France

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With Don’t Come Knocking, Wim Wenders revisits territory, both literal and metaphorical, first explored in Paris, Texas. Not only does he return to the Southwest, but Sam Shepard is back as co-writer. This time, he’s also the star. His Howard Spence is a movie cowboy who’s had enough. One day while working in Monument Valley, he takes off his boots and hops a train to Nevada to see his mother (Eva Marie Saint, lovely as ever). Little does he know that Sutter (Tim Roth), a by-the-books bondsman, is hot on his trail. Next, Spence travels to Montana where a sad young woman named Sky (Sarah Polley) is recovering from a recent death, while an angry young man named Earl (Gabriel Mann), who sounds much like Chris Isaak, plies the troubadour trade. Spence doesn’t know it yet, but they’re the results of a rambunctious past that will soon “come knocking,” as it were. Read More »

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A textured panorama of modern day Africa’s dynamic and volatile cross-cultural landscape, Claire Denis’s White Material is an abstract and elemental, if oddly sterile rumination on colonial legacy and socioeconomic stagnation. Unfolding in episodic flashbacks as second-generation coffee plantation owner, Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert) scrambles to make her way back home after a forced evacuation of European settlers in light of an escalating civil war, the film structurally interweaves the parallel lives of the Vial family, a band of roving child soldiers scouring the countryside for “white material” trophies from fleeing settlers, and a charismatic military officer turned rebel leader known as the Boxer (Isaach De Bankolé) who has gone into hiding to recover from injuries sustained during a recent skirmish.Read More »

Jean Renneval, a mature and attractive stage actor, seduces Thérèse Verdier, a beautiful woman whom he notices attending the play one evening. Henri Verdier, her husband, is about to leave in a business appointment, but he makes arrangements with Henriette – Thérèse’s friend – to stay at his place, and sleep there after dinner. He has learned from his first two earlier wives: Lucie cuckoo-ed him with Hector van Broken, his look-a-like; and Juliette with the sultan Hammanlif. His friend Marinier goes with him in the car to the railway station, and during their conversation, Verdier decides to return home – only to find he has been betrayed a third time. Renneval leaves the bedroom already dressed and composed with his costume of cardinal, and with his rhetoric convinces Verdier to accept his fate.Read More »

A boxer is out in the country with his entourage, training for his next fight. Meanwhile, on the farm nearby, Roger is neglecting his chores. As he watches the boxer and his sparring partners at work, Roger starts to fantasize about being a boxer himself. Then, when none of the boxer’s sparring partners can continue, he is asked to fill in, although he doesn’t know anything about how to box.Read More »

Synopsis:
School for Postmen (French: L’École des facteurs) is a short film directed by Jacques Tati in 1947. Tati plays a French postman adamant to prove he can be just as fast as American postmen at delivering mail. The film includes several sight gags that involve his bicycle. He replicated most of the action here in his first major feature film, Jour de fête, released two years later.Read More »

September 1972. A Palestinian commando called “Black September” takes hostage the Israeli delegation at the Munich Olympics. A forgotten détournement work by the video pioneer Carole Roussopoulos.Read More »

Synopsis:
Arman is 33 and ready to make a change, starting with a run in the park. When he literally bumps into Amélie – slightly cynical but nevertheless lovely – on the jogging path, he’s dead-set on making a connection with her. As a bit of contrived fate brings them together, Arman’s best friend Benjamin suffers an unexpected stroke, relegating him to the hospital for weeks where he falls for his doting young physical therapist. Over the course of two autumns and three winters, Arman, Amélie and Benjamin share the incidental moments, unexpected accidents, unconventional love stories and unforgettable memories that will define who they are.Read More »

Paris, 1482. Today is the festival of the fools, taking place like each year in the square outside Cathedral Notre Dame. Among jugglers and other entertainers, Esmeralda, a sensuous gypsy, performs a bewitching dance in front of delighted spectators. From up in a tower of the cathedral, Frollo, an alchemist, gazes at her lustfully. Later in the night, Frollo orders Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer and his faithful servant, to kidnap Esmeralda. But when the ugly freak comes close to her is touched by the young woman’s beauty…Read More »

Gai Dimanche is a 1935 three reel film written by and starring Jacques Tati and his friend Rhum. The pair star as down-and-outs (very much their situation in reality at the time) who try to generate funds by providing an impromptu leisure tour in a rickety bus they wangle use of for free. Released in 1935 and rarely seen today, the film offers brief glimpses and hints towards methods Tati would begin to perfect on the big screen a decade later.Read More »