A liberal interpretation of Henrik Ibsen’s play Little Eyolf. When their only son dies from a sudden accident, a rift breaks Alfred and Rita’s seemingly trouble free marriage, and they rush headlong into catastrophe. As they do so, theirs and their friends’ lives are changed for forever.Read More »
“A thoroughly devastating documentary on 82 year old Maori woman’s struggle for survival.”
Los Angeles Times
This is the story of Puhi, an aged Maori woman and Niki, her fully grown but wholly dependent son. The world they occupy is not a world of large events but the rituals of everyday life, traditions and interdependence. “In Spring One Plants Alone” documents the minutiae of their very enclosed existence. Filmed over a period of one and a half years, it emerges as a rare, haunting and powerful portrayal of their life together. This is the story of their rituals and of their survival. The small and disconnected instances that we encounter form a lone vision of the rifts and the bond between an old woman and her disturbed son.Read More »
– “What would you do if you had only ten days to live”?
– “Just get very stoned.”
DANDY (1988 )- a Voltaire-inspired anti-fairytale by Peter Sempel – Featuring Blixa Bargeld, Nick Cave, Kazuo Ohno & Nina Hagen.Read More »
The Hawks and the Sparrows (Italian: Uccellacci e uccellini, literally Bad Birds and Little Birds) is a 1966 Italian film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.
The movie is a post-neorealist story about Totò, the beloved stone-faced clown of Italian folk-stories.
Originally Uccellacci e Uccellini, The Hawks and the Sparrows was adapted by director Pier Paolo Pasolini from his own novel. Italian comedian Toto plays a dual role, as “himself” and 12th century monk Brother Ciccillo. In modern times, Toto and his son Ninetto Davoli come across a talking crow who insists upon asking them where they’re going. The answer, it turns out, is eight centuries into the past, where Toto and Davoli become monks, employed by Francis of Assisi to convert the birds of the world to Christianity. Unfortunately, every sparrow that they win over to God is devoured by a hawk. Back in the present, Toto and Davoli face a similar situation when their landlord threatens them with eviction. After various and sundry misadventures, the two human protagonists, growing weary of the philosophical crow’s loquaciousness, eat the bird and move on, prepared to face whatever life brings them without the “help” of their feathered friend. The symbolism in The Hawks and the Sparrows is so obvious as to be funny, which was Pasolini’s intention all along.
Hal EricksonRead More »
Quote:
Five Girls Around the Neck, in 1967, set out to explore that critical age of adolescence when a person’s character is formed for good or evil. Schorm examined a girl’s problems of being giving too much. She tries to buy the goodwill of her less fortunate friends; her intentions are pure, but in the difficulty of communicating she learns envy and deceit, and must decide if she will submit to double dealing or steel her life against self-deception and mediocrity. In addition to the relationship between the girl and her friends, Schorm introduces a teenage romance and the broader relationship between the girl’s parents – neatly tied together with segments of Weber’s opera, Die Freischütz. He reveals himself as a skilled psychological director with a wide range of knowledge about people.Read More »
Quote:
A solitary figure trudges through the inclement weather of a vast, remote Siberian wilderness. An unyielding gust of wind brings the young man (Pyotr Aleksandrov) to his knees as he attempts to avert the caustic, sustained force of the snowstorm, momentarily obscuring him from view, erased from the harsh and desolate landscape. The stark, monochromatic image of the film then cuts to an ironically appropriate impersonal and nondescript official title sequence, as the premature sound of a knock on a door seemingly intrudes on the necessity to present information on the film’s certification. It is a subtle reminder of life’s evolving process: the intrusive nature and unexpected inevitability of death. The film reopens to a jarring, oddly lit image of the gaunt young man standing by the foot of his father’s bed in a cramped and squalid apartment. The dispatched medical technicians dispassionately confirm his father’s death from natural causes, but explain that they cannot issue a death certificate, pragmatically remarking “You should have placed him in a hospital. Everything would have been easier then.” Left alone in theapartment, the son compassionately observes his father’s inanimate countenance before preparing his father’s body for burial: selecting his best suit, bathing him in the snow in the absence of running water in the apartment, transporting his father’s body to the outpatient clinic for a death certificate examination. Without knowing the actual cause of death, the doctor suggests a beaurocratically expedient determination of cancer, rationalizing that “now everything is considered cancer.” Having been issued a death certificate, the son then meets with the undertaker (Nadezhda Rodnova), an abrasive and insensitive businesswoman who is quick to assess the family’s limited means and treats the overwhelmed young man with disrespect and open hostility, especially as the financially strapped son begins to question some ancillary costs included in the itemized funeral bill. As the dutiful son continues to encounter emotional isolation, antipathy, and an impersonal commodification of the burial process, can he restore the sanctity of the ritual and retain the dignity of his beloved father’s memory?
Read More »
Quote:
A Man Escaped opens with the indelible image of a pair of restless hands belonging to a French resistance officer named Lieutenant Fontaine (Francois Leterrier). His face is inscrutable and impassive, concealing his calculated attempt to flee from the escorted prison transport vehicle. He reaches for the door handle, retreats, then reaches again. At a momentary distraction of a crossing railcar, he seizes the opportunity, but is immediately recaptured, and is severely beaten by the German guards for the attempt. Imprisoned and condemned to die, Fontaine finds the courage and determination to escape his certain fate. Based on a true account by Andre Devigny, A Man Escaped is a visually minimalist, emotionally austere film about friendship, hope and perseverance. Read More »
SYNOPSIS: Ethan (Joe Swanberg) is a director who aims to make meaningful art films, but is struggling with a creative slump and disengagement with his work. His girlfriend Claire (Kate Lyn Sheil), is an actress whose career is beginning to take off. She has accepted the lead part in a werewolf movie being directed by talented young horror filmmaker Ben (Ti West). Ethan’s depression leads to jealousy over both Claire’s success and her increasingly close relationship with Ben.Read More »
A beautiful but hopeless fight against circumstance and the death of an American dream in a by-passed Welsh town. Three kids, forced to make up their own rules, are seduced by the possibility of something better. For what other choice is there when reality lets you down?
Set in the present day in Banwen, a two-bit town in the wilds of Wales’ industrial south, House of America, centres around the Lewis family – Sid, Boyo and Gwenny – whose father Clem has apparently run away to America. Left in charge of their eccentric and mysterious mother – Mam – the kids yearn to escape to the States to visit their father, but the chance of them doing so is remote as there are no jobs for them in the small town.
Read More »