2001-2010

From IMDB:
The film follows Nishi, a loser who has a crush on his childhood girlfriend. After an encounter with the Japanese mafia, the film follows Nishi as he journeys to heaven and back, and ends up trapped in an even more unlikely place. Nishi (and some friends) attempt to break out of their trap, and discover what it truly means to be alive along the way. This is a mind-bending trip that uses some of the most innovative animation ever created. Written by animenewsnetwork.com

This award-winning film is a journey of self-discovery based on Japan’s cult underground comic “Mind Game” by Robin Nishi. The story follows Nishi himself through the life experiences that directly inspired the semi-autobiographical “Mind Game” comic. As a college-age loser addicted to porn and aspiring to write seedy adult comics, Nishi aspires to overcome his addiction to perversion in a tale that is lighthearted yet painful and touching. What starts off as an innocent meeting between old friends quickly turns into a psychedelic extravaganza, filled with violence, sex, love, redemption, and the infinite possibilities of the human mind. Director Masaaki Yuasa rejoices in experimental animation techniques, filling the screen with virtuoso wackiness, mixing in rough lines and storyboards, then inserting photographic touches. Written by Anonymous “Read More »

A filmmaker arrives at a crossroads in his life and his art when he learns his mother may be dying in this drama with comedic overtones from director Darezhan Omirbaev. Amir Kobessov (Djamshed Usmonov) is a well-respected filmmaker from Kazakhstan who, both professionally and personally, is suffering from a crisis of confidence. Amir is beginning to wonder if audiences are still interested in his work, and he has a recurring nightmare in which his latest premiere is scotched in favor of a low-budget chop-socky epic. At home, Amir and his wife are not getting along, and both are struggling to keep their marriage afloat. When Amir receives word that his mother is seriously ill, he hops in his car and sets out to visit her in the small village where he was born; along the way, Amir finds himself examining his past as he tries to come to terms with an uncertain future. Jol was screened as part of the Un Certain Regard series at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare: 38 Fully-Dramatized Plays by William Shakespeare (Author), Eileen Atkins (Narrator), Joseph Fiennes (Narrator), Sir John Gielgud (Narrator), Emily Woof (Narrator)

The Complete Shakespeare for the 21st Century . This release is of major importance: for the first time all of Shakespeare’s plays are available on CD in a single set, produced by a single creative team with an extraordinary cast, with the utmost attention to detail to guarantee a listening experience that’s accessible and enjoyable.

Arkangel Productions brings together the best of academic and entertainment industry expertise. Tom Treadwell, a university professor who specialized in Elizabethan drama, and Bill Shepherd from the world of film and TV production, worked with Clive Brill, a former BBC director/producer, to make their vision a reality. Their goal was, simply, to produce Shakespeare for the 21st Century , the definitive, ultimate audio Shakespeare. This is it – they have achieved their goal.

The creative team designed a sophisticated layering of sound and music to provide a complete audio environment. Music was composed by Dominique Le Gendre, whose award-winning talents matched the art of the performers. All the plays were recorded at one of London?s leading studios. The Sound House.Read More »

A film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Syndromes and a Century, the fifth feature from Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, is a spellbinding Buddhist meditation on the mysteries of love and attraction, the workings of memory, and the ways in which happiness is triggered. Mesmerisingly beautiful to look at, it is also laced with wonderful absurd humour.

Commissioned by Vienna’s New Crowned Hope festival in 2006, the film established Weerasethakul as one of the most exciting talents in world cinema today.

Dubbed ‘a hospital comedy of a somewhat metaphysical bent’, Syndromes and a Century is inspired by the Weerasethakul’s memories of his parents, both doctors, and of growing up in a hospital environment. The two central characters interact with a bizarre array of professional colleagues and patients with their various strange maladies, including an elderly haematologist who hides her whisky supplies in a prosthetic limb, a Buddhist monk suffering from bad dreams about chickens, and a young monk who once dreamed of being a DJ and now forms an intense bond with a singing dentist, whom he believes to be the reincarnation of his dead brother.Read More »

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1957. A remote village in Erzincan province, Eastern Turkey. The quest of four villagers to travel to the moon is documented with the use of found black-and-white photos and the aid of a local narrator. A wide range of established Turkish intellectuals offer their views of the events that took place in 1957. And the film curiously becomes an in-depth study of contemporary Turkish culture.Read More »

In the French countryside, Céleste loves a postman who leaves her just before she realizes she is pregnant by him. For nine months, the solitary woman tries to hide her pregnancy, awaiting her boyfriend’s return rather than the coming of the baby… (IMDb)Read More »

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Mamay draws on traditional Ukranian and Tatar folktales for its Romeo and Juliet-like love story and parable about chivalry and the struggle for freedom. Hundreds of years ago, in the wild steppes of Crimea that form an uneasy border between East and West, Europe and Asia, nomad and farmer, the proud Cossack Mamay falls in love with the Tatar beauty Omai. The title, like the storyline, holds a variety of different meanings taken from different cultures. In Turkic languages, it means “no one,” but it was also the name of a famous Mongol conqueror, the great grandson of Ghengis-Khan. In Persian legends, mamay literally means “the spirit of the steppes”.Read More »

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A young girl hospitalized with a coma manages to have a relationship with an enigmatic girl

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Asia, an 18 year-old girl, is in the hospital in comatose state. Her mother and her boyfriend, Nathaniel, take care of her. Little by little we’ll see the events that led Asia to the hospital, the relationship with her mother, her girlfriends and her boyfriend, and specially with Eloïse, an enigmatic girl who introduce her in a new world of feelings. With her, Asia will revive a painful episode from her past, a one her mother will not allow to see the light. Finally, Asia will face everybody to be happy in her relationship with Eloïse.Read More »