TV

  • Claude Chabrol – La danse de mort (1982)

    1981-1990Claude ChabrolDramaFranceTV

    Quote:
    Alice and Edgar, nicknamed “The Captain”, lead a rather miserable existence. They are embittered by life and reject each other’s failures. As they approach their 25th wedding anniversary, they are tired and weary of their old daily perfidies that have kept away all those who approached them.

    Quote:
    No doubt, other masterpiece of Claude Chabrol. This director can surprise you a million times in a million forms. This film is dark and sad. Don’t let you breath between scenes. The characters lives in a hard atmosphere, like a desert museum. The museum of a lonely life -or lonely death- like ghosts.Read More »

  • Raoul Ruiz – Richard III (1986)

    1981-1990DramaFranceRaoul RuizTV

    Raoul Ruiz’s rare version of Shakespeare’s “Richard III”.
    Richard of Gloucester uses murder and manipulation to claim England’s throne.

    “My mise-en-scène focused on the object: it’s about King Richard III and his vertiginous power. More than on a character, I was focusing on a mechanism: the play of power — with a bias, this time approaching caricature — I wanted to develop all of the parodic forms surrounding the representation of power. The result is somewhat akin to Ubu roi.Read More »

  • Paul Annett – Menace Unseen (1988)

    1981-1990Paul AnnettThrillerTVUnited Kingdom

    Plot summary:
    After his business partner Robert Shriving is killed by an exploding computer, Duncan Free (Ian Ogilvy) sets out to uncover a network of powerful individuals who are using technology to collect personal data for their own ends.Read More »

  • Chantal Akerman – L’Homme à la valise AKA The Man with the Suitcase (1984)

    Chantal Akerman1981-1990ArthouseFranceTV

    Quote:
    A sensitivity to sounds coming from the activities of an unwelcome guest in the close quarters of an apartment is only one important component in this atmospheric, avant-garde drollery by Chantal Akerman. When the apartment owner comes home, her guest is settled in and at first, the slightly reclusive host decides simply to eat her breakfast in her room instead of having to face morning conversation with her guest. Sounds of the toilet flushing, the bath water running and splashing, footsteps pacing, and furniture moving invade the hostess’ refuge in her bedroom like the frontrunners of an all-out offensive. She locks herself up for 28 days, life’s detritus accumulating around her, just so she does not have to go out to face the nemesis that lurks beyond her door.Read More »

  • Jean Eustache – La rosière de Pessac aka The Virgin of Pessac (1979)

    1971-1980DocumentaryFranceJean EustacheTV

    Quote:
    The Eustachian intervention within his Rosières would perhaps not be strictly that of a filmmaker behind the camera, but that of a collagist-editor who plays with the film material and temporality to make a meaning spring forth from it. And if there is an erasure in the director, Eustache makes a conscious gesture of a programmer affirming, at the time of making the second Rosières, that he prefers that his two documentaries be viewed in reverse chronology: the first last, and the last first. Read More »

  • Various – Roots (1977)

    Various1971-1980DramaTVUSA

    Roots is a television miniseries in the USA based on Alex Haley’s 1976 novel, entitled Roots: The Saga of an American Family; the series first aired, on ABC-TV, in 1977. Roots received 37 Emmy Award nominations and won nine. It won also a Golden Globe and a Peabody Award. It received unprecedented Nielsen ratings for the finale, which still holds a record as the third-highest-rated US television program. It was produced on a budget of $6.6 million. The series introduced LeVar Burton in the role of Kunta Kinte. (wikipedia)Read More »

  • Jean Eustache – La rosière de Pessac AKA The Virgin of Pessac (1968)

    Jean Eustache1961-1970DocumentaryFranceTV

    Quote:
    In a French village near Bordeaux, Pessac, a young lady is chosen for her virtue by the townspeople.

    Quote:
    This is the first version that Eustache shot. The second version will be shot 10 years after. May ’68 will have been replaced in the conversations by the unemployment and crisis…Read More »

  • Josée Dayan – Le comte de Monte Cristo AKA The Count of Monte Cristo (1998)

    Josée Dayan1981-1990AdventureFranceTV

    The Count of Monte Cristo tells the dramatic story of Edmond Dantes, a young French sailor who is falsely denounced as a political traitor and unjustly imprisoned for eighteen years without trial. After a daring escape, Dantes flees to the island of Monte Cristo where he finds a colossal treasure of gold and jewels bequeathed to him by a dying inmate. Using these riches, he assumes a new identity and devises a plan to take vengeance on all those who betrayed him.Read More »

  • Jørgen Leth – Eddy Merckx i nærheden af en kop kaffe AKA Eddy Merckx in the Vicinity of a Cup of Coffee (1973)

    Jørgen Leth1971-1980DenmarkExperimentalTV

    Det Danske Filminstitut wrote:
    A very special TV production: In the studio, Leth reads from several of his poetry collections, while a subtitle – as in ‘Life in Denmark’ – meticulously, but double-bound, records observations and describes the process. The subtext thus seems to function as a medium for the director’s reflections as the TV film progresses. (…) Alternating with the poetry reading in the studio, the second part of the film consists of snapshots from the 1970 Tour de France stage race, including the cobblestone roads of northern France, Mont Ventoux and the cathedral sprint in Rouen, which is shown three times.’Read More »

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