Arthouse

Quote:
This Proustian documentary, made when Oliveira was 93 years old, explores the great Portuguese film-maker’s relationship with his home town, Oporto, the place which inspired his first film Douro, Faina Fluvial way back in 1931. Using old photographs and newsreels with dramatic reconstructions, he offers a vivid portrait of a city caught between the old and the new. When he was a child, Oporto didn’t even have proper cinemas, film shows were improvised in sheds, Oliveira (born 1908) recalls. Most of the landmarks familiar from his youth have vanished. The brothels and cafés where he and his artist friends used to while away their days are long since closed. Even the house where he grew up is in ruins. The city I remember only remains alive in my sad memory, he sadly reflects. Poignant and playful, this is one of the old master’s most accessible late films.Read More »

Japanese artist, Foujita, is Paris’ darling in the roaring twenties, loved for his delicate nudes. After leaving his 1st wife, Fernande, he meets Lucie Badoud and names her Yuki (snow in Japanese) after her exquisitely pale skin. Together with their friends Van Dongen, Kisling, Picasso, Modigliani & Kiki, they go to all the parties! On the outbreak of WWII, Foujita returns to Japan with his new Japanese wife, Kimiyo. He exhibits his war paintings that are much darker than the delicate whites of his Paris period. As the battles intensify, Foujita retreats to the country with Kimiyo and discover a Japan he never knew. Foujita returns to France years later. Here, newly naturalised, he takes on the French name Léonard and builds the chapel “Notre Dame de la Paix” in Reims, his final work.Read More »

Synopsis
The Tavianis’ adaptation of Goethe’s novel may seem strangely restrained compared to their other fables, but it’s still a work of exquisite elegance and precision. Set in Tuscany during the Napoleonic era, it charts the forces of attraction and repulsion that shape the complex relationships between a happily married baron and his wife (Anglade, Huppert), the baron’s architect friend (Bentivoglio) and the wife’s goddaughter (Gillain). If the story itself (engrossing enough) never seems very much more than an unusually formal period romance, the immaculate performances and the Tavianis’ masterly control of colour, composition and music (a poignant but unexpectedly modernist score from Carlo Crivelli) make for absorbing viewing.Read More »

The great unknown masterpiece of mid-century Australian cinema, Clay is unlike anything made in the country before or since. The story of the film is really the sad story of Mangiamele’s career; shown to acclaim at Cannes, no local distributor would show the film, so the director was forced to hire a cinema in Melbourne to screen it himself. There are many influences here, but to me it evokes New Wave cinema from Eastern Europe as much as anything else. Don’t expect great dialogue, or great acting, and there are profound technical issues (the poor sound synch is typical of Mangiamele’s work, but he never had any money for post-production, to the extent that his earlier feature Il Contratto exists only in silent form with no soundtrack at all). But it is a deeply philosophical film, crammed with evocative imagery, and above all the extraordinary cinematography in high contrast (almost Tarr-esque) monochrome is miraculous. And it will be even more evocative for those who know the Montsalvat artist community near Melbourne, where much of the film was shot.Read More »

A Jean-Luc Godard film about politics and the media, in which two workers in a newspaper plant attempt to make a film.Read More »

Quote:
Elena, a young Brazilian woman, travels to New York with the same dream as her mother, to become a movie actress. She leaves behind her childhood spent in hiding during the years of the military dictatorship. She also leaves Petra, her seven year old sister.

Two decades later, Petra also becomes an actress and goes to New York in search of Elena. She only has a few clues about her: home movies, newspaper clippings, a diary and letters. At any moment Petra hopes to find Elena walking in the streets in a silk blouse.Read More »

A collection of three short ‘haiku videos’ by Chris Marker.

The first haiku, ‘Yanka / Tchaika’, shows the river Seine passing under a bridge. A bird in flight stays motionless in the air.

The second haiku, ‘Owl Gets in Your Eyes’, shows Catherine Belkhodja smoking a cigarette while a superimposed shot of an owl in flight fades in and out over her face.Read More »

Taking leave from their jobs at a gold mine, three workers journey to their home village on foot through the spectacular yet unforgiving wilderness of the mythical island of Hugaw. As time passes and their conversations intensify, buried histories emerge and a sense of psychosis invades the scene. As ever, Lav Diaz’s exquisitely subdued black-and-white images and patient rhythm lend a Brechtian register to the drama; almost always filmed from the same fixed distance, each scene is an immaculate tableau vivant. Behind the film’s folkloric façade, Diaz once again taps into the collective memory of defiant struggles against the tyranny of both contemporary Filipino society and colonial brutality, centred on the timeless image of men walking – one of the key traits of Pan. (Hyun Jin Cho, BFI)Read More »

IMDB:
Anna Bronsky is a violin teacher at the Conservatoire. Against the advice of her colleagues, she imposes the admission of a pupil, in whom she sees a great talent. With a lot of involvement, she prepares Alexander for the end-of-year exam and neglects her young son Jonas, who is also a violinist and ice hockey fan. She moves away more and more from her husband, so fond of him, the French “luthier” Philippe Bronsky. At the approach of audition, Anna pushes Alexander towards performances more and more exceptional. The decisive day, an accident occurs, heavy consequence.Read More »