From the blu-ray cover: Henri Storck (Ostend 1907 – Brussels 1999) lived through the whole history of cinema, passing from silent to sound, and from experimental to commercial films. He is recognised as a pioneer of Belgian cinema and a key figure in documentary. Misère au Borinage, which he co-directed with Joris Ivens in 1933, has become a classic of the ‘cinema of reality’ with which he was most closely associated.Read More »
Set in Istanbul, the film opens with a surprisingly candid scene of Baldwin leisurely awakening in his bedroom. Sedat Pakay, a Turkish filmmaker who studied with Walker Evans, is known for his photographic portraits of famous artists and writers, Baldwin among them. Here in Istanbul, Baldwin seems relatively relaxed, walking among crowds in a public park or on the city’s streets. His focus is personal, even intimate: “The life I live is very different from what people imagine. I love a few men. I love a few women. Love comes in many strange packages; it never comes to you as you think it will. I think the trick is to say yes to life.” He speaks of how difficult it is concentrate and to write in the United States and says that “American men are paranoiac on the subject of homosexuality.” The film offers us a self-reflective James Baldwin, one who fearlessly examines his most private thoughts and feelings.Read More »
The city of Marseille, close to the estuary of the Rhône River, has long been recognized as an important transit port for all of Europe. Nestler’s film is set against the backdrop of the industrialization at Fos-sur-Mer, some 32 kilometers northwest of Marseille. It gives an account of the port’s development since the late 1960s. In addition, Fos-sur-Mer recalls the living conditions of some 7.000 laborers working on this industrial site.Read More »
The documentary chronicles about four decades in a small farming village of Eressos on the island of Lesbos, where lesbian women from around the world have been gathering since the late ’70s.Read More »
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Documentary that covers the famous and successful expedition of the Everest conquest by Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, the first climbers to reach its peak.Read More »
Nicolás Zukerfeld’s feature is a wry, surprising work of filmmaking-as-criticism that traces a mysterious and amusing arc across the vast oeuvre of pantheon auteur Raoul Walsh, before suddenly reinventing itself as an essayistic investigation into memory, cinema, and their shared mutability.Read More »
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An invitation to probe into one of Egypt’s least exposed areas: the world of psychiatry and “madness”. The daily detention of those who have gone to the other side of society. The film is a foray into this world of outcast and recluses.Read More »
Synopsis(borrowed from Sixpackfilm)
Resistance to the political change which took place in Austria in the year 2000, even when coming from members of the alleged opposition, is repeatedly dismissed as a hysterical reaction. The claim is made that this was a “normal democratic change.”
This characterization obscures the fact that the protest was directed primarily at a party whose populist program is intended to mobilize authoritarian and misanthropic prejudices. Furthermore, these protests were and are intended to stop the “integration of popular racism” (Steyerl) into the social and political mainstream, which is also on the rise in countries other than Austria.Read More »