USA

  • Joe Napolitano – Contagious (1997)

    1991-2000Joe NapolitanoThrillerTVUSA
    Contagious (1997)
    Contagious (1997)

    Imdb wrote:
    When some shrimp from Colombia, tainted with cholera, is served to some people on a plane bound for L.A., an outbreak ensues. And a doctor sets out to find the source and contain it before it turns into a epidemic. And if things weren’t bad enough, a drug smuggler who was carrying some drugs on him contaminates the drugs and are sold on the street. And to top things off, the doctor’s husband who is on a camping trip with their two children is sick but did not show any symptoms until they were isolated from the rest of the world. Can she get to them in time?Read More »

  • Marie Losier – Tony Conrad, DreaMinimalist (2008)

    USA2001-2010DocumentaryExperimentalMarie Losier
    Tony Conrad, DreaMinimalist (2008)
    Tony Conrad, DreaMinimalist (2008)

    Quote:
    DreaMinimalist (2008) offers an insightful and hilarious encounter with Conrad as he sings, dances and remembers his youth and his association with Jack Smith.

    “Marie Losier is the most effervescent and psychologically accurate portrait artist working in film today. Her film wriggle with the energy and sweetness of a broken barrel full o’ sugar worms!” Guy MaddinRead More »

  • Hal Hartley – My America (2014)

    Hal Hartley2011-2020DramaUSA
    My America (2014)
    My America (2014)

    A series that is comprised of twenty-one monologues written by American playwrights which form a sort of fractured portrait of the American collective psyche. Ranging from the sad to the hilarious, from the angry to the tentatively celebratory, many of the major and recurrent issues associated with our fraught but beloved union are reconsidered with elegance, wit, brutal honesty, and a little outright insanity.Read More »

  • Agnieszka Holland – To Kill a Priest (1988)

    Agnieszka Holland1981-1990DramaThrillerUSA
    To Kill a Priest (1988)
    To Kill a Priest (1988)

    Directed by Agniezska Holland, this gripping and chilling drama is based on the true story of political unrest in Poland prior to the fall of communism and Father Jerzy Popieluszko, the Solidarity chaplain who was murdered by the secret police in 1984. Christopher Lambert is Father Alek, a Polish labor union chaplain at Saint Sebastian’s church in Warsaw. All gathered within the great church ad.Read More »

  • Robert Beavers – From the Notebook of… (2000)

    Robert Beavers1991-2000ExperimentalUSA
    From the Notebook of... (2000)
    From the Notebook of… (2000)

    From the Notebook of … was shot in Florence and takes as its point of departure Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks and Paul Valéry’s essay on da Vinci’s process. These two elements suggest an implicit comparison between the treatment of space in Renaissance art and the moving image. The filmmarks a critical development in the artist’s work in that he repeatedly employs a series of rapid pans and upward tilts along the city’s buildings or facades, often integrating glimpses of his own face. As Beavers notes in his writing on the film, the camera movements are tied to the filmmakers’ presence and suggest his investigating gaze. (Henriette Huldisch, Whitney Museum of American Art)Read More »

  • Peter Sellars – Don Giovanni (1990)

    Peter Sellars1981-1990MusicalPerformanceUSA
    Don Giovanni (1990)
    Don Giovanni (1990)

    Quote:
    This modern-dress studio production is “not your parents’ Don Giovanni” – the very opening shots, depicting a real New York slum full of rundown buildings, dead rats and garbage-covered snow, make that clear. Set in the South Bronx, this Giovanni strips the characters of their social statuses, keeps humor to the barest minimum, and brings forth loudly and clearly all the darkness that normally only simmers below the opera’s surface. Anna is an obvious rape victim who turns to heroin to escape from her trauma. Masetto does indeed beat Zerlina. And Giovanni and Leporello, innately “not so different,” are here portrayed as identical African American twins – a nearly interchangeable pair of streetwise, leather-clad, coke-snorting, gun-wielding hoods. Ensembles are staged as interpretive dances, and the finale is a hodgepodge of surreal horror, with a green-faced Commendatore, a somber little girl who lures pedophile Giovanni toward his doom, and bare-chested “demons,” both male and female, rising from the pavement.Read More »

  • Richard Thorpe – The Crowd Roars (1938)

    Richard Thorpe1931-1940ActionDramaUSA
    The Crowd Roars (1938)
    The Crowd Roars (1938)

    Plot: A young boxer gets caught between a no-good father and a crime boss when he starts dating the boss’s daughter, although she doesn’t know what daddy does for a living. Written by Ed LorussoRead More »

  • Leonard Kirtman – Inside Désirée Cousteau (1979)

    1971-1980EroticaLeonard KirtmanUSA
    Inside Désirée Cousteau (1979)
    Inside Désirée Cousteau (1979)

    Desiree Cousteau plays herself as she tells us how she got into the porn industry. She starts off talking about previous jobs she had and how they prepared her for having sex in front of a camera.

    If you’re expecting some sort of real documentary on Cousteau then you’re going to be disappointed. I honestly don’t know how much of this is real but it seems pretty obvious that this was just produced to get the beautiful Cousteau in front of the camera in a funny slant. The film is basically a bunch of vignettes where Cousteau talks to the camera and then we see the “action” of the story.Read More »

  • Allan Miller – The Turandot Project (2000)

    1991-2000Allan MillerDocumentaryUSA
    The Turandot Project (2000)
    The Turandot Project (2000)

    A fascinating chronicle of an unprecedented cross-cultural collaboration. In 1997 renowned conductor Zubin Mehta and celebrated Chinese film director Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern) joined forces on a production of Puccini’s opera Turandot in the Forbidden City of Beijing. The production was an undertaking on an epic scale with enormous sets, breathtaking hand-sewn Ming Dynasty costumes and hundreds of soldiers posing as extras. A fascinating chronicle of an unprecedented cross-cultural collaboration, The Turandot Project combines the pageantry of this opulent opera production with a spectacular cinematic portrait of the struggles and triumphs of Zubin Mehta and Zhang Yimou to mount their production in this most historic venue of China.Read More »

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