Drama

Synopsis:
Katina, an impoverished Greek woman, tries to arrange the marriage of her shepherd son, Thanos, to Despina, the daughter of a wealthy landowner. But when Despina’s father, Vlahopoulos refuses to give his blessings and wants Despina to marry a more wealthy gentleman, named Yankos. The wealthy and spoiled Yankos plots to break up the romantic union between Thanos and Despina any way posible while the young lovers plot to run away in a futile attempt to being a new life for themselves.Read More »

Synopsis:
In this 1976 character study by Czech director Frantisek Vlacil, a stout middle-aged physician whose marriage has come apart (Rudolf Hrusinsky) establishes a practice in a small town. Gradually he’s drawn into the lives of his patients—a childless couple, a pregnant girl with a stern mother, the son of a duck farmer—and each relationship reveals a bit more about him and the idyllic but insular community. Vlacil is hardly known for his light touch, but the film’s austere look and elegiac chamber music, at times Bressonian in their severity, convey the doctor’s quest for fulfillment and peace of mind. Hrusinsky, who was blacklisted in Czechoslovakia for his anticommunist stance, ennobles his role by underplaying it.Read More »

Macedonian partisans take up the struggle against Bulgarian fascists that occupy Macedonia. This was not by any means an easy battle since Bulgaria was the only German ally that did not send troops to the Russian front. Thus, the entire Bulgarian military machine could, without distraction, dedicate its efforts to crushing the Macedonian resistance.Read More »

Synopsis:
In mid-nineteenth-century northern France, a coal mining town’s workers are exploited by the mine’s owner. One day, they decide to go on strike, and the authorities repress them.Read More »

A portrait of small-town oppressiveness in the Philippines, made during the Marcos government’s imposition of martial law. Lino Brocka’s 1974 film tells of two social outcasts struggling to survive the hypocritical condemnation of their fellow villagers; the tone ranges from comedy to tragedy to documentary observation of village rituals.Read More »

When the young would-be artist Tino arrives in Venice to live at the house of his uncle while he studies art, he soon discovers that his Austrian/Venetian uncle’s house is packed with mystery — there are abandoned rooms from which strange sounds emanate. Eventually, he is told that his uncle’s insane brother is being kept in rooms on the top floor, and only Uncle Fabio (who is seldom home) is permitted to visit them. However, youth and curiosity impel him onward to even more discoveries.Read More »

Paolo and Vittorio Taviani first garnered critical attention with this adaptation of Gavino Ledda’s autobiography, winning both the Golden Palm and the Critics Prize at Cannes in 1977. Gavino’s father pulls him out of elementary school at the age of 6 to force him into the life of a Sardinian shepherd, often severely beating him. Yet Gavino’s illiteracy spurs him on to eventually earn a university degree on Sardinian dialects. And it’s his journey from the cruel, solitary, animal world of shepherding under the yoke of his tyrant Padre, to that of a writer and a linguist that forms the body of this tale. But more, it’s a showcase for the talents of the Taviani brothers, whose style keeps us distant from their subject, like a child watching an ant colony.Read More »

LADYBIRD 32mins
Directed by: Nello PEPE Starring: Francesca Nunzi & Marco Di Stefano

A sperm donor has some trouble providing a specimen, whilst the eager lady thinks up elaborate ways to get him going. Francesca Nunzi has a sperm donor over to leave a sample but he has difficulty getting aroused. They try music, phone sex, and even a strip tease, but nothing is working. They finally find a simpler way to get the sperm where it needs to be.Read More »

Criterion wrote:
In her provocative first feature, Chantal Akerman stars as an aimless young woman who leaves self-imposed isolation to embark on a road trip that leads to lonely love affairs with a male truck driver and a former girlfriend. With its famous real-time carnal encounter and its daring minimalism, Je tu il elle is Akerman’s most sexually audacious film.Read More »