Romance

Leonardo Favio´s long awaited return to the movies was a triumph. On August 3rd, the Argentinean Film Journalists Association gave the Condor Awards to the 2008 local film production, and Aniceto, Favio´s latest film, got 9 out of the 11 statues it had been nominated for.

A musical remake of his own previous film “Éste es el romance del Aniceto y la Francisca…” (This is the romance of Aniceto and Francisca…), the movie won the awards for Best Film, Best Director (Leonardo Favio), Best Adapted Screenplay (Favio and others, based on Jorge Zuhair Jury´s short story), Best New Actor (Hernán Piquín), Best Cinematography (Alejandro Giuliani), Best Editing (Paola Amor), Best Sound and Music (Iván Wyszogrod), and Best Art Direction (Andrés Echebeste).Read More »

Synopsis:
Just before Christmas, Lee Leander is caught shoplifting. It is her third offense. She is prosecuted by John Sargent. He postpones the trial because it is hard to get a conviction at Christmas time. But he feels sorry for her and arranges for her bail, and ends up taking her home to his mother for Christmas. Surrounded by a loving family (in stark contrast to Lee’s own family background) they fall in love. This creates a new problem: how do they handle the upcoming trial?Read More »

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During the most brutal days of World War I, Apostol Bologa (the extraordinary Victor Rebengiuc), a Romanian serving as a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army, is part of the Court Martial that punishes deserters and other problem soldiers. Gradually the horror of his routine builds up inside of him, forcing a choice between his military duty and greater feelings of humanity. Ciulei’s most ambitious and masterfully realized film, particularly striking in its impressionistic landscape photography, the Forest of the Hanged earned Ciulei the Best Director prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival and became the first Romanian feature to attract widespread international attention. It remains one of the cinema’s greatest studies of the dehumanizing effects of war. Screening introduced by critic Magda Mihailescu.Read More »

The fifth and last film of Nyrki Tapiovaara (1911–40), released posthumously after his tragically premature death during the last days of the Winter War, and finished by one of the film’s actors, Hugo Hytönen, with some help from Erik Blomberg and Mirjami Kuosmanen, future collaborators on The White Reindeer. As with Tapiovaara’s earlier films Stolen Death (1938) and Kaksi Vihtoria (“Two Henpecked Husbands”, 1939), Blomberg was the film’s producer and cinematographer, while Kuosmanen had one of her first major roles in the film. The film was an adaptation of recent Nobel laureate F. E. Sillanpää’s 1932 novel and, along with Teuvo Tulio’s rural melodramas of the late ’30s (including one Sillanpää adaptation, the now-lost Nuorena nukkunut), one of the crucial trope-setters for Finnish cinema in the years to come, with its depictions of breathtaking landscapes, love on the hayfield, and drunken brawls at country dances.Read More »

Over turning given assumptions about gay identity with it’s 1st world connotations as well as our less informed view of the sub-Saharan African context, this gentle, humble film depicts the less often if ever portrayed life of gay love in rural Africa.

This film’s relevance & point of interest is that it remains perhaps the only example of it’s kind to provide images which counteract notions of homophobia & the non existence of homosexuality in the realm of ‘blackness’, ‘Africa’ and the developing world & provides an accessible & familiar story of the dilemmas of love specifically within all three contexts usually understood to exclude gay representation.Read More »

Synopsis:
The story centers on a young gigolo, Bertrand Valade who steals the manuscript of a dying client. After a year, becomes a playwright and is now living in a decked-out Parisian apartment. The only problem is that his producer, Regis Grant has been waiting impatiently for a new play which the imposter Bertrand is somehow supposed to write. When Bertrand shows up for a rehearsal of his hit play, which is now touring the provinces, he crosses paths with a high-class call girl, Eva who quickly becomes an obsession that will ruin his life.Read More »

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1958. Rose is a terrible secretary but a demon typist. Her handsome boss resolves to turn her into the fastest girl in the world.Read More »

Plot:
Questi fantasmi is based on what was a very popular play by Eduardo De Filippo. In fact, so popular that it was filmed three times during the ’50s and ’60s. The version uploaded here was the latter of these three adaptations, directed by Renato Castellani, and starring Vittorio Gassman and Sophia Loren in the principal parts of the married couple, who moves into a house that may or may not be haunted. Its “classic” pedigree notwithstanding, the film feels very much like a ’60s production, and it is not Castellani’s best work, even if the charming performances by Gassman and (especially) Loren manage to keep things interesting. Possibly best of all is the opening sequence depicting the moment the two fall in love on a rooftop. over a cup of coffee, so to speak.Read More »

In this Italian romantic comedy set in the town of Sorrento, on the beautiful Bay of Naples, a woman rents a home from a dashing womanizer. Unfortunately, after 30 years away, the man returns to become the town police chief and wants to reclaim his home. The woman refuses to leave. The man then attempts to use his many charms. The ploy works and the woman agrees to dump her fiancé and marry him instead. When the womanizer realizes what she is about to do, he jilts her instead and decides to woo his own landlady instead. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie GuideRead More »