As Chris Marker’s fans already know, Kinopoezd was a project by Alexandr Medvedkin, Soviet filmmaker and though he isn’t mentioned in the titles, he was a main locomotive in this crazy journey.
Train was full of with film prints, editing tables, actors and it traveled through Soviet Union, films were made in one day, edited at night and very next day shown to the people, who participated in it, as Marker says.Read More »
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Gwen’s family is rich, but her parents ignore her and most of the servants push her around, so she is lonely and unhappy. Her father is concerned only with making money, and her mother cares only about her social position. But one day a servant’s irresponsibility creates a crisis that causes everyone to rethink what is important to them.Read More »
Posle Smerti [After Death]
A titan of the early Russian cinema, Evgenii Bauer was born in Russia in 1865. His father was a renowned zither-player, while his sisters became actresses. Bauer graduated from the Moscow Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Over the years, he was an amateur actor, a caricaturist for magazines, a newspaper satirist, a theatrical impresario, and an artistic photographer. He was especially recognized for designing sets for theatrical productions, a talent that eventually brought him into the cinema when he designed the sets for Drankov and Taldykin’s commemorative historical film, Trekhsotletie Tsarstvovaniya Doma Romanovykh (The Tercentenary of the Rule of the Romanov Dynasty), released in 1913. Encouraged by Drankov and Taldykin, Bauer, then 48 years of age, graduated to directing for their company. Read More »
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Robert Flahertys’ Nanook of the North is considered one of the greatest films of all time for a number of reasons. First off, because it’s one of the greatest films of all time. Flaherty both wielded and helped define the construct of cinema to make a film that is insightful, informative and a whole lot of fun. Also, it’s not quite as racist as you’d fear, which is not to say that it’s not racist at all. In addition, Nanook is generally credited with being the first feature-length documentary film, which is obviously noteworthy despite the semantic difficulty of referring to a work so filled with staged recreations as a documentary.Read More »
In 16th-century Prague, a rabbi creates the Golem – a giant creature made of clay. Using sorcery, he brings the creature to life in order to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution.Read More »
All of those handsome young men in their flying machines are billeted in a field next to the Widow Berthelot’s farmhouse in France. Her daughter Jeannine is curious about the young men fighting for England in World War I and their airplanes. Then one of the aviators is killed. His replacement is Captain Philip Blythe who can’t help but notice Jeannine. When he lands the first time, she is standing in the middle of his “runway.” She makes a more favorable impression when he sees her later by the lilacs. When all of the young men depart on a mission, Blythe promises to return.Read More »
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Although only Dreyer’s third film, The Parson’s Widow is an astonishingly mature achievement. Many of the director’s chief characteristics can be recognised, appearing not as blueprints but in their already fully-realised form. To people who only know his more celebrated later works, the most surprising feature of The Parson’s Widow is its humour. Its comedy is in the tradition – as becomes a Swedish production of the time – not only of Mauritz Stiller’s well-known frequentation of the genre, but also of some of Victor Sjöström’s less widely seen or underappreciated masterpieces, such as Hans nåds testamente (His Honor’s Testament, 1919) and Mästerman (1920). All of these films are quiet, poignant comedies of love and ageing, strangely foreshadowing some of Leo McCarey’s 1930s films.Read More »
David Bordwell wrote:
In 1913, the popular novelist Bernhard Kellermann published Der Tunnel. It’s not quite science-fiction, more a prophetic fiction or realist fantasy in the vein of Things to Come. The book became a best-seller and the basis of a 1915 film directed by William Wauer.Read More »
Plot Summary:
Madariaga is an Argentinian cattle baron with two daughters: one married a Frenchman, the other a German. Madariaga favors his French grandson, Julio, as his heir, but Julio is a wastrel and rake whose greatest achivement is tangoing well. When Madariaga dies, his fortune is split between his daughters. The German side of the family goes back to Berlin, while the French half moves to Paris, where Julio becomes a painter and falls in love with Marguerite, a married woman. When WWI explodes (and is described by the mystic Tchernoff as the coming Apocalypse), and Marguerite’s husband is blinded, Julio decides he must join the army, and becomes a reformed character. But Death hasn’t finished gathering his harvest yet and Julio must face his own cousin on the battlefield.Read More »