Quote:
It is the ’90s and the tradition of ‘compensated dating’ is well underway in Japan. Four high school girls are engaged in enjo kosai in order to satisfy their desire for different things. You can usually find them in Shibuya district of Tokyo where they will give you their time, and sometimes more, in exchange for money that buys pretty things.Read More »
Quote:
It’s 1900, and for the last 130 years Poland has been wiped off the map of Europe; it’s still occupied by three invaders: Russia, Austria and Prussia. In a village near Cracow, a wedding takes place between a poet from the city and a country girl. The intelligentsia celebrates alongside the peasantry, but this is the full extent of any “agreement” between these two social classes, and the wedding guests are made aware of it by visiting apparitions. The chance for a national uprising is duly lost.Read More »
Quote:
The description of several fates, several desperate lives in an inhuman city. A city where no one really exists. It is probably the most depressing movie – french movie – of all time. Every detail, every shot, every dialogue shows us there is no future for the human being. All along this feature, the director – Bellon – gives the audience sequences of darkness, monotony, emptiness. Death in a near future. All kind of deaths. The score makes me think of a whisper, a song from a graveyard. I would say it’s a sort of documentary.Read More »
In this routine story within a story from Poland, Jacek (Zbigniew Cybulski) is the head of a troupe of thespians and so he is responsible for getting together the material for them to act out on the stage. One day he meets Marguerite (Teresa Tuszynska), the charming and sophisticated daughter of a French diplomat, and his heart does flips. He longs to be with her but she herself is more sensible. What kind of a life would she have with an actor? His ultimate rejection leaves him ample time to mope around and be miserable. But then, Jacek the actor has to get another story ready for his troupe — and so was this sequence of love lost real — or another play for the troupe to perform?~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »
An essay-film on language and theater, on human communication – intellectual in content, but purely poetic in terms of form: image, sound, language, cinema. Stagefright, with the exception of one shot, was all filmed in a small puppet theater space, actors against black.Read More »
Born in Mauritania and raised in Mali, Abderrahmane Sissako received a scholarship to study film in Moscow, after graduating from school. To learn Russian, he was sent to Rostov on the Don river for an entire year. On the endless train ride from Moscow to Rostov, he met Baribanga, an Angolan student who was going to the same language school. That year, far from home, the two Africans became friends. Almost two decades later, Sissako decides to search for Baribanga. Rostov-Luanda tells two stories, the search for the long-lost friend, that leads to an encounter with present-day Angola.Read More »
In his last film, legendary writer/artist/filmmaker Jean Cocteau portrays an 18th-century poet who travels through time on a quest for divine wisdom. In a mysterious wasteland, he meets several symbolic phantoms that bring about his death and resurrection. With an eclectic cast that includes Pablo Picasso, Jean-Pierre Leáud, Jean Marais and Yul Brynner, Testament of Orpheus (Le Testament de Orphée) brings full circle the journey Cocteau began in The Blood of a Poet, an exploration of the torturous relationship between the artist and his creations.Read More »
After finishing a strict and traumatizing education at a Jesuit seminary, young Roberto is offered a post by the priest of his village: The local count is looking for a new teacher for his eight year old niece, Flora. Roberto accepts the post and soon finds himself traveling to the remote estate of the count by the seaside which is taken care of by the old housekeeper Mrs. Antonia. In the beginning, everything is well but with the arrival of Flora’s elder brother Mikel who has been expelled from school, things start to get disquieting. In his attempts to find out why Mikel was expelled, Roberto soon unearths unsettling secrets – about himself and about Cristina, his deceased predecessor and Pedro, a former servant of the count who now seems to lurk within the dark corridors of the mansion. Could it be that these two sinister beings are trying to get back to life by the souls of the children?Read More »
Synopsis
A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado town. In exchange, she agrees to work for them. As a search visits the town, she finds out that their support has a price. Yet her dangerous secret is never far away.Read More »