Inspired by Jose Rizal’s third, unfinished novel, discovered in 1987. A Spanish priest (Khavn) and a Filipino poet (John Lloyd Cruz) vie for the affections of an American woman (Lilith Strangenberg) who is going mad. Shot on expired film stock, which was then hand painted and scratched by the director, Makamisa: Phantasm of Revenge is made to feel like an unearthed relic; some newly discovered silent film from an experimental filmmaker from a century past.Read More »
A prostitute and her teenager daughter, will have to run away after the girl stabs her mother’s pimp. The woman will try to find her son, which she hasn’t seen in 8 years.Read More »
Death surrounds Bahman, a director who hasn’t made a film in 24 years (he can’t get past the censors). He’s working on a documentary, for Japanese TV, on Iranian burial practices. On the anniversary of his wife’s death, a hitchhiker tells him a story of spousal abuse and infant mortality, he discovers that someone has been buried in his plot next to his wife, and he needs the help of his attorney, a well-connected fixer. He dreams of death, even as he investigates it for his film. His niece’s husband, a well-known writer, fails to return home; he searches hospitals for an unclaimed body. His heart disease is flaring up. Is he prepared for death? Is that all that’s left?Read More »
In a movie studio, the actors are getting made up and the crew is waiting to begin shooting the film. Grande Otelo, the bungling “king of the deck”, and Marta Anderson, the blond and provocative star of the show, recite in the historical scenario of the chanchadas, the abandoned studios of Cinédia. “The photography is splendid, it is a sort of parallel song, of critique, of parody, of understanding of a certain light typical of Brazilian cinema of the times, already re-created, already stylized. And with the older actors, Otelo, Lewgoy and the others, something very important happened in the artistic perception, seeing again, doing again, it was already a concrete metalanguage” – Julio BressaneRead More »
The vine bore fruit and it’s harvest time. Soraia, a young girl, cuts herself. Blood mixes with wine. A black bull is on the loose. Up in the oak trees, time swells, and a community takes shelter. They share bread and wine, memories and dreams, the history of a landscape. We enter a long night, where nature also speaks. The fiery wind that brings the heatwaves is burning.Read More »
Based on the idea by Roland Topor (screenwriter of Roman Polanski’s The Tenant), this very curious completely silent melodrama tells the story of Mona, who has left her father, the railway gatekeeper, after being raped on the train track. She is kidnapped and taken to a Parisian whorehouse. However, a disinherited prince, Dudu who tries to rescue her, is himself kidnapped and forced to serve as a male prostitute. The two captives meet there and fall in love. They are taken away by different rich people – he to an Arab “harem,” she to a surgeon’s home.Read More »
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Work, earn a salary, live off that money. This simple postulate has always been a problem for Jungchul, who works at a soybean paste factory. During the winter, he fantasizes about traveling to the Philippines in spring, where the weather is mild and life is easier. The only thing he has to do to reach his dream and leave is to achieve the soybean paste quota he promised his boss, but soon the fermentation room turns musty and black mold starts spreading from the thousands of fermented soybean lumps…Read More »
A brutally simple film following an ex-con on his release from prison in Butte, Montana. More a character study of the man than a story, the film methodically follows him through an unspecified period of time from his release to a dubious conclusion.Read More »
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Infused with a jazzy, nouvelle vague–inspired energy, Bo Widerberg’s feature debut has the freshness of youth. Building on his film criticism’s call for a socially relevant Swedish cinema, the writer turned director offers a vivid portrait of a young factory worker (Inger Taube) finding her way toward independence as she weathers unexpected pregnancy, learns hard lessons from relationships with two very different men, and leaves behind the only home she has ever known. Abetted by fellow filmmaker Jan Troell’s coolly beautiful monochrome cinematography, Widerberg takes a bold first step in his mission to create a cinema that is both engaged and engaging.Read More »