Takashi Ito wrote:
The filmic version of a city in which all surface beauty has rotted away. In order to find images of death like landscapes of the city from which people have vanished, and buildings from which the decorations have been stripped away and the inner organs exposed, I walked all over Tokyo taking photographs, then animated them.Read More »
The “white paws” of this noirish melodrama are the gaudy white spats sported by a reclusive French aristocrat in a fishing village on the coast of Normandy. Scripted by French playwright Jean Anouilh, who was originally to have directed it, Pattes blanches was ultimately brought to the screen by Grémillon, who accepted the project after the commercial failure of his Le ciel est à vous. The moody plot concerns the relationship of the aristocrat (Bernard) and his vengeful half-brother (Bouquet) and their rivalry over a promiscuous flirt from the city (Delair) who has married the local innkeeper. Although produced within the framework of the commercial cinema, Grémillon’s film manages to imbue the melodrama with a sharp sense of class divisions and his characteristic visual harmonies. (Harvard Film Archives)Read More »
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A film showing the social mood and tensions in the period between the end of the strikes in August 1980 and the registration of the Solidarity Trade Union in November 1980.
The film won awards, among others:
1981 – Kraków (Kraków Film Festival – Polish Competition; until 2000 National Short Film Festival) – “Bronze Lajkonik” Award in the documentary film category for Bohdan KosińskiRead More »
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The 1746 Battle of Culloden, the last land battle fought in the British Isles and the battle that ensured that Scotland was controlled by England. Not only do we see the battle unfold but also the lead-up, the key people involved and the aftermath.Read More »
Jacques d’Athys returns from an expedition to Indochina where he picks up a book that contains the whereabouts of secret treasures and sensitive government intelligence. This makes him the target of foreign spies, including a Marquise of Latin origin, a Hindu hypnotist and an evil German doctor.Read More »
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Her poetic two-channel video installation Tooba is based on the Koran, in which Tooba, the sacred tree of paradise, offers shelter and sustenance to those in need. Neshat’s video places a woman within a groove in the trunk of a large fig tree, symbolising its soul. They stand, alone, in a stone-walled garden set in a mountainous landscape. Men and women draw near and enter the enclosure, seeking refuge, as the Tooba-woman disappears into the Tooba-tree. The piece is ambiguous. Who has agency? Is it the crowd, who ‘invade’ the garden or the tree-woman who draws them towards her like a magnet? Tooba is dedicated to Iranian writer Shahrnush Parsipour, whose novel Women without Men concerns five women sojourning in a garden, one of whom is transformed into a tree.Read More »
An experimental animated short from Douglass Crockwell which derives its subject matter from his home Glens Falls.
Just sit back and watch….
This is just one of many strange films from the DVD collection “Unseen Cinema: Early American Avant-Garde Film 1894-1941” and it’s from Disc 3. In “Glen Falls Sequence”, Douglass Crockwell used non-drying paints to finger paint or sandwiched the paint between glass panes to create some very unusual kinetic art. Despite being made well into the sound age, there was no accompanying music. The result is very interesting to watch but many will most likely not enjoy it because there is no narrative–just cool artsy images. It’s not bad at all for what it is and must have taken a lot of work to create. However, due to the type of film that it is, you really can’t give it any sort of numerical rating–but instead just sit back and enjoy it.Read More »
In a Bavarian forest, the pupils of a boarding school are about to have their lives changed by the arrival of Vincent, a young man who can charm wild animals with his guitar. One day Vincent ventures across the lake and meets the mysterious Marianne…Read More »
