• Freddie Francis – Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965)

    Freddie Francis1961-1970HorrorUnited Kingdom

    Synopsis:
    Five strangers board a train and are joined by a mysterious fortune teller who offers to read their Tarot cards. Five separate stories unfold: An architect returns to his ancestral home to find a werewolf out for revenge; a doctor suspects his new wife is a vampire; an intelligent vine takes over a house; a jazz musician plagiarizes music from a voodoo ceremony; a pompous art critic is pursued by a disembodied hand.Read More »

  • L. Rezan Yesilbas – Sessiz – Be Deng (2012) (HD)

    L. Rezan Yesilbas2011-2020DramaShort FilmTurkey

    Quote:
    The prison of Diyarbakir, the setting of the story, is like the symbol of the torture experienced in the prisons in Turkey after the coup d’etat of 1980. However, in this story, I did not choose to tell the things that took place in the prison, or the political prisoners or the torture, or the political fight. Instead, I turned my camera to the little stories of the “silent” women outside the prison, who could not speak another language than Kurdish, which was forbidden in the prisons of that era.
    Read More »

  • Luchino Visconti – Appunti su un fatto di cronaca (1951)

    Luchino Visconti1951-1960DocumentaryItalian Neo-RealismItalyShort Film

    A 12-year-old girl, Annarella Bracci, was raped and killed in the popular borough of Primavalle, Rome, one of the age-old cross-roads of Italy, at the time it was going through major construction and road development projects.
    In 1951, the Italian Censorship Commission didn’t allow the release of the movie. It was shown in Paris in 1953 and later lost, but a copy is reported to belong to the Cinématèque Royale in Brussels.
    Part of “Documento mensile,” a project for cine-journalism started by Riccardo Ghione and Marco Ferreri.Read More »

  • Bertrand Tavernier – ‘Round Midnight (1986)

    Bertrand Tavernier1981-1990DramaFrance

    From IMDB:
    In ‘Round Midnight, real-life jazz legend Dexter Gordon brilliantly portrays the fictional tenor sax player Dale Turner, a musician slowly losing the battle with alcoholism, estranged from his family, and hanging on by a thread in the 1950’s New York jazz world. Dale gets an offer to play in Paris, where, like many other black American musicians at the time, he enjoys a respect for his humanity that is not based upon the color of his skin. A Parisian man who is obsessed with Turner’s music befriends him and attempts to save Turner from himself. Although for Dale the damage is already done, his poignant relationship with the man and his young daughter re-kindles his spirit and his music as the end draws near.Read More »

  • Ryûsuke Hamaguchi – Doraibu mai kâ AKA Drive My Car (2021)

    Ryûsuke Hamaguchi2021-2030DramaJapan

    Adapted from a short story in Murakami Haruki’s “Men Without Women”. A director’s wife was a playwright, but she died two years ago. When he’s invited to direct a play at a festival in Hiroshima, the director finds his chauffeur to be a stoic woman. The two share many rides, and as communication is initiated secrets and confessions are gradually exchanged.Read More »

  • Mani Ratnam – Thiruda Thiruda AKA Thief,Thief (1993)

    1991-2000AdventureCrimeIndiaMani Ratnam

    Synopsis:
    Fresh printed bank notes to the value of incredible 10 billion rupies are stolen in India from a train by the henchmen of super-gangster Vikram living in London. The code card only being able to open the container with the money comes into the possession of beautiful Chandralekha. On the way to Vikram she comes across the two thieves Kadir and Azhagu who are on the run from the police – having in tow country-girl Rajathi whom they kept from committing suicide and who then ran away from her ruthless uncle. After some attempts of cheating each other Chandralekha is making friends with the thieves. When she discovers that Vikram is stopping at nothing – especially not at dead bodies – on his hunt after the loot, she informs the three others about the real value of the code card. In the following pursuit between Vikram, the four heroes and a special police brigade which has to get back the money before a state crisis comes about, not only fierce action, but also love comes to its own.Read More »

  • Jean-Jacques Martinod – Before the Deluge (2020)

    2011-2020CanadaDocumentaryJean-Jacques MartinodShort Film

    Within the ancient Precambrian rock of Northern Canada sits one of the largest reserves of uranium on the planet. A power that has yielded the largest destructive energy known to man, also manifest in the region’s harsh natural glory. A gothic travelogue that summons dialogue with ghosts of the region; abandoned mining towns swallowed within the pandemonium of extraction commerce and neglect, while also the liminal unknown forces that inhabit these lands and speak in shadow memories.Read More »

  • Sergio Corbucci – Il grande silenzio AKA The Great Silence (1968)

    Sergio Corbucci1961-1970Euro WesternsItalyWestern

    On an unforgiving, snow swept frontier, a group of bloodthirsty bounty hunters, led by the vicious Loco (Klaus Kinski Nosferatu, For a Few Dollars More) prey on a band of persecuted outlaws who have taken to the hills. As the price on each head is collected one-by-one, only a mute gunslinger named Silence (Jean-Louis Trintignant The Conformist) stands between the innocent refuges and the greed and corruption that the bounty hunters represent. But, in this harsh, brutal world, the lines between right and wrong aren’t always clear and good doesn’t always triumph. Featuring superb photography and a haunting score from maestro Ennio Morricone, director Sergio Corbucci’s bleak, brilliant and violent vision of an immoral, honorless west is widely considered to be among the very best and most influential Euro-Westerns ever made.Read More »

  • Mario O’Hara – Bakit Bughaw ang Langit? AKA Why is the Sky Blue? (1981)

    1981-1990DramaMario O'HaraPhilippines

    Quote:
    The situation is ordinary enough: a woman (Nora Aunor) falls in love with a man (Dennis Roldan). To say that she “loves” him, however, is an oversimplication, because he is a retardate. What she feels is a mixture of pity, sympathy, maternal love, and -of course sexual love for him. On the other hand, though a mere child as far as his brain is concerned, he is physically grown-up, as portrayed in a clever drunken scene where he mimics raping the mistress of a neighbor. There’s no doubt about it: Mario O’Hara is a major director. In Bakit Bughaw ang Langit?, he tackles the same basic situation Lino Brocka deals with in Bona. In the comparison Brocka suffers. Where Bona fails, Bakit Bughaw ang Langit? succeeds.
    – Isagani Cruz, Movie TimesRead More »

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