France

“This film isn’t listed in the official corpus of Oliver Mosset’s pictorial works, doesn’t appear in the (now historicized) filmography of the Zanzibar group (created one night in May 1968), but is related to Mosset’s photographical oeuvre, a process of random production emancipated from the subject and from representation. Film Porno is only a sequence taken from history, an abstract moment dealing with reality and chance.”
“After having spent a year in Warhol’s Factory, painter Olivier Mosset returned to Paris with an appetite for film and began hosting Super 8 nights in his apartment. UN FILM PORNO is a miniature sample.”Read More »

SYNOPSIS:

German filmmaker Vincent Dieutre is accompanied by a close friend’s teenage son on a trip to Berlin and in the process reminisces about his life as a gay man in his 2003 autobiographical documentary entitled Mon Voyage d’Hiver (My Voyage in Winter). Dieutre and his traveling companion, Itvan, visit numerous friends and landmarks, all holding special meaning to the 40-year-old filmmaker as they make their way to the German capital. As the pair grows closer as friends, Dieutre also takes on a paternalistic relationship with the boy as he details his own journey of self discovery — partially to assist Itvan with his own adult transformation, but also as a means for Dieutre’s own legacy to endure. My Voyage in Winter was selected for inclusion into the Forum Program of the 2003 Berlin International Film Festival.
~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie GuideRead More »

Suzanne Simonin describes her life of suffering in letters. As a young woman she is sent to a convent against her will. Since her parents cannot afford the dowry required for a marriage befitting her rank they decide she must instead become a nun. Although a kind and understanding Mother Superior helps her to learn the convent’s daily routine, Suzanne’s desire for freedom remains unabated. When the Mother Superior dies, Suzanne finds herself faced with reprisals, humiliation and harassment at the hands of the new Abbess and the other Sisters. For many years, Suzanne is subjected to bigotry and religious fanaticism.Read More »

Charles Desvalles (Michel Bouquet) becomes suspicious that his wife Helene (Stephane Audran) is having an affair. Charles hires a private detective who comes up with the
name of Victor Pegala (Maurice Ronet) and then goes off to confron his wife’s lover.Read More »

Synopsis:
Pierre (Pierre Richard-Willm), a young lawyer, has enormous debts due to his mistress Florence (Marie Bell), and her whims of luxury life. Pierre has gone too far and put the family firm in jeopardy. They ask him to expatriate. To avoid scandal, Pierre joins the Foreign Legion. In Morocco, near the desert, Pierre goes with his comrades of the Legion to a bar-restaurant-brothel, owned by a shady character, Mr. Clement (Charles Vanel). Clement lives more or less with Ms.Blanche (Françoise Rosay) who is a fortune teller with cards, as a hobby. But Clement is also after his girls now and then. Pierre is still obsessed with Florence but he meets Irma (Marie Bell), one of Clement’s girls, who is the double of Florence except for hair color. Irma has had an accident and has lost part of her memory at a certain point of her recent past, and Pierre slowly persuades himself she is Florence, but cannot remember it. Advised by Ms.Blanche, Irma finally accepts to act as if she was Florence because she is falling in love with Pierre. Near the end of his contract with the Legion, Pierre receives news from France. He has inherited a fortune. He asks Irma to come to France with him, and they make plans. But Clement tries to rape Irma and Pierre has to kill him.Read More »

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A man entranced by his dreams and imagination is love-struck with a French woman and feels he can show her his world.

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Michel Gondry assembles alternate version of his The Science of Sleep
from cut scenes and B-roll footage.Read More »

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The presences of the exemplary Nouvelle Vague icons Bernadette Lafont and Bulle Ogier in the female lead roles notwithstanding, what cachet 1971’s Les Stances a Sophie has accrued over the years is largely extra-cinematical. Its soundtrack, composed and performed by the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago … was for many years a much sought-after item among contemporary jazz fans, and with excellent reason. Like many free-music pioneers, the Art Ensemble decamped to Paris in the late ’60s, where there was both a larger and more welcoming audience for its work and at least one pioneering record label (BYG …) throwing studio time at any number of adventurous artists. The Ensemble’s work for this soundtrack finds them folding classical themes and contemporary soul stylings into its already effortlessly eclectic and daring musical bag. “Theme de Yoyo,” with Bass declaiming a critique of the battle of the sexes that’s a raw counterpoint to some of the more politely limned tensions playing out in the film at that point, is an ever-bracing piece that suggests all sorts of post-Brechtian possibilities for movie music—possibilities that really haven’t been too thoroughly explored since. It’s also pretty killer when listened to entirely on its own.Read More »

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La France est notre Patrie (English: France Is Our Mother Country) is a 2015 Cambodian-French film directed by Rithy Panh. This latest film of the director is a story of a failed encounter between two cultures, two sensitivities, two realms of imagination: an encounter which resulted in a colonization not exempt from brutality while it could have avoided wars, chaos and destruction. Primarily based on extracts of archive film shot mainly in Indochina in the early twentieth century until the fall of Dien Bien Phu, this film is a continuation of a cinematographic reflection about time, memory and looking.Read More »

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“In a tightly knit rural community, Marie and her mother are outcasts, living in a small wood cabin. Marie is exploited and abused by both her employer, a lesbian landowner, and her oversexed male neighbours, who include the town’s mayor and a seemingly respectable shopkeeper. When her mother is killed in a road accident, Marie decides it is time to turn the tables on her tormenters. She starts to make them pay for her sexual favours, and, thanks to her innate talent for seduction, she soon becomes the wealthiest person in the area. In the end, her neighbours decide that Marie is a corrupting influence and contrive to have her forced out of the village. Marie, however, intends to have the last laugh…”Read More »