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’. Read More »
Synopsis
Prolific Japanese filmmaker Koji Wakamatsu’s Go, Go Second Time Virgin tells the tale of two Japanese teens brought together by sexual violence, revenge, and rebellion. A girl (Mimi Kozakura) is forcibly carried to a rooftop and gang-raped, as a boy of similar age (Michio Akiyama) stands to the side watching the events unfold. The boy remains on the roof until the next morning, waiting for the girl to wake. When she does finally rise, the two teens begin sharing intimate details about their lives, including the fact that the boy has recently killed four people that forced him to take part in an orgy. As the two kindred spirits sink lower and lower into depression and delusion, they exact revenge for the crimes against the girl and take a bold, tragic step to end their misery once and for all.
~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie GuideRead More »
In a Central European country a provincial town prepares for the king’s visit, and the chief of the secret police arrives to uncover a suspected anarchist plot. This is perhaps Makavejev’s most “mainstream” film, and an unexpected delight. Its pleasures are both the director’s usual satirical commentary on revolutionary politics, and the eccentricities and quirks of the individual characters and their bizarre, mad interactions.Read More »
From the Chicago Reader:
We may forget that the most radical rethinking of Marx and Freud found in European cinema of the late 60s and early 70s came from the east rather than the west. Indeed, it’s hard to think of a headier mix of fiction and nonfiction, or sex and politics, than this brilliant 1971 Yugoslav feature by Dusan Makavejev, which juxtaposes a bold Serbian narrative shot in 35-millimeter with funky New York street theater and documentary shot in 16. The “WR” is controversial sexual theorist Wilhelm Reich and the “mysteries” involve Joseph Stalin as an erotic figure in propaganda movies, Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs “killing for peace” as he runs around New York City with a phony gun, and drag queen Jackie Curtis and plaster caster Nancy Godfrey pursuing their own versions of sexual freedom. – Jonathan RosenbaumRead More »
Quote:
A group of students go to the Eden club where they play bizarre and cruel games including fake Russian Roulette, strange rituals, rape, blood-drinking and poison, until a mysterious stranger appears and ups the ante. After a bloody magic trick, he provides an African drug to a girl who sees a montage of fearful images and then slowly appears to live them, wandering into a strange fluid factory and into a postcard of Tunisia, where murders, S&M sex, dancing and a nonsensical plot of kidnapping and torture in order to locate a painting take place. The film is an experience, a reality created by illusions, hallucinations and drugs, with bizarre visuals and details emerging little by little as some images develop into scenes, albeit incoherent ones.Read More »
Quote:
Robbe-Grillet turned once again to painting and literature for inspiration in his next film. In 1976 he had written a ‘picto-novel’, La Belle Captive, which reprinted some of Magrittes’s paintings including La Belle Captive itself. His 1983 film of the same name used paintings by both Magritte and Edouard Manet as a launching pad, each painting a ‘generation cell’ for the film’s ideas and narrative. Magritte’s Belle Captive is a great painting – formal, poetic, mysterious, it hints at all sorts of possibilities. The drawn curtains open onto a beach and sky. In the stony foreground there is an easel and a painting that visually links the world behind the curtain with the vista in the distance. It’s an audacious, inspiring work that’s a self-conscious reflection on the process of painting, but is also eerie and enigmatic, exuding a strange beauty.Read More »
From timeout.com:
Few film-makers wear their hearts as openly on their sleeves as Margarethe von Trotta, and her fascination with women (their relationships with each other and their definition – often redefinition – of themselves) is as apparent in this, her first solo feature, as it was in the later The German Sisters or Friends and Husbands. Christa Klages (Engel) is a young mother who turns terrorist and bank robber to prevent the closure of a crêche which she helps to run and her daughter attends. On the run with her friend and sometime lover, Christa is pursued by the police, and more mysteriously by a young woman (Thalbach) who was her hostage in the bank raid. What von Trotta has to say about her women is compelling, and she remains one of the few film-makers to portray terrorists convincingly. But the enigma of the hostage runs through the film as elusively as a character in a dream – vitally important at any given moment, but irritatingly meaningless when taken as a whole – and undermines the conviction of this feminist thriller which is otherwise so gloriously rooted in West Germany’s present.Read More »
Olga and Ruth become friends. Olga is independent, separated from her husband, living with an immigrant pianist… Read More »
Sisters Maria and Anna live together. Maria is a most proficient executive secretary, encouraging Anna to finish her studies and start a career…Read More »