Arthouse

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Vera Chytilova’s fascinating 1962 film-school thesis is a protofeminist meditation on the fashion industry that draws on Chytilova’s experience as a model. The storytelling is a bit clumsy, arbitrarily juxtaposing scenes of the protagonist posing at a photo shoot and awkwardly interacting with some young men in a cafe. But many of the images ring emotionally true, even those that have since become cliches—like the sequence in which she wanders the street at night staring at shop window mannequins. The film’s best scene—of the model standing on the runway while the audience whirls vertiginously about—evokes the vacuous instability of a self that exists only in the gaze of others.Read More »

A silent aquarium with numerous fishes
then the same aquarium with musicRead More »

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In this classically surreal fantasy, a sailor, known for telling tales, sees a student killing his teacher and decides to spin a few yarns for him. He tells the boy of his many adventures in exotic South American ports where he visited opium dens and stayed in cathouses. In such dark, dreamlike places, the sailor meets many strange, mystical characters.” — Sandra Brennan, All Movie GuideRead More »

A handful of strangers hoping to find freedom discover it is no easy quarry in this metaphoric drama. Four people stand near the shore of a seaside community and board a small boat hoping to sail away; they are soon attacked by border guards, and one of them does not survive. The three remaining sailors — two men (Axel Neuman and Valentinas Masalskis) and a woman (Fatima Ennafloui) — wash up on the beach of an island strewn with rocks. None of them speak the same language, and they struggle to make their way on the unforgiving coastline, often at odds with each other. They find they are not alone on the island — an Arab settlement and a cadre of soldiers are already living there; the military men attack them, and the Arabs refuse to come to their aid. Freedom was shown in competition at the 2000 Venice Film Festival. (by Mark Deming,)

Runaway drug dealers and a lost girl travel through a desert and along the coast. This journey reveals the complicated relationships between people, their striving for freedom to be lonely.
/www.lfc.lt/
Lithuanian Film Center Home PageRead More »

“Andrzej Żuławski is one of the true mavericks of European cinema and his wild, imaginative and unique films have won awards at many international film festivals over the years. A nightmarish and surreal masterpiece, The Third Part of the Night is his highly influential debut feature film. Set during the time of the Nazi-occupation of Poland and rich with multilayered symbolism and apocalyptic imagery, it shows one of Europe’s most uncompromising and visionary directors at his best.Read More »

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With three full feature films in two years under his belt, Igor Voloshin has both received critical acclaim and provoked public debates. Nirvana (2008), a “gothic cyber-punk” about drug addiction, got Voloshin the Best Debut prize at the Kinotavr film festival in Sochi. In March 2009, Russia’s First TV Channel screened Voloshin’s Olympius Inferno, a melodrama-cum-action about Georgia’s attack on Ossetia dubbed by many critics, such as Mkheidze and Kuvshinova, a state-commissioned “agit-prop” film. His next project, I Am,competed at Kinotavr 2009, where the film’s director of photography Dmitrii Iashonkov received an award for Best Cinematography. The film continues to generate controversy: “the best film of the year or the shame of Russian cinematography?” (Mkheidze and Kuvshinova)Read More »

Vers Mathilde (Towards Mathilde)
France | 2005 | 84mins | col | dir. Claire Denis, with Mathilde Monnier

Mathilde Monnier is more than France’s foremost contemporary choregrapher. An explorer of the thorny fields of post-modern theory she has acquired a reputation as a kinetic investigator par excellence. More than just a documentary, this parallel triggered between Claire Denis’s work explores the birth, formulation and performance of a radical new dance piece.Read More »

Synopsis
Assis 2005: a troubadour walks the streets of St. Francis of Assisi hometown, singing and playing the Song of Brother Sun or Song of the Creatures, written by St. Francis back in the winter of 1224. Woods of Umbria, 1212: during one preaching to the birds, St. Francis suddenly faints. Reanimated by St. Clare, the saint looks strange and absent and he doesn’t remember anything. When the night falls, the animals in the forest sing and praise Francis. But this love sung by the animals leads to a feeling of possession, a desire of exclusivity usually known as jealousy.Read More »

Drama. Dressed in dominatrix leather fetish wear, the director pictures herself tying up her consenting girlfriend in frozen black and white images cut to the sound of high-heels clattering down a never-ending corridor.

“The German Swiss artist Cleo Uebelmann created a myth called “Mano Destra“ when she was only 22 years of age. This tough, black and white movie was first screened 1985 at the first SM Conference for Women „Secret Minds“ in Cologne and initiated a debate about SM. The movie displays a bondage session of dominatrix and her playmate, which demands absolute attention and awareness for both of them. The music, played by the female new wave band Vinyl is as cultic as the movie is a historical document of the SM movement.” (PorYes)Read More »