Arthouse

A dying man in his forties remembers his past. His childhood, his mother, the war, personal moments and things that tell of the recent history of all the Russian nation.Read More »

A student film by Béla Tarr, from 1979.
Presumed lost until very recently.Read More »

A family living on a remote island learns an escaped prisoner may be in the area. Allan (Sterling Hayden) is the professor who studies the migratory habits of birds. His wife Clea (Maureen McNalley) has a fascination for all things dead. Her sister Lis (Susan Strasberg) is visiting to break the news of her impending marriage to an older man. Clea leaves tobacco and food out for the unseen escapee. Lis meets the prisoner (Stuart Whitman) on the beach and the two make love. The quiet paradise is interrupted by the escaped prisoner who later suffers a potentially fatal wound while killing another man.Read More »

Experimental film director Franco Piavoli’s Al Primo Soffio Di Vento (At the First Breath of Wind) is nearly a wordless, non-narrative account of a summer’s day as appreciated by the residents of an estate in Lombardy, Italy.

The family, despite living in a idyllic mansion, live their lives very much apart from one another. The father (Primo Gaburri) is usually holed up in his study, while his wife aimlessly paces the grounds pining away after a former lover. Of the two daughters, the eldest plays sad tunes on the piano, while the younger explores the woods and struggles to understand her recent inklings of sexual attraction.Read More »

Oskar, a bullied 12-year old, dreams of revenge. He falls in love with Eli, a peculiar girl. She can’t stand the sun or food and to come into a room she needs to be invited. Eli gives Oskar the strength to hit back but when he realizes that Eli needs to drink other people’s blood to live he’s faced with a choice. How much can love forgive? Set in the Stockholm suburb of Blackeberg in 1982.Read More »

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This ground-breaking film won a Special Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and established its director, Michelangelo Antonioni, as a major international talent. The plot concerns a yachting trip by a small group of jaded socialites, including Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), an aging architect who sold out for easy money long ago, his mistress Anna (Lea Massari), and her friend Claudia (Monica Vitti), who doesn’t fit in with the wealthy jet-setters’ dissolute ethics. When Anna disappears during a tour of a volcanic island, Claudia initially blames Sandro’s emotionally barren behavior toward her. As they search the island, however, Claudia and Sandro grow closer and — when it is apparent that Anna is gone forever — become lovers. Unfortunately, Sandro cannot find anything decent inside himself and betrays Claudia with a local prostitute. Caught in the act, Sandro has a heartrending breakdown on a desolate beach, but Claudia silently forgives him. L’avventura caught many audiences who were expecting a mystery by surprise; as in La notte (1961), The Eclipse (1962), and Red Desert (1964), Antonioni is interested less in developing a logical story than in exploring states of feeling and breakdowns in human connection.Read More »

Synopsis by Dan Pavlides:
When young Kaja (Lena Boehncke) is found dead, Andi (Bertram von Boxberg) is questioned by authorities. The two had spent time together along the railroad tracks where Kaja was promised by Andi that he would take her to the place where beautiful butterflies congregate. Andi is told that the girl died of injuries suffered in a fall as the police try to discover if Andi was involved. Peter Franke plays the father, with Uwe Helfrich as the police inspector.

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It won the Golden Leopard at the 1988 Locarno International Film Festival.Read More »

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“Hypnotic” is the best word to describe Favula, the latest work from director Raúl Perrone, which comes with a recommendation from none other than Apichatpong Weerasethakul – though he used the more Joe-like epithet, “bliss.” Somewhat of a secret outside of his native Argentina, Perrone has made more than 30 movies, and in recent years has reinvented his cinema, by looking back to the past, and in doing so pointing to the future. Standing apart from any other film made this year, with its magical handmade aesthetic, Favula recalls Méliès, or silent Fritz Lang, but at the same time evokes recent silent, stage-bound aesthetics like Raya Martin’s Independencia. Loosely based on an African fable, and shot employing rear-projections techniques, Favula’s simple events take place mostly in an isolated house and a nearby jungle: a marginal family’s life is interrupted by the arrival of a teenaged girl. On top of the minimalist, pulsating images, Perrone layers a maximalist soundtrack that encompasses both the sounds of the jungle and non-diegetic music (indelible contemporary songs that appeared in his last work, the cumbia punk opera P3ND3JO5). The result is a wholly unique, mythical universe of danger, passion and magic.Read More »

Based on the 1967 novel by Canadian author Timothy Findley, THE LAST OF THE CRAZY PEOPLE is a French naturalist drama from director Laurent Achard. Martin is a young boy growing up in a family on the brink of collapse, the story is presented from his perspective as he passively watches it slowly crumble around him.Read More »