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Every day of her life, Angela kept a diary, filled with words and drawings, in which she recorded public and private matters, meetings, things she had read, everything. Including the account of two trips to Russia (1989-90). The period of the collapse of the USSR. A diary that she had been keeping in small Chinese notebooks, since before Dal Polo all’Equatore (1986), on our uninterrupted work on the violence of the 20th century. From our tours in the United States with the “scented films” of the late seventies to the Anthology Film Archive of New York and the Berkeley Pacific Film Archive… Now I reread these diaries and see again the film-diary of all those years. I am alone now, after many years of life and artistic work together.Read More »

A glowing crystal that causes sexual arousal and time travel is the centerpiece of this sexual sword-and-sorcery epic. Victoria Paris stars as the buxom amazon whose quest for the stolen crystal takes her from one sexual tryst to another and eventually into another century!Read More »

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In a series of long held shots, men are observed performing simple tasks in real time, while on the soundtrack we hear excerpts from opera.Read More »

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Set in the 17th century, Le voci bianche tells the story of a young Roman youth,
Meo (Paolo Ferrari), who embarks on a career as “castrato,” although he manages to
escape the mandatory castration. As a “castrati” he comes into contact with the upper
classes of his time, and becomes a kind of casanova with the often bored and sex
starved wives of the rich and wealthy. For an early directorial effort, this is a
very handsome production with an impressive cast.Read More »

From original nfo file:
Another pre-war Columbia serial, made before Sam Katzman could get his grubby hands on it, and as such is pretty good. Amateur magicians wil be interested in the magic show near the beginning of Chapter One. Among the routines performed by Mandrake is the Cup and Sponge Balls. This is a very old routine, but some magicians are better than others with hand magic.
Whoever is doing the cups and balls is very good.
I have no idea who is doing the actual hand magic. Certainly not Warren Hull. You can slow it down, play it backwards, and never see him make a slip.
The rest of the magic show is pretty ho-hum.Read More »

Like lost girls on a winter’s day, Alona and Hagar ramble through the streets of Haifa. One is escaping her life, the other her future.Read More »

During an evening spent at his house with his sister, a girl realizes that she doesn’t really have much in common with her boyfriend.Read More »

While looking for the cast for another unfinished project, a director discovers his ideal actor, a boy at a baker’s shop. By the time he goes to hire the young boy for his film, the shopkeeper has fired him. What ensues is a search for the homeless child and, along the way, the discovery of his solitude, his survival techniques, and the mental and physical state of surrounding adults and children. When the director finally finds his actor, the young adolescent seems to need serious medical care.The film gives the public a view of the Iranian medical system; once again the inadequacies of the social system and its contradictions are highlighted. Jalili also elaborates on generosity, once a sacred notion, individual responsibility and human limitations. Seen as criticism of the current medical system, the film was withheld for three years and only released in 1998.A True Story has found its moving actor and a life story worth discovering, but the film unintentionally dragged Jalili towards the realm of melodrama. Of this film, Godard said ‘A True Story may turn out to be a film that is not made very well, but it will always be ahead of the art.’Read More »

Well into middle-age, but still grasping at the reckless pleasures of his youth, Roque is locked in a pattern of self-destruction. His parents cast him out from their home in Caracas and Roque returns to the Amazon and the derelict tourist lodge he built and ran in a previous life. His aim is to rebuild both the lodge and himself, quitting alcohol for good in the process. But temptations are strong in the jungle. A feverish voyage of discovery through the hinterland between madness and salvation, La Fortaleza is a superb second feature from Venezuelan director Jorge Thielen Armand. What makes it all the more fascinating is the fact that Roque is played by Armand’s own father, Jorge Roque Thielen, and that the screenplay is inspired by his stories of building the lodge and battling alcoholism against a tinderbox backdrop of sparking violence and unrest. Wendy IdeRead More »