Drama

  • Lewis Seiler – Pittsburgh (1942)

    1941-1950ClassicsDramaLewis SeilerUSA

    Quote:

    This film is a hard one to assess. It is like a Western taken out of context, replacing the cowboys and Indians with coal miners and steel impresarios.

    Ostensibly two coal miners, Pittsburgh Markham and Cash Evans, best friends, chance upon Josie “Hunky” Winters a high-class “countess” and both men fall in love with her. She persuades them that they need to take chances if they are to get anywhere and they do, by shaving three cents off the price of coke and persuading a steel company owner, Morgan Prentiss to sign a contract with them to provide it.Read More »

  • Hayao Miyazaki – Kaze tachinu AKA The Wind Rises (2013)

    2011-2020AnimationDramaHayao MiyazakiJapan

    Synopsis
    Jiro dreams of flying and designing beautiful airplanes, inspired by the famous Italian aeronautical designer Caproni. Nearsighted from a young age and unable to be a pilot, Jiro joins a major Japanese engineering company in 1927 and becomes one of the world’s most innovative and accomplished airplane designers. The film chronicles much of his life, depicting key historical events, including the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, the Great Depression, the tuberculosis epidemic and Japan’s plunge into war. Jiro meets and falls in love with Nahoko, and grows and cherishes his friendship with his colleague Honjo.Read More »

  • Henri Decoin – La chatte aka The Cat (1958)

    1951-1960CrimeDramaFranceHenri Decoin

    Synopsis: Paris 1943. After her husband’s death, killed by the Germans, Cora joins the résistance under the pseudonym “La Chatte” (the she-cat). Very skillfully she succeeds in a dangerous mission. The same evening she meets a Swiss journalist, Bernard, and falls in love with him. Bernard is a German officer who now has to decide between his love for Cora and his mission.Read More »

  • Andrzej Munk – Czlowiek na torze AKA Man on the Tracks (1957)

    1951-1960Andrzej MunkDramaMysteryPoland

    In 1950, at night, a passenger train kills a man on the tracks. He is Orzechowski, an engineer since 1914. An inquiry immediately follows. Testimony takes the form of flashbacks. Tuszka, the station master, believes Orzechowski was a saboteur; at least one on the inquiry panel agrees. Zapora, the young engineer on the train that hit Orzechowski, gives more complicated testimony about the dead man – stiff-necked, proud, imperious, critical of Zapora and other younger workers. The signalman at the crossing where Orzechowski died also testifies. Can the panel arrive at the truth in a world where workers unite, inferior coal is a badge of honor, and the old order is suspect?Read More »

  • Marco Bellocchio – I pugni in tasca AKA Fists in the Pocket (1965)

    1961-1970ArthouseDramaItalian Neo-RealismItalyMarco Bellocchio

    Quote:
    Tormented by twisted desires, a young man takes drastic measures to rid his grotesquely dysfunctional family of its various afflictions in this astonishing 1965 debut from Marco Bellocchio. Charged by a coolly assured style, shocking perversity, and savage gallows humor, Fists in the Pocket (I pugni in tasca) was a gleaming ice pick in the eye of bourgeois family values and Catholic morality, a truly unique work that continues to rank as one of the great achievements of Italian cinema.Read More »

  • Ozualdo Ribeiro Candeias – A Margem (1967)

    1961-1970BrazilDocumentaryDramaOzualdo Ribeiro Candeias

    At the riverside of Rio Tiete, in São Paulo, prostitutes, a pimp, a retarded man, a handicap, people in the margin of the society live their ordinary hopeless lives without any expectation and waiting to die and join themselves in the boat of hell. (IMDB)Read More »

  • Fernando E. Solanas – La nube AKA Clouds (1998)

    1991-2000DramaFernando E. SolanasFrance

    Quote:
    An eclectic group of actors struggle to save their theater from being demolished and replaced with a shopping mall. Max, the leader of the troupe, is a workaholic director who abandoned his family to build his career and is forced to confront the daughter he deserted. Then there is Enrique, the playwright-poet who is reduced to pawning his belongings to sustain his livelihood when his state pension is severed. Finally, there is Fulo who is driven to succeed so that she can bring her daughter from Rio de Janeiro.Read More »

  • Jasmila Zbanic – Na putu AKA On the Path [+Extra] (2010)

    2001-2010Bosnia HerzegovinaDramaJasmila Zbanic

    Synopsis:
    Luna and Amar are a couple. Their relationship is under great strain. First of all, Amar loses his job for being drunk at work. Luna is very worried and has little hope of realising her fragile dream of having a child with Amar. But her fears for their future increase when Amar takes on a well-paid job in a Muslim community hours away from where they live. Only after quite some time has elapsed during which they have had no contact with each other, is Luna allowed to visit Amar in this community of conservative Wahhabis in its idyllic lakeside location.Read More »

  • Ruth Beckermann – Die Geträumten AKA The Dreamed Ones (2016)

    2011-2020AustriaDramaRuth Beckermann

    Quote:
    The themes of love and hate are depicted in the movie. At center stage are the two poets Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan, who came to know each other in post‐war Vienna. Their vivid postal exchange creates the textual basis of the film.Read More »

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