Arthouse

Synopsis
Jimmy, Mary and Makis are three people living their everyday day life in an entirely different manner. They seem to have nothing in common and normally they shouldn’t even know each other…
CineuropaRead More »

A minimalist recitation by Barbara Ulrich of Book 2 chapter 6 of Montaigne’s Essays.Read More »

Independent auteur Hal Hartley wrote and directed this satirical exercise in what he calls “fake science fiction.” In the near future, following a violent overthrow of the American government, the United States has come under the rule of the MMM, a Multi-Media Monopoly which runs the country as a business. Every citizen now has a personal bar code, which is used to monitor his or her consumption of practically everything, including sex, now that aphrodisiacs have become the nation’s biggest consumer product. Jack (Bill Sage) and Cecile (Sabrina Lloyd) are two MMM executives who are vying for the same level of advancement within the organization, while William (Leo Fitzpatrick) is a member of the Partisans, a cadre of anti-MMM activists who are attempting to bring down the corporation’s rule, though they are regarded as both dangerous and powerless by MMM’s leaders. In the midst of this situation comes a beautiful woman from the planet Monday (Tatiana Abracos), who knows about Jack’s little secret — he’s a fellow alien hiding out on Earth. The woman has come to Earth to bring Jack back to planet Monday, but given the currently miserable state of Jack’s life, he’s more interested in having a relationship with her than heading back home. The Girl From Monday has its world premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. — Mark DemingRead More »

In 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle), Jean-Luc Godard beckons us ever closer, whispering in our ears as narrator. About what? Money, sex, fashion, the city, love, language, war: in a word, everything. Among the legendary French filmmaker’s finest achievements, the film takes as its ostensible subject the daily life of Juliette Janson (Marina Vlady), a housewife from the Paris suburbs who prostitutes herself for extra money. Yet this is only a template for Godard to spin off into provocative philosophical tangents and gorgeous images. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her is perhaps Godard’s most revelatory look at consumer culture, shot in ravishing widescreen color by Raoul Coutard. (Criterion)Read More »

Marock is the 2005 Moroccan film by the female Muslim director Laila Marrakchi. The movie was very controversial as it deals with a Muslim/Jewish love between two high school mates, Rita and Youri. The film was 2006’s most successful film in Morocco, scoring more than 3 million dirhams at the Moroccan box-office, according to TelQuel.
The film was shown in Moroccan cinemas without being edited or censored.[citation needed] The title Marock is a play on words based on the French name of Morocco Maroc and Rock as in Rock’n Roll.

The universal language of youthful rebellion takes center stage in director Laïla Marrakchi’s tale of a Moroccan Muslim teen who falls for a handsome and progressive-minded Jewish boy. High school is drawing to a close for 17-year-old Rita (Morjana Alaoui) and her carefree friends, and as the footloose girls pound the pavement of Casablanca’s Anfa district, it seems that their summer of fun is already well under way. When Rita meets fun-loving Youri (Matthieu Boujenah) and the pair hit it off, her liberal Muslim family’s open-minds soon begin to close when they discover that their daughter’s new boyfriend is Jewish.Read More »

Quote:
MEANWHILE concerns Joe Fulton, a man who can do anything from fixing your sink to arranging international financing for a construction project. He produces online advertising and he’s written a big fat novel. He’s also a pretty good drummer. But success eludes him. For Joe can’t keep himself from fixing other people’s problems. His own ambitions are constantly interrupted by his willingness and ability to go out of his way for others.Read More »

Quote:
The biggest hit from the most popular Italian filmmaker of all time, La dolce vita rocketed Federico Fellini to international mainstream success—ironically, by offering a damning critique of the culture of stardom. A look at the darkness beneath the seductive lifestyles of Rome’s rich and glamorous, the film follows a notorious celebrity journalist (a sublimely cool Marcello Mastroianni) during a hectic week spent on the peripheries of the spotlight. This mordant picture was an incisive commentary on the deepening decadence of contemporary Europe, and it provided a prescient glimpse of just how gossip- and fame-obsessed our society would become.Read More »

A man returns to the place he once lived a passionate love affair with a woman who is now dead.  So powerful are the emotions that seize him that he imagines she is still alive, and begins to live as if this were the case…

INTRODUCTION BY MARGUERITE DURAS
“Woman of the Ganges” is in a way two films. Parallel to the film is played out a purely vocal film, unaccompanied by images.
To avoid any contempt, we would like to let the spectator know that the two Voices Off of women do not belong at all to the characters which appear in the images.
We can add that the characters seen in the images are entirely unaware of the existence of the two women in the story who manifest themselves only in the dialogue which they hold.Read More »

Synopsis
Three poor young university student dropouts, with hardly any money left, hang around and decide to move to countryside Aomori where they stay at one of the boys small appartment. As they wander around the beach they spot a young couple and decide to rape the girl. They all feel rejected by society and try to get out of their state. One of the boys eventually gets a hold of a gun and commits suicide, while the other accidentally finds a gun and shoots at a policeman. The story was probably inspired by the figure of Norio Nagayama, a 19 year old serial killer who was convicted of killing 4 people in a cross-country murder spree in 1968 (see Masao Adachi’s movie AKA Serial Killer which is about this figure).Read More »