This is the Andrei Tarkovsky production of the famous Pushkin/Mussorgsky opera, performed in 1990 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, conducted by Valery Gergiev.
[To avoid some confusion: Tarkovsky, who died in 1986, was the director of the opera production, not the man behind the camera for this performance. The original production was staged 1983 in London. Amazon lists both Tarkovsky and Gergiev as directors, IMDB lists Humphrey Burton.]Read More »
SUMMARY
The film recalls various periods of Greece’s history. Sfikas studies and interprets the artistic movements of his time, influenced by eighties Post-Modernism. Starting in antiquity, he passes through the Byzantine and feudal eras and ends up in capitalism, without proposing this as a final end. Following the spire of this development, Sfikas resorts to poetic allegory. His cinematic oratorio, where angels are crushed in the abyss of civilizations, is something more than the transformation of a philosophical idea into a film; it becomes the very soul of the poet who wonders about its perpetual evolution.Read More »
IMDB: Nice and sad Fairytale
I was pretty surprised to see this rare Kazach film. First of all it touches upon great Asian folk atmosphere and has wonderful music, partly composed by master of soviet electronic music Edward Artemeyev. The director shows great visionary in the film. Some parts of the film are made in colour-the rest are black and white. The story is also something new for me: a blind bagger-girl meets a steppen killer, who decides to protect her on her hard life way. They meet a lot of dangers and wise old men and stayed alive after really creepy moments. Finally they reached the girl’s motherland. Here the ways of them two separate really dramatically. One can see some gore moments in this philosophic tale.Read More »
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A City Of Sadness opens with a credit sequence-shot of total darkness as the solemn voice of Emperor Hirohito is heard over a radio broadcast announcing the unconditional surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945. The setting is then faintly illuminated by the warm glow of candles to reveal an anxious Taiwanese household that is preparing for the imminent birth of a child in the midst of a power failure. As the electricity is restored, the audible agony of the expectant mother gives way to the sound of a crying infant. The apparent metaphor is then reinforced in the subsequent intertitles that reveal that the concubine of Lin Wen-heung (Chen Sown-yung) had given birth to a son whom they name Kang-ming, meaning ‘light.’ However, as the film chronicles the lives of the Lin family during the turbulent four years between the Japanese withdrawal from Taiwan after 51 years of occupation in 1945, to the secession of Taiwan from mainland China in 1949, the hopeful and optimistic tone of the film’s introductory sequence seemingly proves untenable.Read More »
A married kleptomaniac (Sonoko) and a younger woman (Mitsuko) begin an unusual love affair which develops fast into a kinky sexual love triangle when Sonoko’s husband gets involved.Read More »
As Orlando (Magdalena Montezuma) enters the world of “freaks,” the movie develops scenes from a mythological netherworld, the Spanish Inquisition, the Middle Ages, and a few other settings to focus on unusual characters with physical or mental oddities. By the time the various vignettes that take place in these separate periods are completed, each with their own points and counterpoints, the “freaks” seem much less odd than their physically normal contemporaries. After Orlando has revealed much about the human condition through glimpses of a P.T. Barnum side-show, Siamese twins, as well as modern sexual morés, her journey with the viewer is completed. The device of Orlando, the time-traveler and liberated bisexual is based on Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando: A Biography.” The same set of actors play different roles in each of the five chronological segments. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, RoviRead More »
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Bright and imaginative in its approach to its subject, PERFECT IMAGE? exposes stereotypical images of Black women and explores women’s own ideas of self worth. Using two actresses who constantly change their personae, the film poses questions about how Black women see themselves and each other and the pitfalls that await those who internalize the search for the “perfect image”!Read More »
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A child is raised in Korea to avenge the death of his father’s first child in this decades-spanning tale of obsession and violence, the third collaboration between director Ermek Shinarbaev and writer Anatoli Kim. A study of everyday evil infused with philosophy and poetry, this haunting allegory was the first Soviet film to look at the Korean diaspora in central Asia, and a founding work of the Kazakh New Wave. Rigorous and complex, Revenge weaves luminous imagery with inventive narrative elements in an unforgettable meditation on the way trauma is passed down through generations.Read More »
“Transitions” is a film of inner life and speaks of time, reality, power. It depicts the disquieting sensations of being between – between falling asleep and being awake, between here and there, between being and non-being. These metaphysical themes are evoked by the central image of a woman in white over which layers of images and sound (voices) are superimposed.Read More »