A portrait of contemporary life in Hale County, Alabama. A series of fleeting, quotidian moments – church services, basketball practice, and family gatherings – that allows the viewer an emotive impression of the Historic South, trumpeting the beauty of life and consequences of the social construction of race, while simultaneously a testament to dreaming.Read More »
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Marlon Riggs, with assistance from other gay Black men, especially poet Essex Hemphill, celebrates Black men loving Black men as a revolutionary act. The film intercuts footage of Hemphill reciting his poetry, Riggs telling the story of his growing up, scenes of men in social intercourse and dance, and various comic riffs, including a visit to the “Institute of Snap!thology,” where men take lessons in how to snap their fingers: the sling snap, the point snap, the diva snap. The film closes with obituaries for victims of AIDS and archival footage of the civil rights movement placed next to footage of Black men marching in a gay pride parade.Read More »
Synopsis
The recurring theme of dance once again works its way into a Shirley Clarke project, as this short film features a performance that takes place across a multitude of environments. As a primary couple intimately interacts, Clarke tests herself as a filmmaker by enhancing the performance with camera movements and visual additions. Altering the setting and the atmosphere with the use of back-projection, this intriguing piece illustrates Clarke’s willingness to experiment on many levels.Read More »
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“This film by Bruce Baillie, completed in 1966 but unreleased until 2014, is contemporaneous with Castro Street, but is much more formally connected to All My Life or Still Life, also from the same year. In three sections with three different formal strategies, Baillie shares distilled moments of found natural beauty as he encountered them in the North Bay outside San Francisco. The first section features a study of plum blossoms, rendered in rich, multiple superimpositions that allow the white flowers to explode into a blizzard of visual complexity, framed by a panning shot of purple mountains. In the second section, Baillie allows us a furtive glimpse of the titular little girl, waving to cars with her dog on the side of the road, lost in her world and thoughts. Bruce#s framing remains unadorned, feeling no need to add to or take away from a beautiful piece of simple portraiture. The third section, of waterbugs on the surface of a pond, remind us how remarkable and sensitive Baillie’s camerawork can be, as he observes their graceful dances, and the subtle light and water effects they produce by their movements.”
Mark ToscanoRead More »
Thirteen static shots of coal-fired power stations across the United States, seen in rural landscapes, urban settings, sun or cloud and at all times of year. Whatever the location or season, there’s always at least one chimney belching out fumes.Read More »
This is the R-rated version of the hardcore sex film Dixie Ray, Hollywood Star. It’s of somewhat historical significance as being one of the few porno films to feature a name Hollywood actor: Cameron Mitchell. Mitchell doesn’t have any sex scenes (thankfully), but he plays a gangster boss (much like his role in My Favorite Year) in this 1940s-set period film. Star John Leslie (who does have sex scenes) plays a detective who is hired by a former movie star to find some “indiscreet” photographs of her.Read More »
Francis and Blake Falls are conjoined twins who live in a neat little room in a rundown hotel. While sharing some organs, Blake is always fit and Francis is very sickly. Into their world comes a young lady, who turns their world upside down. She gets involved with Blake, and convinces the two to attend a Halloween party, where they can pass themselves off as wearing a costume. Eventually Francis becomes really ill, and they have to be separated. They then face the physical and mental strains that come from their proposed separation. Viewers will be inclined to believe that the two are really Siamese twins, but in fact they are simply real-life brothers playing the parts convincingly.Read More »
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A monumental work of scholarship on one of the most important and neglected areas of film history, Richard Abel’s massive study is already clearly destined to occupy a position of deserved pre-eminence in relation to all foreseeable future work done on this seminal period in French cinema. At once a work of critical synthesis and a compendium of infor-mation containing much original research, it remains indispensible less for its overall critical argument than for its wealth of data, making it more valuable as a reference source than as a “definitive” history. The book is divided into four sections, any one of which contains enough important material to constitute a significant book in its own right: “The French Film Industry,” “The Commercial Narrative Film,” “The Alternative Cinema Network”and “The Narrative Avant-Garde.” — Jonathan RosenbaumRead More »
A dedicated reporter is incensed by a killer’s two vicious murders and tries to track him down.
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At least Heartaches looks more ambitious than it is-no small feat for a PRC production. Ken Farrell plays Vic Morton, a popular movie crooner whose voice is actually supplied anonymously by the gloriously nicknamed Bogey Mann (Chill Wills). Not long after Morton begins receiving mailed death threats, his press agent Mike Connelly (Frank Orth) is murdered, the second such killing in as many days. Reporter Jimmy McDonald (Edward Norris) investigates, uncovering a complex conspiracy and exposing an unsuspected culprit. Incredibly, in addition to Chill Wills, the supporting cast of Heartaches includes a starlet named Chili Williams! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »