Drama

  • Mario O’Hara – Bulaklak sa City Jail AKA Flowers of the City Jail (1984)

    Mario O'Hara1981-1990DramaPhilippines

    Quote:
    Bulaklak sa City Jail–1984 Metro Manila Film Festival’s grand slam winner–is a tale of female empowerment in a patriarchal society, an exercise in observation of its female characters struggling to survive in the cruel society and a revelation of the many injustices, gendered or not, that Filipinos encounter in their lifetime.Read More »

  • Vítor Gonçalves – A Vida Invisível AKA The Invisible Life (2013)

    2011-2020DramaPortugalVítor Gonçalves

    Night falls over Lisbon. But Hugo can’t go home. Antonio has died, and for some reason, he can’t stop thinking about his old love, Adriana.

    Quote:
    The youth uncertainty of A Girl in Summer becomes middle age regret. A whole country in suspension living in a haunted house covered in shadows. A truly invisible life. This would make a great double bill with Horse Money, both reports on the Portuguese living dead from different class perspectives.Read More »

  • Fons Rademakers – Als twee druppels water AKA The Spitting Image (1963)

    Fons Rademakers1961-1970DramaMysteryNetherlandsQueer Cinema(s)

    Quote:
    Transformation under duress is at the nexus of this excellent wartime drama by noted Dutch filmmaker Fons Rademakers. The setting is Holland under German occupation and young Ducker (Lex Schoorel) is surviving the war and an unhappy marriage the best he can. Then one dark night, a mysterious secret agent who looks remarkably like Ducker except for his black hair, parachutes into the young man’s back yard. The secret agent, Dorbeck, enlists Ducker’s help in his missions against the Germans, and before much time has elapsed, Ducker has joined the resistance fighters and is actively engaged in the anti-German, underground war effort. He becomes daring, confident, imaginative — all the qualities missing in his earlier life. But then the war ends and brings an ironic twist to Ducker’s career as a brave patriot.
    Read More »

  • Jeanine Meerapfel – Malou (1981)

    Jeanine Meerapfel1981-1990DramaGermanyRomance

    Malou feels that the difficulties she is experiencing in her relationships lie in her past and so she searches out information about her mother. Her mother, a nightclub singer who lived in Germany, France and Argentina, becomes the focus of a series of flashbacks through which we learn of her mother’s stormy life and the difficulty she had in bringing her up. These insights enable Malou to sort out the difficulties in her own life.Read More »

  • Karim Aïnouz – O Abismo Prateado AKA The Silver Cliff (2011)

    Karim Aïnouz2011-2020BrazilDrama

    Violeta, 40 years old, dentist, married, a teenage son, is ready start another ordinary day, between her office and her new apartment in Copacabana. A phone message will take her to a journey in the streets of Rio till sunrise.Read More »

  • Ken Hughes – The House Across the Lake (1954)

    Ken Hughes1951-1960DramaFilm NoirHammer FilmsUSA

    Quote:
    Written and directed by Ken Hughes (the 1967 Casino Royale), Heat Wave employs the regular film noir convention of a man who has run out of rope confessing his story to an unseen presence (the audience). Novelist Mark Kendrick (the film’s requisite American, Alex Nicol, also known for Jacques Tourneur’s Great Day in the Morning) is found by a mysterious figure at the bar where he is drowning his sorrows, and Mark’s ready to spill them out. Cut to Mark wrestling with his typewriter at his lakeside home, looking across the water at an opulent house and the fancy lights on its dock (how Great Gatsby!). Carol Forrest (Hillary Brooke, Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd), a rich and glamorous blonde, phones him and asks him to ferry her friends across the lake, and of course, he ends up ferrying himself to his own doom.Read More »

  • William A. Wellman – Beggars of Life [+commentaries] (1928)

    William A. Wellman1921-1930DramaQueer Cinema(s)SilentUSA

    Synopsis:
    After killing her treacherous step-father, a girl tries to escape the country with a young vagabond. She dresses as a boy, they hop freight trains, quarrel with a group of hobos, and steal a car in their attempt to escape the police, and reach Canada.Read More »

  • Kianoush Ayari – Abadani-ha AKA The Abadanis (1993)

    Kianoush Ayari1991-2000DramaIran

    The car of a war refugee who is now living in Tehran is stolen. He with the help of his son begins a desperate search for finding his stolen car. Meanwhile he meets a man who can help him and his son Borna is too after his missing eyeglasses.Read More »

  • Krzysztof Zanussi – Suplement AKA The Supplement (2002)

    Krzysztof Zanussi2001-2010DramaPoland

    Quote:
    Young people, a medical student and a wardrobe maker are trying to be together. The boy hesitates about what his vocation is. He will go through various initiations before deciding whether to become a doctor and husband or a priest. A meeting with an old doctor will turn out to be crucial.

    As the title suggests, “The Supplement” is a complement to the film “Life as a Sexually Transmitted Disease” (2000) by Krzysztof Zanussi. The author develops the plot of the young characters, which runs parallel and intersects with the story of the old doctor’s death. Compositionally, the film is a montage of scenes from the previous film with new scenes and fragments of Zanussi’s youthful “Illumination” (1972) by Zanussi, which Filip watches on television. The film won the FIPRESCI Award at the Moscow International Film Festival (2002).Read More »

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