Although it’s not even mentioned in Joseph McBride’s massive John Ford biography, this rare 1951 film is probably the best of Ford’s war documentaries. “This Is Korea!” was commissioned by the Navy to explain an unpopular war to the American public, but Ford, always a poet first and a propagandist second, chooses to depict, not a heroic battle against godless Communism, but the toll war takes on its participants.Read More »
Price of Pleasure:
Pornography, Sexuality & Relationships
Once relegated to the margins of society, pornography has emerged as one of the most visible and profitable sectors of the cultural industries, assuming an unprecedented role in the mainstream of our popular culture at the same time that its content has become more extreme and harsh, more overtly sexist and racist. This eye-opening and disturbing film tackles the complexity behind this seeming paradox, placing the voices of critics, producers, and performers alongside the observations of men and women as they candidly discuss the role pornography has played in shaping their sexual imaginations and relationships. Honest and non-judgmental, The Price of Pleasure moves beyond the liberal versus conservative debates so common in the culture to paint a myth-busting and nuanced portrait of how pleasure and pain, commerce and power, liberty and responsibility have become intertwined in the most intimate area of our lives. An ideal tool for initiating classroom discussion about this notoriously difficult subject.
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Synopsis
Andreia wants to move out. Leid is waiting for her husband, who is in prison. They are neighbors in a poor suburban slum of Belo Horizonte, trying to escape the daily dangers of a drug traffic war happening on the outside and avoid the tragedy that comes with the rain.Read More »
“On January 8, 1988, when I was ten years old, my parents decided to go on vacation and leave me with my brothers Santiago and Andrés who were 17 and 14 years old. That day I went to a friend’s birthday party and they were to pick me up in the afternoon. Night fell and dawn found me still waiting and watching at the window. They never arrived.” Read More »
The companion film to “Before Stonewall” by Greta Schiller & Robert Rosenberg (link), “After Stonewall”, narrated by Melissa Etheridge, explores gay history in the U.S. from the 1970s through the 1990s. Like its predecessor, After Stonewall attempts to cover much ground in a short amount of time; however, with only three decades to span, the assignment is more manageable. – Amazon.comRead More »
Quote:
A documentary about the 20th century German sculptor and performance artist Joseph Beuys.Read More »
When Jorge, a Chilean filmmaker living in New York, decides to seek a statue of a Portuguese neurologist in a park in Chile, a curious investigation begins in the streets of Santiago, Brooklyn and Lisbon, but also through the history of his native country and his own family memory – for which he tries to fi ll in the gaps. And what if the statue were really a bust? Or just a plaque? What if, instead of being in Chile, it were in Lisbon? And what if the film were really about something else? Because, from this starting point in anecdotal appearance, Jeronimo Rodriguez creates a refl ection on memory and disappearance – of people, places and things.Read More »
Human not human is not only the best Italian “experimental” film of the 60’s, but also one of the richest and most involving documents of “cinema of protest”. – Lino Miccichè
Schifano’s cinema is, as his paintings, spontaneous and gesture-based, quickly objectifying the world, and at the same time deeply thougth-out, and progresses by building up pictures and sounds.
Dissolves and pulsing images of television broadcasts plunge us in a completely unstable state of vision, allowing the author to avoid choosing, including in the same space different visions and distant, fragmentary, expanded timeframes.
If anything, the choice is left to the viewer and, from this point of view, “Human not human” becomes almost an interactive film, one that needs to be mentally rebuilt.Read More »
IMDB Review:
Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi is a film with no actors, no storyline, and no dialogue. The only things we see during the experimental documentary’s 87 minutes are natural landscapes, images of cities, and real people going about their regular lives. Yet from the very beginning, when we see the title of the film appear in blood-red characters and hear the voice of a bass soloist chanting the title like an incantation, it is difficult not to be swept away in captivation.Read More »