2001-2010

  • Zeki Demirkubuz – Bekleme odasi aka The Waiting Room (2004)

    Zeki Demirkubuz2001-2010ArthouseDramaTurkey
    Bekleme Odasi (2003)
    Bekleme Odasi (2003)

    Synopsis:
    Zeki Demirkubuz plays the lead character Ahmet who wants to make a film about Dostoyevsky’s ‘Crime and Punishment’. He falls into a deep depression, loses interest in the film and life, pushes those who love him away and cannot complete the film.Read More »

  • Florent Emilio Siri – L’ennemi intime AKA Intimate Enemies (2007)

    2001-2010DramaFlorent Emilio SiriFranceWar
    L'ennemi intime (2007)
    L’ennemi intime (2007)

    Review from The New York Times, published October 2, 2009
    Mike Hale wrote:
    “Intimate Enemies” is a movie you’ve seen before, when it was set on the Apache reservation or in the Vietnamese jungle. This time the naïve lieutenant, the jaded sergeant, the suicidal mission with no purpose — all the components of the restless-natives combat movie — are applied to the war in Algeria in the late 1950s.Read More »

  • Jorgo Papavassiliou – Held der Gladiatoren (2003)

    2001-2010ActionAdventureGermanyJorgo Papavassiliou
    Held der Gladiatoren (2003)
    Held der Gladiatoren (2003)

    After almost the whole family decimated by soldiers of the Roman Empire, the noble Germanus is captured as a slave. Humiliated and tortured by the mighty of Rome, he is obliged to endure the most terrible trials. In the bloody combat that wages as a gladiator in the Roman arenas, Germanus ends up losing his only brother, who dies in the hands of the cruel lakes. But Germanus will not give up and now will have to use all his spirit of struggle and leadership to command the masses against oppression towards freedom.Read More »

  • Babette Mangolte & Marina Abramovic – Seven Easy Pieces (2007)

    Marina Abramovic2001-2010Babette MangolteExperimentalPerformanceUSA
    Seven Easy Pieces (2007)
    Seven Easy Pieces (2007)

    About the performing body and how it affects viscerally the people who confronts it, looks at it and participates in the transcendental experience that is its primary affect. The ceremonial and meditative are the common responses to the weeklong series of performances that took place in November 2005 in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. From an art event to a social phenomenon, the seven performances became the talk of the town because it created among the visitors a sense of sublimation like prayer. The film attempts to reveal the mechanisms of this transcendental experience by just showing the performer’s body living the events inscribed in each pieces with details that outline the body fragility, versatility, tenacity and unlimited endurance.
    —Babette MangolteRead More »

  • Andrew Davies & André Schäfer – Rock Hudson: Dark and Handsome Stranger (2010)

    Andrew Davies2001-2010André SchäferDocumentaryGermany
    Rock Hudson Dark and Handsome Stranger (2010)
    Rock Hudson Dark and Handsome Stranger (2010)

    Twenty five years after the death of Rock Hudson, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, biographers and movie historians discuss his career, his personal life and his death, all especially in relation to his closeted homosexuality. Born Roy Fitzgerald, Hudson treated who was known as “Rock Hudson” as being a studio creation that was somewhat outside himself. However, he sometimes was still “Rock Hudson: movie star” to those who knew him. Publicly, he had to maintain the façade of that creation, the public who saw in him a handsome, rugged, masculine yet likable and safe leading man and movie star. That façade included a short two-year marriage of convenience to Phyllis Gates. His movie career on the most part also supported that façade, especially when there was a foil of a more effeminate or nebbish male character playing against him. Read More »

  • Krzysztof Zanussi – Rewizyta AKA Revisited (2009)

    Krzysztof Zanussi2001-2010DramaPoland
    Rewizyta (2009)
    Rewizyta (2009)

    Quote:
    “Rewizyta” is a film about the further fate of the protagonists of Krzysztof Zanussi’s films from the 1970s: “Family Life” (1970), “Camouflage” (1976) and “The Constant Factor” (1980). What happened to them? Where are they? How did they survive the decades that separate us from those times? The film takes the form of an interview conducted in the present day by a would-be suicide, the protagonist of “And A Warm Heart,” who, on the recommendation of a therapist, investigates whether human life can be successful. The interview scenes are juxtaposed with film excerpts. Years later, the same actors appear before the camera and answer the man’s questions.Read More »

  • Gianfranco Rosi – Below Sea Level (2008)

    2001-2010DocumentaryGianfranco RosiUSA
    Below Sea Level (2008)
    Below Sea Level (2008)

    During a five year period an Italian filmmaker documents the world of down-on-their-luck individuals who live in a Californian desert trying to get by one day at a time. None of them has more than a vehicle, a dog and some clothes.Read More »

  • Duki Dror – The Journey of Vaan Nguyen (2005)

    Duki Dror2001-2010DocumentaryIsrael
    The Journey of Vaan Nguyen (2005)
    The Journey of Vaan Nguyen (2005)

    Synopsis
    Hoiami Nguyen never imagined that he will end up so far from his home village of Bong Son in central Vietnam. Political circumstances and the roulette of life have washed him to the shores of Israel. The penniless Vietnamese refugee became a father of 5 Hebrew speaking Israeli daughters. His daughter – Vaan, describes her parents’ ordeal using a razor sharp language in her blog. She feels trapped in circles of identity which will never meet. Caught between her wild and stormy Israeli spirit and the expectations to be modest and obedient Vietnamese at home, there is unbridgeable abyss. When her father returns to his family in Vietnam, Van finds herself absorbed into his tragic story – a cruel tale of loss and survival. Hoimai’s dream of return sends Vaan to look for a brighter future in the new-old country. She joins him in trying to reclaim the lands of the family, in the remote village at the heart of the Vietnamese jungle..Read More »

  • Umit Unal – Gölgesizler AKA The Shadowless (2009)

    Umit Unal2001-2010DramaFantasyTurkey
    Gölgesizler (2009)
    Gölgesizler (2009)

    A barber working in Istanbul longs to be ‘both here and far, far away’. And one day, without warning, he takes himself off and disappears abruptly into the great far away. The barber settles in a far-flung village, and as chance would have it the one-time local barber, Jingle Nuri, vanished from the place years ago. The village is in the hands of the mukhtar, the elected local chief. So the new barber rents his shop and opens the doors for business. The village is not, however, the innocent village. The mukhtar finds himself dealing with one mysterious disappearance after another. Güvercin, the prettiest girl in the village, is now missing without trace. The mukhtar and his only armed man, the village guard, set about questioning everyone in the village. Read More »

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