Quote: The Locarno Film Festival is renowned for showing interesting, unconventional films, favoring fresh, undiscovered talent over established names. The two do occasionally mix: one example is Anthony Hopkins’ directorial debut Slipstream, a stream-of-consciousness satire that competed at the 2007 edition. It didn’t win anything, though: the prestigious Golden Leopard was picked up by Masahiro Kobayashi, who stunned critics and audiences with The Rebirth, a minimalistic character study of rare poignancy.Read More »
John Ford returned to his Irish roots in this lighthearted gem featuring three short films introduced by Tyrone Power and shot entirely in Ireland.
The first, “The Majesty of the Law”, is the droll tale of a police inspector (Cyril Cusack) trying to serve a warrant on an old man (Noel Purcell) who assaulted his neighbour.
“A Minute’s Wait” tells the farcical story of how a train’s one-minute station stop turns into a two-hour delay. Filmed on the late, lamented West Clare Railway.Read More »
The first TV glimpse of Alan Bleasdale’s alienated, down-at-heel scouse youth Franny Scully, as he invites his mates to gatecrash his mum’s new year’s eve party, which Bleasdale had developed in stories for Radio Merseyside. Scully and mate Mooey made strange dramatised cameos on misfiring waterbound Saturday morning miscellany The Mersey Pirate, before graduating to a series for Granada television.Read More »
‘These refuseniks have all been denied visas to go to Israel. Some are in prison, others are suffering KGB harassment even as I speak… the point of asking you here is to find ways of mounting a barrage of publicity in the media. To act as horseflies, if you like, on the Kremlin’s rump.’Read More »
A young actor with his backbone broken (he is crippled after a bad fall on the stage) is being treated in a hospital. He is invalidated for good and he wills not to live further on. He gets acquainted with a 10-year-old boy, Leonid, from the adjoining room. The boy is spending time in hospital with an arm in a plastic cast. They make friends. In fact, the actor intends to use the kid to provide him with poison. He starts telling a marvelous fairy tale. “Yo-ho-ho” – this old refrain of a pirate song is all too familiar. For the sake of the boy the Actor invents stories about the good buccaneer who is fighting the evil ruler Alvarez who must be punished for his crimes. Little by little the real people in hospital are transformed into the imaginary heroes of the pirate stories that the Actor and the child vanquished by goodness, honesty and self-denial. The boy is fascinated. Gradually, this pre-planned friendship develops into sincere devotion and affection. Leonid’s attachment to his older friend, and his trustfulness and good heart make the Actor abandon his plan of suicide and restore his faith in life. He realizes that life is worth living it, even if paralyzed.Read More »
Jacob Gronlykke directed this $3 million Danish drama, the first production filmed completely in Greenland, with Inuit dialogue. The story begins with the 1947 ceremonies in which Greenland becomes part of Denmark; Danish king Christian X gives a ceremonial rifle to Greenland’s Niisi Lynge. A half-century later, Niisi’s son Rasmus (Rasmus Lyberth) still has the rifle, but past dreams have gone sour. The alcoholic Rasmus, married to aggressive Marie (Vivi Nielsen), has many problems because of his drinking, and so does his son Niisi (Knud Peterson), who drunkenly kills his brother’s girlfriend and then commits suicide. The grief-stricken Rasmus sets out across the frozen land on a risky hunting trip, and the film’s tone shifts from realism to satire as Danish female environmentalists make fun of his crude clothing and gear. A helicopter pilot lands and tries to talk Rasmus into turning back. In a folkloric vein, Rasmus encounters a hermit, the Qivittoq (Anda Kristiansen), who takes him into a mystical world for a reunion with his father. Shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.Read More »
Daniel is an exemplary policeman, but he ends up making a mistake and becoming suspended. With nothing keeping him in his hometown, he goes to visit his online love interest.Read More »
In Belgium, Silvio Donati, a young painter, meets Dorothée Yanakov, a rich woman, older than him. Tempted by her money, Silvio marries her. After a time, while in Mykonos for business, Silvio comes across Pascale, his former mistress. Soon, their flame is rekindled and Dorothée instantly becomes a disturbance. The only way out for Silvio is to get rid of his wife…Read More »
This short is set in the early 1950s in a small textile factory in central Italy (Prato). Giovanna and her fellow female workers decide to enact a protest against the direction of the factory’s dismissal plan, by occupying the factory and continuing to work until the proprietor cancels the dismissals. None of these women can really afford to lose their jobs, as it is the only income in the family. All workers receive moral and material support from their families, apart from Giovanna, who bravely endures her husband’s disapproval. Almost all the women hold out for thirty-five days in spite of the proprietor’s attempts to break their resistance. At first he blocks the road to the factory, then he cuts off electric power to increase their isolation; finally, he tries to convince them to accept the dismissal of at least a smaller number of them. But the women overcome these obstacles, determined to resist… (IMDB)Read More »
