Arthouse

  • Akio Jissôji – Uta AKA Poem [Theatrical Cut] (1972)

    1971-1980Akio JissojiArthouseDramaJapan

    Quote:
    Poem is the last film in Jissoji’s Art Theatre Guild trilogy and deals with the traditional stem-family system on the verge of collapse allegorically. Not very satisfied with the optimistic last scene of Mujo, Jissoji approaches a similar subject matter from a different perspective. And the film is more in line with his concern about the radical change in the society which prompted him to make the trilogy. It appears that the script was written through intense discussions between Jissoji and Ishido, this time too.Read More »

  • Paulo César Saraceni – O Desafio AKA The Dare (1966)

    1961-1970ArthouseBrazilPaulo César SaraceniPolitics

    Passively facing the repression imposed by military dictatorship in Brazil in the 60s, a journalist gets into a personal crisis, aggravated by his love affair with an industrialist’s wife, who doesn’t want to leave her home because of her son.Read More »

  • Louis Malle – Pretty Baby (1978)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaLouis MalleUSA

    In 1917, in the red light district Storyville, New Orleans, the prostitute Hattie lives with her twelve year-old daughter Violet in the fancy brothel of Madame Nell, where she works. Photographer Ernest J. Bellocq has an attraction to Hallie and Violet and he is an habitué of the whorehouse. One day, Madame Nell auctions Violet’s virginity and the winner pays the fortune of US$ 400 to spend the night with the girl. Then Hattie marries a wealthy client and moves to Saint Louis, leaving Violet in the brothel alone. Violet decides to marry Bellocq and she moves to his house. Until the day that Hattie, who has overcome her past, comes to Bellocq’s house with the intention to take Violet with her.Read More »

  • Adoor Gopalakrishnan – Kodiyettam (1977)

    1971-1980Adoor GopalakrishnanArthouseDramaIndia

    Adoor’s second feature film made five years after Swayamvaram achieved commercial success in Kerala, while reaching an artistic height.

    Its structure is that of a festival in a village temple. I wanted to create an intimate experience of everyday rural life. It is structured in such a way as to look natural, as if there are no outside interventions. During the course of the film, the festival comes full circle, parallel to it is the inner development of the character as well.Read More »

  • Carlos Saura – La Caza AKA The Hunt (1966)

    1961-1970ArthouseCarlos SauraDramaSpainSpanish cinema under Franco

    Quote:
    Museo Valenciano de la Ilustración y la Modernidad writes:
    José, Paco and Luis, three middle-aged men who fought in the “national” side during the Spanish Civil War, meet in a village of Castilla to hunt rabbits, accompanied by young Enrique. But the hunting journey will stir up deep latent frustrations and rancours within the group. La Caza, which won the Silver Bear for the Best director in Berlin, was compared by critics with the most avant-garde films of that period. It had a remarkable influence on directors such as Sam Peckinpah, who found in this film a source of stylistic and thematic inspiration.Read More »

  • Michael Haneke – La pianiste AKA The Piano Teacher (2001) (HD)

    2001-2010ArthouseAustriaDramaMichael Haneke

    Quote:
    Erika Kohut is a piano teacher at the Vienna Conservatory prestigious music school in Vienna. In her early forties and single, she lives with her overprotective and controlling mother in a hermetically sealed world of love-hate and dependency, where there is no room for men. Her sex life consists of voyeurism and masochistic self-injury. Lonely and alienated, Erika finds solace by visiting sex shops and experimenting with masochism. Ata a recital, she befriends Walter, a handsome young man, whom she seduces and with whom she begins an illicit affair. As Erika slowly drifts closer to the brink of emotional disorder, she uses the love-stricken Walter to explore her darkest sado-masochistic fantasies, which eventually lead to her undoing.Read More »

  • Michael Haneke – Der siebente Kontinent AKA The Seventh Continent (1989) (HD)

    1971-1980ArthouseAustriaDramaMichael Haneke

    Quote:
    Three members of a middle-class family are followed as their lifestyle slowly disintegrates. Nothing spectacular happens: it’s just the dreary un-ending grind of a go-nowhere existence. The film’s final scene emulates Fassbinder, as the threesome bid auf wiedersehn to everyone and everything in a gaudy, grotesque manner. It goes without saying that Der 7. Kontinent is not for everyone’s taste.Read More »

  • Hartmut Bitomsky – Staub AKA Dust (2007)

    Arthouse2001-2010DocumentaryGermanyHartmut Bitomsky

    A speck of dust is just about perceptible to the naked eye. It’s the smallest visible subject a film can be about – it’s a medium of disappearance and a criteria of perception. Wherever we go, it has already beaten us; wherever we turn, it follows us. It is our past, our present and our future. It is universal and has a name in every language. It keeps housewives busy, as well as scientists, inventors, artists and entire industrial branches. It is blamed for feeding vermin and causing illness. It takes ownership of our possessions, it penetrates laboratories, it creates planets and galaxies. We’re surrounded by it, it gets inside us, we shed it… It nestles right into the despair of its own existence.Read More »

  • Piotr Trzaskalski – Edi (2002)

    2001-2010ArthouseDramaPiotr TrzaskalskiPoland

    Best friends Edi and Jureczek earn their living as scrap-metal pickers on the streets of a big city. Our story begins when the two gangster Brothers who rule the neighborhood beat a fellow scrap picker to death. This is the Brothers’ way of enforcing payments for illegally sold alcohol. A few days later the Brothers come up with an extraordinary proposal for Edi. They want him to tutor Princess, their 17- year old sister whom they have been bringing up since the death of their parents. The Brothers choose Edi because they know about his passion – Edi is an avid reader, always keeping the books he finds in the garbage.Read More »

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