Minoru Kawasaki (The Calamari Wrestler, Executive Koala) returns with yet another bizarre offering of Japanese film oddity.
Taisho’s father is a supermodel cat, and everybody believes that Taisho will be a supermodel as well. His family has great expectations of him, because he is the eldest son, but he can’t bear all the pressure and runs away from home.Read More »
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Beijing, 1988. On the cusp of middle-age, Chen Handong has known little but success all his life. The eldest son of a senior government bureaucrat, he heads a fast-growing trading company and plays as hard as he works. Few know that Handong’s tastes run more to boys than girls. Lan Yu is a country boy, newly arrived in Beijing to study architecture. More than most students, he is short of money and willing to try anything to earn some. He has run into Liu Zheng, who pragmatically suggests that he could prostitute himself for one night to a gay pool-hall and bar owner.Read More »
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This is a documentary with rare images of real life stories in the so-called “asentamientos” in the poor underbelly of Uruguay’s capital, Montevideo, and in its youth jails. It centers on the life of a family, and some of its teenage neighbors. Filmed at times by only one discreet camera, the documentary exposes the youth legal system and youth jails in Uruguay, as well as the daily lives of its former or future prisoners: teenage prostitutes, petty thieves, single mothers, and their miserable lives, contrasting with upper middle class neighborhoods. A former prostitute now “single” grandmother is a central character, being the mother of a few teenage criminals, a single mother who is also a prostitute, and a repeat offender who eventually dies of AIDS in jail, and whose burial we witness in the film.Read More »
Amaryllis Campos is a young, classically trained Latina ballerina, who dreams of leaving her impoverished home in Puerto Rico to pursue fame and fortune as a dancer. Amaryllis heads for New York City, where she is forced to work in a seedy strip club to make ends meet. Setting audiences afire with her erotic moves, Amaryllis quickly becomes the strip club’s hottest attraction, but must finally decide between true love and realizing her dream of becoming a star.Read More »
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Just after the death of her newly born sister, Chanda (12) learns of a rumour spreading through her small village near Johannesburg. It destroys her family and forces her mother to flee. Chanda leaves home and school in search of her mother – and the truth. Life, Above All is an emotional and universal drama about a young girl (stunningly performed by first-time-actress Khomotso Manyaka) who fights the fear and shame that have poisoned her community. The film captures the enduring strength of loyalty and a courage powered by the heart. Directed by South African filmmaker Oliver Schmitz (Mapantsula, Paris, je t-aime), it is based on the international award winning novel ‘Chanda’s Secrets’ by Allan Stratton.Read More »
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Vintage film noir gets a confidently stylish upgrade in this subtle domestic thriller, intensified by Tilda Swinton’s acclaimed performance as a mother who risks everything to protect her family. Adapted from Elisabeth Sanxay Holding’s story The Blank Wall (previously filmed as 1949’s The Reckless Moment), the film’s gripping plot commences with Margaret (Swinton), a naval officer’s wife and mother of three, disposing of the body of a sleazy club owner, who died in an accident after a confrontation with Margaret’s closeted gay son. Maternal instinct shifts into high gear when a blackmailer (Goran Visnjic) demands $50,000 to withhold incriminating evidence, and his unspoken feelings provoke an unexpectedly compassionate alliance. Compelling plot twists aside, The Deep End gains much of its impact from the quiet desperation of a family defined by its secrets and rescued by the mysterious motivations of the human heart.Read More »
This is a collection of licentious little films from last century: twelve short silent pornographic films with piano accompaniment made between 1905 and 1930 by sometimes illustrious directors who preferred to remain anonymous. True curiosities in the history of cinema, these films were originally screened in the waiting rooms of brothels.Read More »
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A deadly car crash sets off three parallel stories of women at crisis points, faltering behind the doors of the same, plain Vienna apartment block. A bored nurse with a stable, comfortable family life has a wild but almost-wordless extramarital affair with a fashion-conscious traveling salesman, who’s obsessed with sex photos. An unstable young Austrian grocery checker lies to hold on to her philandering Yugoslavian boyfriend, claiming she’s pregnant. Finally, a recent divorcée whose violent, ex-husband is a King of Denial intent on getting her back. Will the residents’ fibs and moral failures save or destroy them ? Can the women safely express their fears ?Read More »
Ten-year-old Estrella has a vivid imagination. She loves horror stories and in order to get rid of the fear that the ‘big monsters’ cause her, she makes friends with them. One day, Estrella makes a new friend, a vampire. But could it be that this friend is not merely a product of the girl’s imagination?Read More »