Actress Patricia Clarkson narrates this documentary dramatizing the unique history of American film criticism. In addition to eliciting the thoughts and opinions of such respected film critics as Jonathan Rosenbaum, J Hoberman, Andrew Sarris, Roger Ebert, Kenneth Turan, Lisa Schwarzbaum, and A.O. Scott, the filmmakers also speak with internet-based critics like Harry Knowles and Karina Longworth, who offer a fresh perspective on the ongoing battle between upcoming on-liners and their print publication counterparts.Read More »
Synopsis Documentary-fiction about the director and his family’s holiday in his homeland. The journey is a means to confront the past, memories, one’s own origins, but it is also the radiography of an era. A semi-unknown masterpiece by Marco BellocchioRead More »
Waves crashing over a breakwater at the edge of the sea—this dramatic opening image conveys the vital spirit of a place that has withstood decades of external pressure. On the streets of Havana, residents of all ages share their views on living under such impositions by outsiders, as well as on the internal freedom they experience in spite of the repercussions of harsh sanctions. Descriptions of the waves of imperialism that have shaped this country’s history provide a deeper understanding of the impact of long-term oppression and the powerful desire to exist without outside forces weighing in.Read More »
Synopsis: Filmmakers (and brothers) Albert and David Maysles follow four employees of a company that makes expensive, ornate, illustrated bibles as they attempt to sell the items door-to-door to less-than-interested customers, who are mainly poor or lower-middle-class Catholics with little money to spend on pretty Bibles.Read More »
Nell Minow wrote: Steven Spielberg sent a telegram to New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael to tell her that she was the only critic who understood “Jaws.” George Roy Hill, furious about her review of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” began his letter to her, “Listen, you miserable bitch.” Ridley Scott was so shaken by a Kael comment he said he never read another review—from anyone. Marlene Dietrich wrote from Paris to make sure she could continue to get The New Yorker in France, telling Kael, “I am quite lost without your opinions on films.”Read More »
Quote: Synopsis On 20 May 1968, the workers of the Citroën factory in Nanterre decided not to go back to work. The “cops” of the factory were chased away… Chronicle of a strike in a factory which hadn’t had one for 20 years, symbol of capitalism where the boss is the only master after God.Read More »
The fight for the freedom of Loyalist Spain during the 1936-39 civil war pitted an International Brigade of 35,000 civilian soldiers from more than 50 nations against the well-equipped insurgents of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Aid to Franco came via Italian fighter planes from Mussolini and from the Nazi Condor Legion of Junker bombers sent by Hitler, who wanted to try out his new weaponry in anticipation of the larger war to come. Spurred by their government s failure to aid Spanish democracy, 2,800 American volunteers fought with distinction in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade within the international volunteer army. Read More »
Quote: “Fatma of the Forest”, documentary,reflects life, longings and a major “fear” in the subconscious of a 12-years old “woodcutter” girl living under very hard conditions in the forest of Toros Mountains at an altitude of approximately 2000 m. The documentary, aiming to symbolize a little-known but common practice of child labour, accomplishes a dramatic portrayal of laborers who work for Ministery of Forestry totally deprived of social security.Read More »
Quote: Staged in Algiers, the first Pan-African Cultural Festival was a momentous event, bringing together musicians and dancers from throughout the continent with many first-worlders joining in the jams. It was a moment of great postcolonial jubilation as representatives of national liberation movements converged on an Algeria that had gained its independence just seven years earlier. This energetic doc includes such luminaries of the moment as Amilcar Cabral, a writer who led the struggle in Guinea-Bissau; Miriam Makeba, the great African singer who was then married to Stokely Carmichael; Houari Boumédienne, Algeria’s military dictator; Stanislas Adotevi, the Benin philosopher who penned Negritude and Negrologists; and Eldridge Cleaver, who was living in Algiers, overseeing the Black Panther contingent at the festival. Klein’s coverage captures the astounding cultural mix, but also the militant resolve that permeated the gathering, making agit-appropriate correlations to the United States and its own colonial misadventure, the Vietnam War.Read More »
