Quote:
MARY JANE’S NOT A VIRGIN ANYMORE, Jacobson’s only feature film, is a vibrant and vital antidote to every phony Hollywood teen picture, bringing lo-fi realness to the coming-of-age genre. Sure, the usual signposts are here — first job, first time, crushes, friendships, fitting in and figuring it out — but all are handled with utter honesty. The sex is bad, the boys are jerks, the future is questionable, and growing up is ultimately a disappointment. It’s a stark contrast to Hollywood’s glamorous lies.Read More »

Set during one of India’s main peasant risings, the Telangana insurrection between 1945 and 1951 in the pre-Independence state of Hyderabad, the Bengali director’s first feature tells the story of Chander’s best-known novel (Jab Khet Jaage (1948) from the peasant’s point of view. A young peasant, Ramiah, rebels against the corrupt rule of the nizam, and when his girlfriend has to submit to the potentate’s sexual coercion, Ramiah leaves. He befriends a Marxist activist (the rising was CPI-inspired) and participates in the Independence struggle.Read More »

Quote:
Fascinating remake of Sternberg’s “Docks of New York.” The geometric and pictorial aspects, as in the case of many Japanese films, and especially those of this time period, fascinate as much as the story. The push/pull, attraction/repulsion dynamic of the romance between the lowly ship stoker and the “fallen woman” he rescues from drowning gives a charge to the claustrophobic confines of their scenes together. The fight scenes between the men fascinated me also: a chaotic melange of sprawling limbs, bodies leaping over one another, sharp jabs and uppercuts.Read More »

Synopsis:
Agata and Manfredi is a young couple in Catania, deeply in love and growing happier as time goes by. When Manfredi is shot and killed, Agata emerges from her shock with a desire for vengeance. Once she identifies the murderer herself, she methodically seduces him in order to exact a confession.Read More »

Indiewire wrote:
The 21-minute short, produced in collaboration with Apple, was shot entirely on an iPhone 13 Pro, and was just released on the tech company’s YouTube page. The whimsical film tells the story of an undertaker (Yoo Hai-jin) whose attempt to steal a coffin ends up awakening a ghost (Park Jeong-min). That ghost ends up bonding with the ghost of the warrior (Kim Ok-vin) the undertaker was trying to bury. The film takes some unexpected turns, and ends up being a supernatural romance, a musical, and a martial arts film in equal measures.Read More »

If Leonora Carrington was England’s “lost surrealist” the Czech title must surely go to Marie Cermínová, AKA Toyen or “the baroness” to her friends – a name that characterised her remote and somewhat aloof bearing. Like Leonora Carrington, Toyen’s life contained much hardship and loss and the art of both women reflected their intense inner suffering. Toyen knew hunger and poverty and watched those she loved dying around her, one by one.Read More »

Three young men, a scriptwriter, a producer and a director are called in by Benny U Murdoch, an exotic movie producer. He wants to make a new erotic movie starring a big woman – the “Eskimo Nell” of the title. However problems start from the beginning, the scriptwriter is a virgin, a lover of penguins and hasn’t a clue on how to write an erotic movie, each of the three main backers want a different type of movie – a western, an erotic and a kung-fu movie with different people in the main part. However problems really start for the three when Benny runs off with all the money and they have to make three different versions of the same film and try not to let the backers and stars know what has happened. And this is made harder when there is a clean-up-filth society breathing down their necks…Read More »

Abbas Kiarostami wrote:
“In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.”

Quote:
A woman orders a suit from a tailor for her young son to wear to her sister’s wedding. The tailor’s apprentice, together with two other teenage boys who work in the same building, devise a plan to try on the suit at night to see what it feels like.Read More »

Synopsis:
An art restorer is raped on the street by a gang; getting little support from her lover, she leaves him and is determined to change her life.
This film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.
Award:
Ondas Awards, Best Actress, 1993Read More »