1981-1990

Plot Synopsis from ALLMOViE:

Though he made allusions to his own life in all of his films, Fanny and Alexander was the first overtly autobiographical film by Ingmar Bergman. Taking his time throughout (188 minutes to be exact), Bergman recreates several episodes from his youth, using as conduits the fictional Ekdahl family. Alexander, the director’s alter ego, is first seen at age 10 at a joyous and informal Christmas gathering of relatives and servants. Fanny is Alexander’s sister; both suffer an emotional shakedown when their recently-widowed mother (Ewa Froling) marries a cold and distant minister. Stripped of their creature comforts and relaxed family atmosphere, Fanny and Alexander suddenly find their childhood unendurable. The kids’ grandmother (Gunn Wallgren) “kidnaps” Fanny and Alexander for the purpose of showering them with the first kindness and affection that they’ve had since their father’s death. This “purge” of the darker elements of Fanny and Alexander’s existence is accomplished at the unintentional (but applaudable) cost of the hated stepfather’s life. Ingmar Bergman insisted that Fanny and Alexander, originally a multipart television series pared down to feature-film length, represented his final film, though within a year after its release he was busy with several additional Swedish TV projects, and he returned to make one more theatrical release movie before his death – the 2003 Saraband. Oscars went to Fanny and Alexander for Best Foreign Film, Best Cinematography (Sven Nykvist), Best Costume Design and Best Art Direction/Set Decoration.Read More »

Shuji Terayama (December 10, 1935—May 4, 1983) was an avant-garde Japanese dramatist, writer, director, and photographer, noted for such films as Emperor Tomato Ketchup and Fruits of Passion.
In 1967, Terayama started an experimental cinema and gallery called ‘Universal Gravitation,’ which is in fact still in existence at Misawa as a resource center. The Terayama Shuji Memorial Hall, which has a large collection of his plays, novels, poetry, photography and a great number of his personal affects and relics from his theatre productions, can also be found in Misawa.
source: artandpopularcultureRead More »

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L’Amour à Mort (Love Unto Death) is one of the more difficult Resnais films of the 80s. Featuring a core of actors from La Vie Est un Roman who would also go on to make Mélo (and are still working with Resnais on his most recent films), the film has a chamber mood, an enclosed and tightly constructed meditation on two complex subjects – love and death.

Elisabeth (Sabine Azéma) and Simon (Pierre Arditi) have been together as a couple for only a few months when Simon dies. To everyone’s surprise he revives after a few minutes and appears to be quite healthy again. The couple’s relationship appears to become more intense, but Simon is unable to come to terms with his near-death experience, feeling an irresistible desire to withdraw from life. Their friends, a married couple of Protestant pastors, Judith (Fanny Ardant) and Jérôme (André Dussollier) try to rationalise how Simon and Elisabeth must feel, offering guidance and consolation through theological and philosophical discussions, but the couple are beyond the reach of human understanding or explanation, and the pervasive and persuasive music of ‘the other’, of a love beyond death, exerts an irresistible attraction.Read More »

Sébastien Grenier,a secret agent eliminates all his rivals in order to decipher who has killed some of his associates.

Sebastien Grenier (Lino Ventura), a former French spy, is working as a financial analyst in Zurich and cultivating an on-going relationship with Anna Gretz (Krystyna Janda), a German teaching at the university. Then his peaceful existence starts to disintegrate when he is recruited by a top French intelligence operative (Michel Piccoli) to discover how one of their own secret agents was found out and executed in broad daylight by a gang of terrorists. Sebastien starts to work but is immediately put off by the fact that his contacts are being murdered before he can reach them. As he gets deeper and deeper into the case, he comes to realize that he is being used in an elaborate political scheme, a scheme that leads to the death of Anna and a vow to get the killers who have now ruined what is left of his life. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »

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The controversial horror film that shocked the world in 1987, when it was banned in Germany, censored in Japan and simultaneously became a huge underground hit in the US (now long out of print.)

Nekromantik tells the story of Rob (Daktari Lorenz) who works at a street-cleaning Agency, and visits roadside accidents to clean up the scene. Incidentally Rob collects the body parts and shares them with his girlfriend Betty (Beatrice M.) When Rob presents a complete corpse taken out of a swamp, their undying love reaches its peak, but soon after Betty gets a more liking towards the corpse and leaves Rob, which takes him to the sick end of his destruction.Read More »

Directors Sergei Paradzhanov and Dodo Abashidze resurrected an old Soviet Georgian folktale as the basis for their film The Legend of Suram Fortress. The fortress in question is forever under construction, and forever collapsing before the last brick can be laid. The advice of a fortuneteller is sought out; the young fellow sent out to seek this advice happens to be the son of a man who years earlier had jilted the fortuneteller. Out of pique, she tells him that he must be walled up in the fortress’ wall, else the structure will continue to tumble. So many ancient legends are based upon self-sacrifice that one would think that Legend of Suram Fortress would have nothing new to offer–and one would be quite unfair to this well-crafted film to think along those lines. Never as brilliant as the critics made it out to be, Suram Fortress is still an immensely satisfying work from a gifted filmmaking team. ~ Hal Erickson, RoviRead More »

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A moody, jaded police detective, while investigating a drug ring, falls for a mysterious woman and is drawn into a shady and dangerous scheme.Read More »

The ghost of a murdered woman possesses a dancer’s body in order to exact vengeance on her killer.

Light Industry wrote:
A rarity unearthed from Harvard’s vaults, Fred Tan’s Split of the Spirit is a macabre tale of supernatural possession, necromantic battles, and the vengeful phantom of a woman scorned. In Tan’s stylish neo-noir thriller, a renowned female choreographer becomes overtaken by the specter of a murdered woman, who forces her to enact revenge upon the men who have wronged her. After a string of gruesome slayings, the film culminates in a searing conflagration, an allegorical avant-garde dance finale, and ultimately an Orphic journey to the afterworld and back. Tan worked as an assistant director to King Hu and made only three features before his death at age thirty-five; placing the forces of ancient sorcery in contemporary Taiwan and Hong Kong, he deploys an ominous synth soundtrack and an expressive, haunting mise-en-scène to bring primeval frights into the modern world.Read More »

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When Mette and her father are left alone over the Christmas holidays to paint the new nursery the father ends up alone most of the time. The 16-year-old Mette is always off with her friends at the disco or skating, and the father does not mind until he discovers that young Jønne has taken some semi-nude photos of Mette and clearly is intending to go further in their relationship. Suddenly the father starts hanging out with Mette and her friends as they practice winter sports together – and there is hardly anything stranger, or more embarrassing, as far as Mette is concerned. It is clear that father and daughter are heading toward a change in their relationship as both have to adjust to her “growing up.” Read More »