Criterion wrote:
In her provocative first feature, Chantal Akerman stars as an aimless young woman who leaves self-imposed isolation to embark on a road trip that leads to lonely love affairs with a male truck driver and a former girlfriend. With its famous real-time carnal encounter and its daring minimalism, Je tu il elle is Akerman’s most sexually audacious film.Read More »
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This film, considered to be the completion of Yoshida’s style, focuses on Kita Ikki, the prewar ideological leader of Japanese rightist terrorism and military revolts. The key factor is Kita’s relation to the emperor.Read More »
Plot:A cinematographic essay, without dialogues, about the months Friedrich Nietzsche spent in Turin, Italy, with narration quoted by his original writings. It was there that the philosopher wrote some of his most known books such as Ecce Homo and Twilight of the Idols .Read More »
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In his book Images, Ingmar Bergman has written: “All my films can be thought of in terms of black and white, except for Cries and Whispers. In the screenplay it says that red represents the interior of the soul. When I was a child, I imagined the soul to be a dragon, a shadow floating in the air like blue smoke – a huge winged creature, half bird, half fish. But inside the dragon, everything was red.”
Certainly, Cries and Whispers marks the most sophisticated use of color in Bergman’s long career. It was only in 1963 that he turned, somewhat reluctantly, to color for All These Women, and even after that he continued to opt for black and white in such critical films as Persona, Hour of the Wolf, and Shame. With Cries and Whispers, however, Bergman for once – by his own admission – wants the work to be regarded in chromatic terms.Read More »
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“Marguerite Duras’ Destroy, She Said seems to be a film out of time and out of space, but could only have been made after May, 1968 … Significantly, it is only this year that she has felt able to write and direct her own film-without any compromises … It explodes into life, and one is hypnotically captive until the end. The dramatic power of the film, and its way of haunting one for days, are not surprising; what is, however, is the degree of visual virtuosity that Mme. Duras achieves. In short, here is a ‘difficult’ film which more than compensates for the demands it makes on the viewer.”-Richard Roud, The Guardian (Manchester)
” …Destroy. She Said is a triumph … In my estimation its glum enchantments constitute a masterpiece.”-Elliott Stein, The Financial Times (London)Read More »
Synopsis
One of the islands in Istanbul has been given an evacuation order in expectation of an earthquake. Scores of people flee the island in a rush. But some think otherwise, and refuse to leave. Life will get harder by the day in this apocalyptic climate for those who remain. An unlikely group of distressed women struggle with their tribulations, united extraordinary reserves of energy, courage, hope and faith. The film follows them throughout their inspiring, humanistic journeys into the different dimensions of existence. “We may inhabit a dark world, but there are at least a few people out there in the world whose compassion and generosity of heart give us hope as to the multidimensional profundity of existence. These magnanimous people are incredibly strong because they know how to labour, to sing, to share, to laugh, to run, to protect.”– Reha ErdemRead More »
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Winter, spring, summer, autumn…and then? La cinquiememe saison (The Fifth Season) is an apocalyptic tale which does not need to make use of extraterrestrial aliens or natural catastrophes to impress the viewer. Humans and nature have a very fragile connection – what if nature suddenly decided to cut this connection?
Set in a little rural village in the Ardennes, the inhabitants are preparing for the local feast to celebrate the end of the winter. But something goes wrong: the fire that was supposed to light up the bonfire refuses to burn, a bad omen for the whole community. We do not see the end coming at first but season after season we gradually witness a slow but implacable process of decay: the crops do not grow, the animals become sterile, people fall ill and the trees collapse. The two young protagonists Alice and Thomas, the outsider Pol and his paraplegic son, and all the others can do nothing other than be spectators to this silent disaster.Read More »
A witty and controversial documentary from Zentropa, which won the SUNDANCE World Cinema Jury Prize in 2010.
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A journalist with no scruples and two Danish/Korean comedians—one a self-proclaimed “spastic”—travel to North Korea under the guise of a cultural exchange. On the pretext of being a small Danish theatre group, named The Red Chapel, they are allowed into the country, but unbeknownst to the North Koreans, cultural exchange is not really what they have in mind. Mads Brügger, the journalist; Simon, the straight man; and Jacob, the spastic, use humor to challenge one of the world’s most notorious regimes. The troupe rehearse under the watchful eye of government officials brought in to “collaborate” on their performance and make it more palatable for the Korean regime. They are shown the important historical sights by a female government employee, who smothers poor Jacob with motherly affection.Read More »
Plot Outline :
Ferdinand Griffon is married with his wealthy Italian wife and has been recently fired from the television where he worked. His wife forces him to go to a party in the house of her influent father that wants to introduce Ferdinand to a potential employer. Her brother brings the babysitter Marianne Renoir to take care of their children. Ferdinand feels bored in the bourgeois party and borrows his brother-in-law’s car to return home. He meets Marianne, who was his lover five years ago and insists to call him Pierrot, and offers to take her home; however, he spends the night with her and finds that she is involved in smuggling weapons. When Marianne is chased by terrorists, they decide to travel to the beach without any money, leaving Paris and his family behind in a crazy journey to nowhere.Read More »