Arthouse

Plot:
Janko Bugarski “Džimi Barka” is a small time wallet snatcher, and an aspiring singer, who wants to make it big with as little effort as he can, traveling through industrial areas and looking for affairs with local women and easy money. On one of his travels he meets a young girl he takes to Belgrade to accompany him on an amateur singing contest, where he fails miserably, since he can’t follow a tune, and abandoning her, teams up with his former girlfriend, also a pickpocket, which takes him to his final journey.Read More »

Quote:
With A Simple Event Sohrab Shahid-Saless emerged on the Iranian film scene as a filmmaker with a distinctive style. Adopting an almost documentary style, Shahid-Saless records uneventful moments in the lives of ordinary people. He has said, “A Simple Event has no plot. It is only a report on the daily life of a boy”. Working with a cast of non-professional local players, Shahid-Saless constructed his film with realistic images that almost corresponded with the temporal flow of rural life. The film is so simple and unadorned that it creates the illusion of having been made with no prepared overall design.

For all its lyrical charm, A Simple Event must be considered as a prelude or a preparation for Shahid-Saless’s acclaimed film Still Life which was awarded the Silver Bear for best direction and the critics’ prize at the 24th Berlin International Film Festival in 1974.Read More »

Quote:
Little exists, critically speaking, on the subject of Yoshishige Yoshida’s “Heroic Purgatory”. It is a singular experience in that it has never been the subject of much acclaim or criticism. Film sites boast very few, if any, reviews. You will not find its name amongst the more famous Japanese cinematic works. Once one has seen the film, that is all there is. There is no chance to read a critical evaluation and put the pieces together with the help of a more wise, trusted and noted critic. The film extrapolates no farther than itself and its viewer.Read More »

Quote:
After a number of stressful affairs, a court lady becomes a nun in order to pursue a life without desire.Read More »

Synopsis:
In the 20’s, the anarchist revolutionary Sakae Osugi is financially supported by his wife, journalist Itsuko Masaoka. He spends his time doing nothing but philosophizing about political systems and free love and visiting with his lovers Yasuko and the earlier feminist Noe Ito. He conveniently defends three principles for a relationship between a man and a woman: they should be financially independent (despite the fact that he is not); they should live in different places; and they should be free to have intercourse with other partners. In 1969, twenty year-old student, Eiko Sokuta, has an active sexual life, having sex with different men. Her friend, Wada, is obsessed with fire and they usually play weird games using a camera while they read about Osugi and Ito.Read More »

Synopsis
The director brings the viewer on a journey to a place that is haunted, in present day, by the myth of a mysterious inscription. The viewer can see the film maker depict fractional images of a divinely inspired Nature, interweave mythological and historical accounts, as well as glean fragments to record the identity of a place that confronts and is confronted with the great philosophical questions of life. Koutsaftis not only is the director but is also the writer and the photography director of the film.Read More »

In the aftermath of the 1967 defeat, four young Lebanese try to figure out their places in a society whose rules seem to have changed. It proved to be an extraordinary anticipation of the civil war that would engulf the country while the film was being edited.Read More »

Quote:
There’s very little in common between Asha Jaoar Majhe and In The Mood For Love, but somehow Aditya Vikram Sengupta’s debut feature reminded me a lot of Wong Kar Wai’s classic romance. Perhaps it’s to do with the abiding images of the two protagonists walking/cycling along narrow city alleys with little spoken yet a lot communicated through music; just the plaintive shehnai music in the background here, and the aching melancholy of Yumeji’s theme there. Like In The Mood For Love, Asha Jaoar Majhe is a quiet, almost silent film, yet each of its frames is resonant with unspoken feelings. Can you tell a story with just everyday images and situational sounds? Sengupta does it seamlessly.Read More »

ANDRZEJ ZULAWSKI’S adaptation of Manuela Gretkowska’s provocative and hugely successful novel reaches new extremes in the depiction of brutality, sex, and passion as it tells the story of a young(ish) anthropologist driven by the mystery surrounding the death of a recently discovered shaman; and his growing obsession with an enigmatic yet violently perverse beauty known as “The Italian”.SZAMANKA (She-Shaman) is a film ‘without brakes’. Above all else, it is a ‘demonic’ film where characters are battlegrounds in the war between demons and angels, where angels are agents of God and demons are those of the Devil. This pulpy, sexually charged tale with its deranged erotic futurism underlines Zulawski’s commitment to stretch the limits of aesthetic expression by exploring themes beyond the pale in conventional cinema. Violence, exuberance and sexuality are its key ingredients. Through hysteria, possession and hallucination we see what the Polish writer Stanislaw Przybyszewski called ‘naked soul’. Read More »