Drama

The institute that this film is about existed twice. Once as the top-secret Institute for Physical Problems as part of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, which was in operation from 1938 to 1968, and a second time as the largest film set in Europe, which was destroyed at the end of the project. The DAU Institute in Kharkiv was an experiment designed by director Ilya Khrzhanovskiy in which leading mathematicians, artists, philosophers and mystics lived and worked between 2009 and 2011. Among other things, they explored the foundations and limits of intellectual understanding and human action, working towards the creation of a “new human being” and beyond, to the bloody end. Read More »

Natasha and Olga work in the canteen of a secret Soviet research institute. This is the beating heart of the DAU universe, everyone drops in here: the institute’s employees, scientists and foreign guests, like Luc Bigé. Natasha begins an affair with him, but not before she and Olga have a lengthy talk about love which puts them at loggerheads. In her bathtub and during jovial drinking games, Natasha ponders her lovers and describes the Frenchman as being “gentle”. But the secret service, headed by Vladimir Azhippo, intervenes. For Natasha (and us) this is an “ungentle” experience. Even those who know nothing about Ilya Khrzhanovskiy’s DAU project – a large-scale simulation of the totalitarian system under Stalin and after – will be able to recognise in the artistic and political dimensions of DAU. Read More »

Diagnosed with cancer, a Siberian man, inspired by an ancient folk tale, tries to fool death by adopting a new identity—one that leads to ostracism and violence from the others in his village.

Egor, a forest ranger in Siberia, finds out he has terminal cancer. He accepts his prognosis and prepares for the inevitable. His wife (Natalia Kudryashova), who is expecting another child, begs him to visit a shaman, who relates a Russian folktale about a creature who fooled fate by disguising itself. Therefore, Egor decides to disguise himself and dress as a woman. Dressing as a woman in a Siberian village is an audacious move that is way beyond the comprehension of the locals, and worst of all, his son and wife, who are mortified. Read More »

TV Guide writes:
Gowan McGland (Tom Conti) is a Scottish poet who is finding life something of a burden since his inspiration evaporated about five years ago. Now he is reduced to performing readings of his work to groups of adoring middle-aged women and bored college students, doing his best to take away the pain by sleeping with as many of his female fans as possible and drinking himself into a stupor. At the moment he is living in New England where his readings have gone down well, and his list of conquests has grown – but what if McGland were to actually fall in love, would that make him a changed man?Read More »

Quote:
Stan, screeplay writer, had his time of glory in Hollywood. Today, alcoholic with a certain envy for suicide, his only link to life is his daughter, Charlotte.Read More »

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The story of Stan, a misunderstood poet, who makes a living teaching English to schoolchildren while writing a screenplay on the side.Read More »

Louis de Rochemont, former March of Time producer whose docudrama films proved so popular in the 1940s, offers more of the same in Walk East on Beacon. Based on an article written – or ghostwritten – by J. Edgar Hoover, the film concerns the efforts by the FBI to plug up a dangerous security leak. Federal agent Belden – George Murphy- is assigned to locate the communist mastermind behind the leak, and to trace all avenues of informational access utilized by the Bad Guys. Finlay Currie co-stars as an Einstein-like scientist who is being blackmailed by the Reds into cooperating with them, while Karel Stepanek is slime personified as the top Eastern-Bloc spy. Largely filmed on location in New York, Walk East on Beacon makes good use of several Manhattan-based actors, few of whom were seen in films either before or since.Read More »

Synopsis:
Joe, a rootless young drifter, finds work on a barge travelling between Glasgow and Edinburgh, owned by Les and his wife Ella. One afternoon they discover the corpse of a young woman floating in the water. Accident? Suicide? Murder? As the police investigate and suspect is arrested, we discover that Joe knows more than he is letting on. Gradually we learn of Joe’s past relationship with the dead woman. Meanwhile an unspoken attraction develops between Joe and Ella, heightening the claustrophobic tensions in the confined space of the barge.Read More »

Synopsis:
Erich von Stroheim is The Great Flamarion, a marksman who employs Mary Beth Hughes and Dan Duryea, a married couple, for his vaudeville act. Having decided to rid herself of her husband, Mary Beth plots to trick von Stroheim into doing the dirty work for her.Read More »