Colourful, wildly stylised, immense captivating fable, including animation, kabuki and butoh and collapsing sets. About a soothsayer at court who was driven to insanity by the murder of his lover and will marry her likeness. And indeed, she’s a fox in human form!Read More »
Remarkable graduation film from KASK in Ghent with an entirely unique style. Fedor is a young locksmith in Murmansk, a frozen city in the darkness of the Russian arctic. He wanders from client to client through the concrete alleyways driven by a fantasy that isolates him from the city and its inhabitants. His dreams erode his sense of reality, opening the door to a phantasmagorical universe: a second sun rises over the horizon.Read More »
Quote:
The matriarchal clan led by gorgeous Margarita (Renata Litvinova) enters a turbulent period when her son loses his beloved fiancée. Using the structure of a repetitive ritual, the action spans years but takes place mostly during the annual gatherings of Margarita’s extraordinary family in their mansion on New Year’s Eve. Margarita believes in the magical 13th hour that can break the eternal circle of repetition, defeat death and bring her much-awaited love.Read More »
Idiots and Angels (2008)
Angel is a selfish, abusive, morally bankrupt man who hangs out as his local bar, berating the other patrons. One day, Angel mysteriously wakes up with a pair of wings on his back. The wings make him do good deeds, contrary to his nature. He desperately tries to rid himself of the good wings, but eventually finds himself fighting those who view the wings as their ticket to fame and fortune.Read More »
The Raven (1963) Quote:
In this tongue-in-cheek movie inspired by Poe’s poem, Dr. Craven is the son of a great sorcerer (now dead) who was once himself quite skilled at that profession, but has since abandoned it. One evening, a cowardly fool of a magician named Bedlo comes to Craven for help- the evil Scarabus has turned him into a raven and he needs someone to change him back. He also tells the reluctant wizard that Craven’s long-lost wife Lenore, whom he loved greatly and thought dead, is living with the despised Scarabus.Read More »
Plot / Synopsis (Pako to mahô no ehon (2008)
There once was a hospital where patients and even doctors and nurses were all strange. Above all, Onuki, a patient who built up his own company, is a super cranky old man. One day, he meets up a girl named called Paco, who cannot retain memory beyond one day due to a car accident. She reads the same picture book everyday. As time passes, Onuki starts bonding with Paco, and begins to doubt his way of living. He starts wanting to do something for Paco with his remaining life, and comes up with a brilliant idea. This pleases Paco, but their fate is…Read More »
In a Chilean little town, the son of an uprooted couple, formed by a rigorous communist father and a loving but weak mother, tries to pave his own path in a society that does not understand their Jewish-Ukrainian origins.Read More »
Lewin’s fascination with the exotic and the esoteric comes to a head in his final film. A British archaeologist working in Mexico becomes convinced that a local woman is actually the reincarnation of an Aztec princess. The idea of Mexico as a place where the archaic coexists with the modern fascinated foreigners from Antonin Artaud to William Burroughs. Having already juxtaposed the archaic and the modern in Pandora, Lewin revisits this trope here. The Living Idol dares the ridiculous (even) more than most other Lewin films, and doesn’t always pass the test. But its striking use of widescreen cinematography, as in the climactic moment of a sinister panther stalking a deserted Mexico City plaza, makes it a worthy companion to Dorian Gray and Pandora.Read More »
