• Mika Kaurismäki – Helsinki Napoli All Night Long (1987)

    1981-1990ComedyCrimeFinlandMika Kaurismäki

    Another good movie from the first period of Mika, with some funny moments and great cameos like Nino Manfredi, Samuel Fuller, Jim Jarmusch, Wim Wenders, Eddie Constantine.

    Quote:
    Alex (Kari Vaananen) is a Finnish cabbie working in Berlin with plenty of problems in this comedy with film noir touches. With two dead men and a suitcase filled with hundred dollar bills, he has difficulty disposing of the bodies. He is chased by the top crime boss (Samuel Fuller) and his crony (Eddie Constantine). Alex’s wife is allergic to the money, so the cabbie endures more than he can handle trying to rid himself of the cash and the corpses.Read More »

  • Don Askarian – Ararat: 14 Views (2007)

    2001-2010ArmeniaArthouseDon AskarianDrama

    Synopsis :
    A series of controlled improvisations. They focus on the holy Armenian mountain Ararat that is out of reach in Turkey. The filmmaker looks at his mountain as a poet, a dancer, a painter. And of course, eventually also as a filmmaker.
    Ararat is a holy mountain for Armenians. According to Biblical tradition, Noah saw the first land here again after the Great Flood. So it is difficult for Christian Armenians that the mountain is just over the border in Islamic Turkey. They can only look at it. That is also what Don Askarian does with great dedication and using all his visual inventiveness. Askarian worked for at least five years on this film, which is hard to label. It is not a drama or a documentary and it can’t be put in the tradition of the experimental film, for that he puts up too much resistance to what we now understand as ‘modern’. However, the filmmaker studies his mountain from every conceivable angle, just as the great French painter Cézanne once studied Mont Sainte-Victoire, or like the equally great Japanese print maker Hokusai studied Mount Fuji. Read More »

  • Michel Khleifi & Eyal Sivan – Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel (2003)

    Documentary2001-2010BelgiumEyal SivanMichel KhleifiPolitics

    Plot
    Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel takes a fresh look at the inhabitants of Palestine-Israel. For two months in the summer of 2002, two film-makers, the Israeli Eyal Sivan and the Palestinian Michel Khleifi, travelled together through Palestine-Israel from north to south, tracing a map of routes they called Route 181, following the imaginary frontier of Resolution 181 adopted by the United Nations on 29 November 1947, which provided for the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. Fifty-five years later Eyal Sivan and Michel Khleifi give men and women, Israelis and Palestinians, young and old, civilians and military, anonymous people living their everyday lives, a chance to talk about those lives, their experiences, their situation, their particular memory and their personal understanding of what is going on around them. All of them, found by chance in the course of Sivan and Khleifi’s journey, have their own way of looking at the frontiers that separate them from their neighbours: concrete, barbed wire, cynicism, indifference, mistrust, aggression.
    Read More »

  • Timothy Sakamoto – Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West (2007)

    2001-2010ArchitectureDocumentaryTimothy SakamotoUSA

    Take a journey through legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West — an architectural masterpiece housing his home, his studio and a school of architecture in the Arizona desert — with this documentary and interactive tour. The longtime director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, discusses Wright’s life and career, exploring the ways in which Taliesin West reflects his values of organic architecture.Read More »

  • Bill Douglas – My Way Home (1978)

    1971-1980ArthouseBill DouglasDramaUnited Kingdom

    Set in the 1950s, the film follows Jamie from a children’s home in Scotland to Egypt where he is billeted after being conscripted to the RAF. There he meets Robert, a self-sufficient type surrounded by books and an uneasy friendship develops. It is, however, through this friendship, and the confidence that it gives him, that his artistic talents begin to emerge.Read More »

  • Fred Baillif – La Mif AKA The Fam (2021)

    Drama2021-2030Fred BaillifSwitzerland

    “Who are you?” – “The queen of punks, in the land of pain in the ass.”

    Seven girls live under the same roof but haven’t chosen each other, just like a family. Emerging from difficult backgrounds, here in the safe house, the girls find a new community, in a way they’d never experienced before. They are sharing joy and pain, passionately rebel against the shortcomings of their surrounding – the young women’s temperaments are different, their lust for life large, their place in society too precarious for things to be all peace, love and harmony. Home director Lora is always there for them when­­­­­ they need her. Read More »

  • Bill Douglas – My Ain Folk (1973)

    1971-1980ArthouseBill DouglasDramaUnited Kingdom

    When Jamie’s maternal grandmother dies, he and his brother Tommy are separated – Tommy is taken off to a welfare home and Jamie goes to live with his other grandmother and uncle. His life is far from happy, filled with silence, rejection and bouts of violence.
    My Ain Folk (1973) was made immediately after Bill Douglas’ My Childhood (1972), again with the support of the BFI Production Board. An increased budget of £12,000 allowed a 55 minute running time, and an opening Technicolor extract from Lassie Comes Home (US, d. Fred M. Wilcox, 1943). This quickly gives way to black-and-white shots of Newcraighall at its bleakest.Read More »

  • Bill Douglas – My Childhood (1972)

    1971-1980ArthouseBill DouglasDramaUnited Kingdom

    Storyline
    The first part of Bill Douglas’ influential trilogy harks back to his impoverished upbringing in early-’40s Scotland. Cinema was his only escape – he paid for it with the money he made from returning empty jam jars – and this escape is reflected most closely at this time of his life as an eight-year-old living on the breadline with his half-brother and sick grandmother in a poor mining village.Read More »

  • Junli Zheng – Nie Er (1962)

    1961-1970AsianChinaChinese cinema under MaoDramaJunli Zheng

    Biography of famous Chinese composer Nie Er, who found the meaning of life by composing for national rejuvenation.Read More »

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