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Guy Maddin’s dizzily delirious 1992 film, Careful, has been called a pro-repression fable, a masterpiece of deadpan comic timing, a period piece evoking a time and place that never existed, and a Ricola ad gone horribly, horribly wrong. Utterly unique and yet evocative of myriad influences, Careful is a truly bizarre concoction created from the plundered relics of cinematic history and the dark attics of dreams.Read More »
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Interviews with a procurer and with nineteen boys and young men who are prostitutes in Prague. The youths range in age from 14 to 19. They hustle at the central train station and at clubs. Most of their clients are foreign tourists, many are German. The youths talk about why they hustle, their first trick, prices, dangers, what they know about AIDS, their fears (disease and loneliness), and how they imagine their futures. The film’s title, its liturgical score, much of it elegiac, and shots of the city’s statues of angels underline the vulnerability and callow lack of sophistication of the young men.Read More »
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Cheryl is young, Black, and lesbian, working in Philadelphia with her best friend Tamara and consumed by a film project: to make a video about her search for a Black actress from Philly who appeared in films in the 30s and was known as the Watermelon Woman. Following various leads, Cheryl discovers the Watermelon Woman’s stage name and real name and surmises that the actress had a long affair with Martha Page, a White woman and one of Hollywood’s few female directors. As she’s discovering these things, Cheryl becomes involved with Diana, who’s also White. The affair strains Cheryl’s friendship with Tamara. More discoveries bring Cheryl (and us, her audience) to new realizations.Read More »
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When Simone nods off at the wheel, her car goes out of control. She escapes serious physical injury, but her life changes direction nevertheless. She cancels a planned trip to Italy, quits her modeling job, and calls her friend Philippe with the suggestion that they have a baby together. To gain time, he agrees but only under the condition that they do it in the desert. The two leave Montreal for Utah where something unexpected awaits Philippe.Read More »
A man between daydreaming and nightmaring, between the call of life and the call of death; his night in mid-water, apnea, perfored by a succession of visions…
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“Like a Dream That Vanishes” continues Sternberg’s work in film both thematically and formally: the ephemerality of life echoed in the temporal nature of film, as the stuff of life echoed on the energy, life-force in rhythmic light pulses. (Your life is like a candle burning.) Imageless emulsion is inter-cut with brief shots of natural elements and mise-en-scene of the stages of human life: a little boy runs and falls; teens hang out together at night smoking; sun shines through tree branches; men pace, waiting; flashes of lightning; an elderly man speaks philosophically about miracles.Read More »
A British war film released in 1997. It is directed by Michael Winterbottom. The screenplay is by Frank Cottrell Boyce and is based on the book Natasha’s Story by Michael Nicholson.Read More »
Percy Nilegaard collects Swedish single men and embarks on a bus trip to Tallinn with a so-called “highly-experienced driver”.Read More »
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‘Exterminating Angel’
‘Parts of Last Supper resemble an educational film with directions for its use. It deals with the impossibility of depicting something. Is it about the impossibility of depicting something? What is real? What is staged? What can be staged by coincidence? And which reality does a video camera record?
‘Guests arrive at a vacant lot in New York, which is surrounded by rundown apartment buildings. The host is a writer, and he intends to celebrate the publication of his latest book with his friends and acquaintances. A buffet has been laid out. Waiting for the writer. Waiting for Godot. He fails to show up. This level of the film is constructed in the same way as a theatrical work. The dialogues seem holographic: almost every quotable phrase reflects the meaning of the entire statement.Read More »