USA

  • Leo C. Popkin & Russell Rouse – The Well (1951)

    1951-1960DramaFilm NoirLeo C. PopkinRussell RouseUSA

    Synopsis:
    In a racially mixed American town, a 5-year-old black girl falls unnoticed into a hidden, forgotten well on her way to school. Having nothing better to go on, the police follow up a report that the child was seen with a white stranger, and rumors run wild. Before hapless, innocent Claude Packard is even found, popular hysteria has him tried and convicted. But Packard’s troubles pale by comparison as ever more inflated rumors uncap the well of racial tensions and mob violence. And young Carolyn Crawford, forgotten by most, is still missing…
    — Rod CrawfordRead More »

  • Bob Rafelson – Mountains of the Moon (1990)

    1981-1990AdventureBob RafelsonUSA

    The legendary true-story of Capt. Richard Francis Burton and Lt. John Hanning Speke’s tumultuous expedition to find the source of the Nile river.Read More »

  • George Cukor – Sylvia Scarlett (1935)

    1931-1940DramaGeorge CukorQueer Cinema(s)RomanceUSA

    “Then I won’t be a girl. And I won’t be weak and I won’t be silly. I’ll be a boy and rough and hard. I won’t care what I do. Don’t worry! I’m ready for anything.”
    – Sylvia (Katharine Hepburn)

    Sylvia Scarlett is a 1935 romantic comedy film starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, based on The Early Life and Adventures of Sylvia Scarlett, a novel by Compton MacKenzie. Directed by George Cukor, it was notorious as one of the most famous unsuccessful movies of the 1930s. Hepburn plays the title role of Sylvia Scarlett, a female con artist masquerading as a boy to escape the police. The success of the subterfuge is in large part due to the transformation of Hepburn by RKO make-up artist Mel Berns.Read More »

  • Richard Fleischer – Follow Me Quietly (1949)

    1941-1950250 Quintessential Film NoirsCrimeFilm NoirRichard FleischerUSA

    An obsessed cop tracks an elusive serial killer who strangles his victims on rainy nights.Read More »

  • Peter Bogdanovich – Naked City: A Killer Christmas (1998)

    1991-2000CrimePeter BogdanovichThrillerUSA

    Inspired by the 1948 movie Naked City, follows two cops working the streets on the down low. Their latest assignment is a case of a serial killer who became active around Christmas. However, an ambitious reporter gets in their way.Read More »

  • Jordan Melamed – Manic (2001)

    2001-2010DramaJordan MelamedUSA

    Lyle Jensen is subject to sudden and violent outbursts, and he is committed to the juvenile wing of the Northwood Mental Institution. Several other youths are there with a variety of serious problems. Lyle interacts with other patients and staff on a human, and sometimes not so human level. The psychological problems of the patients also forms the fabric by which we see what’s right with them, and what’s wrong with the society that affects them.Read More »

  • Bruce Yonemoto and Norman Yonemoto – Made in Hollywood (1990)

    1981-1990Bruce YonemotoExperimentalNorman YonemotoUSA

    Synopsis wrote:
    Steeped in irony, Made in Hollywood depicts the personal and cultural mediation of reality and fantasy, desire and identity, by the myths of television and cinema. Quoting from a catalogue of popular styles and sources, from TV commercials to The Wizard of Oz, the Yonemotos construct a parable of the Hollywood image-making industry from a pastiche of narrative cliches: A small-town ingenue goes West to find her dream and loses her innocence; the patriarch of a Hollywood studio nears death; a New York couple seeks screenwriting fame and fortune in the movies. With deadpan humor and hyperbolic visual stylization, the Yonemotos layer artifice upon artifice, constructing an image-world where reality and representation, truth and simulation, are meaningless distinctions.Read More »

  • Gwendolyn Audrey Foster – Dreaming of Monica Vitti (2021)

    2021-2030DocumentaryGwendolyn Audrey FosterShort FilmUSA

    “Abstract silver screen dreams of Monica Vitti, Michelangelo Antonioni, and all the great Italian cinema made at Cinecittà in the 1960s.”
    Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

    “I dreamed I was in bed and the bed was moving. I looked down and it was on quicksand. It was sinking deeper and deeper. There’s something terrible about reality and I don’t know what it is. No one will tell me.”
    Giuliana (Monica Vitti) in ‘Red Desert.’Read More »

  • Cle Shaheed Sloan – Bastards of the Party (2005)

    2001-2010Cle Shaheed SloanDocumentaryTVUSA

    One of three films at Tribeca about gang warfare between the Crips and the Bloods, Antoine Fuqua-produced docu, directed by 32-year-old Los Angeles gang member Cle “Bone” Sloan, steps back from the vicious cycle of death and revenge long enough to answer the question, “How did we get here?” with economy and clarity. Tracing the evolution of the gangs through a history of racism and externally encouraged divisiveness, “Bastards” indicates paths away from self-genocide as it reveals the face of a common enemy. Must-see docu reps a promising start for Fuqua’s independent production venture.Read More »

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