Documentary

Despite harsh condemnation and denunciation from society, a heterosexual female pastor founded Taiwan’s first LGBT-affirming church in May 1996. For LGBT Christians, who had been rejected by the Christian community for a long time, they finally have a church that offers them a safe haven. Though the founder has passed away, the church members continue to make their voice heard, confronting the unjust social institutions while struggling with religious conflict at the same time. Come hell or high water, they strive to make a difference in the lives of others by telling their own life stories, in hope that love will eventually trump hate and solve misunderstanding someday.Read More »

Renowned French photographer and Nan Goldin disciple Antoine D’Agata offers this visual essay of Tokyo prostitution circuits that isn’t for the easily offended. By exploring the prostitutes’ filthy working rooms and capturing the sex workers as they service clients, shoot heroin, and masturbate with their own blood, D’Agata effectively shatters the standard perception of the porn industry. ~ Jason Buchanan, RoviRead More »

SYNOPSIS
The film style of Robert Bresson is the subject of this documentary tribute to the French director and screenwriter, and to his minimalist auteur films about sensitive individuals (or even animals) trying unsuccessfully to survive in a cruel world. Weg Naar Bresson is divided into several segments with specific themes, such as “camera” or “theory,” that are illustrated by film clips, and interviews with Bresson himself (a coup), and also with acclaimed directors Andrei Tarkovsky, Louis Malle, and Paul Schrader (who also wrote a book on three directors, including Bresson).

– Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »

A dying town in the lush, water-fed mountains of Japan’s southeastern Nara Prefecture inspires Mexican multihyphenate Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio to ruminate on natural wonders and the melancholy inevitability facing an aging population in “Inori.” Produced by Naomi Kawase as part of her Nara Film Fest’s Narative project, the docu adheres closely to the Kawase model of nature lensed in a minor key, and fans of Gonzalez-Rubio’s “Alamar” will find gentle pleasures in this agreeable yet slight work.Read More »

This is the fourth in a series of seven projected video essays (four of which were completed) that Ruiz was commissioned to make in 2002-2003 for use among Chilean community organizations and broadcast on public television. Cofralandes, the head-title for each of the segments of Ruiz’s series, is taken from a song by Violeta Parra where it evokes the “land of milk and honey,” the “land of Cockayne,” the “green world” imagined by Gonzalo in The Tempest.Read More »

This is the second in a series of seven projected video essays that Ruiz was commissioned to make in 2002-2003 for use among Chilean community organizations and broadcast on public television. Cofralandes, the head-title for each of the segments of Ruiz’s series, is taken from a song by Violeta Parra where it evokes the “land of milk and honey,” the “land of Cockayne,” the “green world” imagined by Gonzalo in The Tempest.Read More »

txt from Strictly Film School
(…)
“In Pain Is…, Dwoskin’s thoughtful rumination on the nature of pain, this intersection occurs in the conceptual mechanism of pain itself, in the way it surfaces amorphously, imprecisely, throughout the process and conduct of life, as well as in its insidious ability to create a subconscious shift in (sensorial) awareness – in essence, to reconfigure (if not transform) one’s immediate reality because of its existence. It is this untenable quality of pervasiveness and indefinability that Dwoskin articulates in an introductory analogy that sets the tone for the film’s organic (and inherently circular) exposition:Read More »

Quote:
For more than twenty years the films of Ruiz have led us into the fields of uninhibited delirium, free associations, and intricate games of collage. Ruiz, paying no heed to conventions, leads his audience into a labyrinth without a map, without warning and without an Ariadne allowed to help them retrace their steps. “Regulars only” seems to be the imperative which thrusts us into his creative world. However, it is a playful attitude that he proposes. Labyrinth, yes, but devouring monster, no — except the one we assemble ourselves from the fragments of mirrors that Ruiz has left scattered on the road. These fragments, their selection and random order, is indeed the art of Ruiz.Read More »

Quote:
The foolish servant Pulcinella is sent from the depths of Mt. Vesuvius to present-day Campania to honor the last wishes of the poor shepherd Tommaso: his mission is to save a young buffalo called Sarchiapone. Pulcinella finds the animal at the former royal palace of Carditello, where Tommaso had looked after the ruined Bourbon estate in the heart of the Land of Fires. He takes the buffalo off to the north and the two servants, man and beast, travel through a beautiful and lost Italy, but their long journey’s end does not bring what they were hoping for.Read More »