1991-2000

Quote:
LUSH AND GOTHIC, RARELY HAS EROTICA IN FILM BEEN SO STUNNINGLY PRESENTED.

Night is falling. A frightened Schoolgirl makes her way along the deserted cobbled street, glancing fearfully around her. She is being pursued, but by whom–or what? Swept away, she awakens in an eerie, candlelit mansion. Her captors, the mysterious Ladies of the Night. Ageless and deadly, they examine their newest plaything. Teasing, tormenting, seducing, they toy with their young victim. As her alarm subsides, she submits to their dark, haunting beauty more and more eagerly. Led to the underground Torture Chamber, flogged, paddled, and caned, she is driven to the brink of absolute surrender. With the approach of dawn, her torture intensifies, and the Vampires at last taste her Virgin blood.Read More »

Quote:
Koji Wakamatsu, who in the past has directed such pungently titled exploitation flicks as Go Go Be a Virgin a Second Time and Violated Women in White, spins this biopic about jazz saxophonist Kaoru Abe (Ko Machida) and his wife, noted writer Izumi Suzuki (Reona Hirota). A sort of Sid and Nancy for the free-jazz set, the film opens with Suzuki dialing a wrong number and getting Abe. Instead of hanging up, he asks her out on a date and soon the two are shacked up and living together. Sex, drugs and Ornette Coleman feature prominently in the early phase of their relationship, and soon they realize that they are in fact soulmates. Abe is a romantic artist as well as a self-destructive, self-absorbed manchild prone to angry tirades and epileptic seizures. In turn, Izumi is first presented as a bubble-headed hippie chick who goes through men like tissues, but as her relationship with Abe deepens into marriage and evidently motherhood, Izumi reveals a steel will and pragmatism, refusing to sacrifice herself to Abe’s muse. Their tempestuous relationship grows increasingly destructive. ~ Jonathan Crow, RoviRead More »

Description: – ”The 40 Labor [the manufacturer firm] as a faithful conservative reaches back – his generation only – to the tradition looking like the lost one. To the twentyfold years’ avantgarde, the ones of sixty filmlanguage-his narration revolution, to the seventy ones’ experimentation. And to the postmodern one which recalling was kept always, for which all this fits shakily under the world’s big umbrella, ( everything else – and the contrary of everything – too).
Buharov brothers strong and effective pictures are dreamed onto the linen, their work lasts caught if we understand nothing from him. We do not recognise their world’s rules, we feel it though these rules his strength.” – Báron GyörgyRead More »

Plot:
Based on the best selling autobiography by Irish expat Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes follows the experiences of young Frankie and his family as they try against all odds to escape the poverty endemic in the slums of pre-war Limerick. The film opens with the family in Brooklyn, but following the death of one of Frankie’s siblings, they return home, only to find the situation there even worse. Prejudice against Frankie’s Northern Irish father makes his search for employment in the Republic difficult despite his having fought for the IRA, and when he does find money, he spends the money on drink.Read More »

Yasuo is a gangster just released from jail. Believing his boss double-crossed him, enraged Yasuo is on his way to find the boss. But before setting out for the dangerous trip, Yasuo asks Kenji to take care of his mentally challenged sister, Yuri, and a mysterious black bag.Read More »

A convicted rapist, Ikuo is released from prison and goes in pursuit of the woman he raped, Mieko. So obsessed is he with revenge he see’s her in every woman he meets. After carrying out vicious attacks on a prostitute and a young girl he finally comes face to face with her. Mieko tells him she wants to escape from Tomimori. To redeem himself in her eyes Ikuo takes her plea to the extreme resulting in inextricable tragedy for them all. The film is set in Japan’s notorious ‘soaplands’ – areas where young women offer bathing and massage to men, as a way round the laws prohibiting prostitution.Read More »

Quote:
“A rarity-packed treat for opera and silent-film buffs!”
– Variety

In this mesmerizing collage of silent Italian melodrama, found-footage filmmaker Peter Delpeut (Lyrical Nitrate) affectionately captures the spirit of the World War One-era cinema diva. In all-but-lost gems such as La donna nuda (1914), and Tigre reale (1916), superstars such as Lyda Borelli and Pina Menichelli portrayed heroines teetering dangerously between defiant indulgence in sexual passion and hysterical remorse at their own cruelties. Delpeut’s inventive celebration of Black Romanticism is both striking and heartbreaking in its composition —a beautifully woven narrative of tempted fate and self-torment, elegantly guided by Loek Dikker’s original score. Zeitgeist Films is proud to present Delpeut’s stunningly experimental work in all its heaving bosomed, luridly tinted glory.Read More »

In this short film on the life and work of the 12th century saint-poet, Mahadevi Akka, her radical poems, written with the female body as a metaphor, have been composed and picturised in contemporary musical language. Mahadevi, framed as Akka – elder sister, while leaving the domestic arena in search of God also abondoned modesty and clothing. The film explores the meaning of this denial through the work of contemporary artists and writers and testimonies of ordinary folk who nurtured her image through centuries in their folklore and oral literature. A celebration of rebellion, feminity and legacy down nine hundred years. Read More »

Synopsis:
Makhmalbaf puts an advertisement in the papers calling for an open casting for his next movie. However when hundreds of people show up, he decides to make a movie about the casting and the screen tests of the would-be actors.

Review:
A seminal film for Makhmalbaf (it laid the foundations for Moment of Innocence) and a key film for Iran’s new cinema. In 1994, to celebrate the medium’s upcoming centenary, Makhmalbaf placed an ad for aspiring movie actors in a newspaper. Five thousand people of all ages showed up (this opens with scenes of the riot) and the resulting film is a highly selective compilation of episodes from the screen tests. It packs a lot into 70 minutes. It’s a spot-sample of Iranian society in 1994, noting the rise of assertive young women. There’s a wry perspective on Khomeini’s revolution (note the man who trades on his prison friendship with Makhmalbaf to ask favours for his sons). There are reflections on cinephilia, from the idiots who think they look like Hollywood stars or want to show off their macho gunplay to the would-be actor who pretends to be blind and claims to be able to ‘feel’ the films he sits through. And there’s Makhmalbaf deconstructing the film-making process: acting the directorial bully, then watching others (women!) emulate his bullying. Read More »