a butcher in Paris while getting into mischiefs on saturdays which sometimes lead to the prison. One day, he meets the love of his life …Read More »

Quote:
The film, depicting life in working-class Liverpool from the 1940s into the 50s, is already a modern classic.

Now that Eileen, Maisie, and Tony are adults, their childhood memories – and in particular those associated with their father – are inconsistent. While Eileen clings to happier times, her siblings remember his brutal violent nature, which has been a major influence on their growth and development. This troubled family must deal with the day-to-day alongside their past. Terence Davies creates a loving portrait with this partly autobiographical tale (shot in two sections), and it was voted one of the greatest British films by Sight & Sound.Read More »

Quote:
In ”Him and Me,” at the Film Forum, James Benning, one of our more highly regarded experimental film makers, appears to be looking back over his life, from the 1950’s to the 80’s, recalling it in terms of public events and private sorrows, landscapes, streets, music and colors.

I emphasize the word ”appears” because ”Him and Me” makes no attempt to be coherent in any conventional sense. The film is composed of dozens of sometimes startlingly beautiful fragments of images and sounds, involving people who are never identified, sometimes accompanied by off-screen voices that may take the form of first-person reminiscences or of inconclusive conversations.Read More »