Arthouse

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Oliveira returned to the center of Portugal’s film scene in the 1960s with Acto da Primavera (Rite of spring; 1963), a work that marks a significant change in the director’s trajectory and that initiates some of the cinematic strategies that he would develop more fully in later films. In Acto da Primavera, Oliveira offers a version of a popular representation of the Passion of Christ, enacted by members of a rural community in northern Portugal, derived from the Auto da Paixão de Jesus Cristo (1559), by Francisco Vaz de Guimarães. He came across the annual Easter drama in the small town of Curalha when he was looking for locations for “O Pão,” and he was so taken by it that he wanted to return and register it on film.Read More »

Alone and self-sufficient since childhood, Tony shuns emotions as illogical and immature. After finding his true vocation as a technical illustrator, he becomes fascinated with Eiko, whom he marries. His life changes, he feels vibrantly alive, and for the first time, he understands and fears loneliness. But when Eiko’s all consuming obsession for designer clothes ends in tragedy, Tony finds himself alone again, sitting in his wife’s closet, gazing at her treasured couture pieces, the whispering ghosts of her soul. Finally, Tony places an ad in the paper searching for a woman who fits Eiko’s measurements perfectly.Read More »

Synopsis
A bankrupt telecoms engineer, employed by his ex-boss to investigate a phone-hacking operation, gets trapped into paying off either his economic or his moral debts.

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“Wild Duck” is the story of Dimitris, a telecommunications engineer who’s forced to shutter his business after running up a considerable debt with a local loan shark. He and his buddy Nikos, another telecommunications expert working for a big outfit, decide to get to the bottom of a big scandal. Their research leads them to a certain apartment, whose tenant Panagiota becomes the focus of their attention. Dimitris is now facing some major dilemmas and a trip to his hometown will help him clear his head and look at himself under a different light.Read More »

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One of the masterworks of 1960s cinema, La notte [The Night] marked yet another development in the continuous stylistic evolution of its director, Michelangelo Antonioni — even as it solidified his reputation as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. La notte is Antonioni’s “Twilight of the Gods”, but composed in cinematic terms. Examined from a crane-shot, it’s a sprawling study of Italy’s upper middle-class; seen in close-up, it’s an x-ray of modern man’s psychic desolation. Two of the giants of film-acting come together as a married couple living in crisis: Marcello Mastroianni (La dolce vita, 8 1/2) and Jeanne Moreau (Jules et Jim, Bay of Angels). He is a renowned author and “public intellectual”; she is “the wife”. Over the course of one day and the night into which it inevitably bleeds, the pair will come to re-examine their emotional bonds, and grapple with the question of whether love and communication are even possible in a world built out of profligate idylls and sexual hysteria.Read More »

O Demiurgo (1972)
A colorful feature film that mixes exile with the figure of the poet Rimbaud and the feminist revolution. “It’s super-intellectual. A fable-musical-philosophical-chanchada”, Mautner says. He also affirms that the work focuses a lot on the longing for Brazil, on the will that the exiled had to return to their homeland. The idea came from conversations between the musician and his old father, “always talking about the pre-Socratics”, he recalls. Glauber Rocha states that “The Demiurge” is the best film “of” and “about” exile.Read More »

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The debut feature from the great Andrei Tarkovsky, Ivan’s Childhood is an evocative, poetic journey through the shadows and shards of one boy’s war-torn youth. Moving back and forth between the traumatic realities of WWII and the serene moments of family life before the conflict began, Tarkovsky’s film remains one of the most jarring and unforgettable depictions of the impact of violence on children in wartime.Read More »

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Carrington is the true story of the tragic relationship between the English painter Dora Carrington and writer, Lytton Strachey. Between the First World War and the early 1930’s, they experimented with a way of life beyond the conventional standards of their time, a life which broke all the taboos of society of their desire to live as freely and honestly as they could. They acknowledged openly what most of us are aware of but still reluctant to discuss: that a great many differences can exist between spiritual love and physical desire.Read More »

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Ikka Kita is a revolutionary, who suffers when he is brought his younger brother’s clothes, still smeared with his blood. Ikka’s brother followed the revoltionary’s precept and acted, attempting on the life of a finantial group manager and then, unable to escape, killing himself. Now, Ikka is more determined than ever to take his own teachings to the ultimate end, the «coup d’etat».Ikka Kita is a revolutionary, who suffers when he is brought his younger brother’s clothes, still smeared with his blood. Ikka’s brother followed the revoltionary’s precept and acted, attempting on the life of a finantial group manager and then, unable to escape, killing himself. Now, Ikka is more determined than ever to take his own teachings to the ultimate end, the «coup d’etat»Read More »

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Acclaimed filmmaker Jem Cohen’s new feature, Museum Hours, is a mesmerizing tale of two adrift strangers who find refuge in Vienna’s grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum. Johann, a museum guard, spends his days silently observing both the art and the visitors. Anne, suddenly called to Vienna from overseas, has been wandering the city in a state of limbo. A chance meeting sparks a deepening connection that draws them through the halls of the museum and the streets of the city. The exquisitely photographed Museum Hours is an ode to the bonds of friendship, an exploration of an unseen Vienna, and the power of art to both mirror and alter our lives.Read More »