Arthouse

Set against the backdrop of the 1967 Six-Day War, the movie adaptation of Naguib Mahfouz’s novel follows the escapist, drug-fuelled riverboat meetings of a group of frustrated Egyptians from various walks of life.Read More »

MARCH 22, 1965: CASTRO OPENS.

Warhol’s film, The Life of Juanita Castro premiered at the Film-Makers Cinematheque. (DB217) It was filmed at WALDO BALART’s apartment on West 10th Street. RONALD TAVEL wrote the script, inspired by Waldo who also appeared in the film and whose sister had been married to FIDEL CASTRO. Fidel had divorced her just before he became Premier. (POP111)Read More »

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Director Javier Rebollo’s first feature, Lola (Lo que se de Lola), was the unanimous choice of this year’s London Film Festival FIPRESCI jury. Partly shot in French and in Spanish, and located in both France and Spain, it is a visually provocative tale of a conventional loner who becomes a silent voyeur obsessed by desire and an impossible love.Read More »

Hayat, her father and bedridden grandfather live in a riverside shack near the dangerously dark but breathtakingly beautiful waters of the Bosphorus. Hayat’s father owns a small boat that secures the family’s survival through a miscellany of not always lawful ventures. Beyond the motion and romance of the water, Hayat’s life is harsh and unrelenting. But Hayat has an instinct for survival. Her capacity for courage, endurance and hope in the face of these trials suggest that there is Life despite the manifold injustices of an unjust world. (IMDb)Read More »

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Nob leads a happy life in a small town with his wife and young son. But when his son dies and his wife leaves him, he is unable to cope. Even others in the village turn their backs on him. He becomes lonely and feels completely dejected. He plunges deeper and deeper into a downward spiral from which it seems he may not escape. That is, until a glimmer of hope appears in the form of a monk who encourages him to join the Buddhist priesthood.Read More »

One of America’s finest filmmakers tackles “lovemaking” in its many varieties (hetrosexual, homosexual as well as various animals having sex). Without a soundtrack (as the artist always thought that sound was an aesthetic error in filmmaking), the film is shot with Brakhage’s characteristic visual rhythmns.Read More »

Documentarists tend to be an eccentric breed. They need to be, since none of the main film festivals allow their films into competition (an incomprehensible decision), and to get a documentary into a cinema these days is a fraught process. But there is no more highly personal yet elusive film-maker than Chris Marker. His importance lies not in how many audiences have been affected by his films, but in how many of his fellow film-makers regard him as something of a genius.Read More »

Like a bulletin board that has all kinds of notices next to each other, Jenoe Farkas’ documentary on the various inhabitants of Copenhagen, filmed over a several-year period, has all sorts of people and events on display, but not one unifying theme or any cinematic artifice to link them together.Read More »

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A foreign journalist arrives on a small Pacific island 200 miles off the coast of South America. Once a leper colony, the island was later transformed into a prison and then, under U.N. mandate, made into an independent republic. Yet despite democratic structures, the inhabitants–who speak a strange dialect composed of Spanish and English–still obey the old prison rules. After sending back detailed accounts of the torture and repression seen everywhere, the journalist realizes that she”s fallen into the trap created for her by the islanders: lacking natural resources, the island”s main export is news. The clearest anticipation of Ruiz”s later European work, The Penal Colony is a powerful document of the tensions and contradictions in Chile in the months before Allende”s electoral victory.Read More »