New York Times:
THE setting is a rather grand English country home on the Isle of Wight. Two women are bickering as they play lawn tennis. An elderly man reading beneath a tree spots a fly on his hand and begins having an odd attack. A young stranger suddenly appears and gives the man mouth-to-mouth resuscitation or, so to speak, a kiss of life. Later, the victim will thank him for having braved not only the garlic on his breath but ”an old man’s slack mouth.”Read More »
Cream in My Coffee is a television drama by Dennis Potter, broadcast on ITV on 2 November 1980 as the last in a loosely connected trilogy of plays exploring language and betrayal. A juxtaposition between youth and old age, the play combines a non-linear narrative with the use of popular music to heighten dramatic tension, a feature of much of Potter’s work. Cream in My Coffee was awarded the Prix Italia for best drama in 1981 and Peggy Ashcroft gained a BAFTA Best Actress award in 1981. The play’s title is taken from the popular song “You’re the Cream in My Coffee”, from the 1929 Broadway musical Hold Everything!Read More »
Mark Cunliffe:
“You don’t know how low I was, how down. Everything was like it was raining all the time. The way the rain sort of glints all dull like on the slates. On the roof”
In 1978, tired of and frustrated by not having the power over the BBC’s drama department Dennis Potter went some way to realise his dream of being a writer with total control over his work by forming the independent production company Pennies From Heaven (or PFH) Ltd with producer Kennith Trodd and his agent Judy Daish. Two years later, the companies independent nature came to fruition thanks to a deal with BBC rival, LWT to produce six new plays by Potter along with three other plays comprising of two from Salford socialist Jim Allen and one writer/performer Ken Campbell.Read More »
Synopsis:
Three horror anthology stories of tormented women. In the first story, Julie Eldridge is a sexually-repressed college teacher who is blackmailed by one of her students for a past indiscretion in which she played an unwilling part. But the student is unaware that Julie plots to turn the tables on him the first chance she gets. In the second story, Millicent Larimore is a plain-looking, almost reclusive woman who lives with her amoral twin sister Therese whom delights in tormenting her. However, only their doctor who visits from time to time knows the real thing behind the scene. In the final story, Amelia in a solo horror story monologue is a mother-dominated woman who buys an African Zuni fetish doll for her latest boyfriend in which the doll comes to life and terrorizes her in her own apartment.Read More »
In the 70’s, Bokolo and Mamadou sweepers in the city of Paris, looking for a way to pay for the return home of one of their sick comrades. When they discover an old book of recipes in the trash, the idea came to participate in a televised game of decline precisely the ingredients of the best dishes of French cuisine. They memorize the recipes sauces, puddings and desserts.Read More »
Quote:
This interview with Castoriadis was conducted in 1989 by famed filmmaker Chris Marker for Marker’s own television series L’héritage de la chouette (“The Owl’s Legacy”). Eighty-one minutes long, the raw footage originally recorded in French has been translated into English (via easy-to-read subtitles) and edited anonymously as a public service. Here, Castoriadis lays out and examines the contributions of ancient Greece to questions of contemporary relevance relating to democracy, politics, philosophy, art, poetry, economic and social reorganization, and the creative chaos that underlies all existence.Read More »
Quote:
A TV movie (aired on Rai on July 2, 1962) that seems to come from a remote galaxy. We are no longer used to anything like this. It is an alienating charm, consciously cooled to the extreme, stylized in its scenographic and luminous lines of relentless, literary cleanliness (where can we hear a word like “dripping” on TV today?), Without a shred of sentimentality.
In short, Bertolt Brecht on the small screen. The text is taken from a radio original by Friedrich Dürenmatt.Read More »
Quote:
Il taglio del bosco is a film for television of 1963 , directed by Vittorio Cottafavi , taken from eponymous book by Carlo Cassola .
The film, produced by RAI, was broadcast on September 19, 1963 during the cycle of nine films entitled Tales of Italy today .
The film sees the participation of Gian Maria Volonté as the only professional actor, while all the other characters are played by the inhabitants of Tirli , the village of the Grosseto hills where the film is shot and set.
Gianni Rondolino defines the work “a phenomenological film that manages to introduce a disturbing moral dimension into the objectivity of the realistic vision”Read More »
Synopsis
A 4-part documentary chronicling the creative process of the legendary Japanese filmmaker. He is shown as a passionate artisan, a steadfast trailblazer, and a father butting heads with his son.Read More »