Night falls over Lisbon. But Hugo can’t go home. Antonio has died, and for some reason, he can’t stop thinking about his old love, Adriana.

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The youth uncertainty of A Girl in Summer becomes middle age regret. A whole country in suspension living in a haunted house covered in shadows. A truly invisible life. This would make a great double bill with Horse Money, both reports on the Portuguese living dead from different class perspectives.Read More »

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Transformation under duress is at the nexus of this excellent wartime drama by noted Dutch filmmaker Fons Rademakers. The setting is Holland under German occupation and young Ducker (Lex Schoorel) is surviving the war and an unhappy marriage the best he can. Then one dark night, a mysterious secret agent who looks remarkably like Ducker except for his black hair, parachutes into the young man’s back yard. The secret agent, Dorbeck, enlists Ducker’s help in his missions against the Germans, and before much time has elapsed, Ducker has joined the resistance fighters and is actively engaged in the anti-German, underground war effort. He becomes daring, confident, imaginative — all the qualities missing in his earlier life. But then the war ends and brings an ironic twist to Ducker’s career as a brave patriot.
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In Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Adrian Jackson’s freewheeling kaleidoscopic film Here for Life, place is again of paramount importance. We’re in Hackney in rapidly gentrifying east London, full of fenced-off, securitised spaces where the large cast of marginalised real-life characters the directors have assembled must endure the pain of displacement together with other day-to-day difficulties – recovery from addiction, domestic violence, isolation, terrible life losses.Read More »

Synopsis
The Private Life of an Actor was the English-language title bestowed upon Sacha Guitry’s first postwar feature, Le Comédien. The film recounts the life and loves of Guitry’s actor/father Lucien, with Guitry playing both himself and his dad. Most of the story takes place either on-stage or in the dressing room, satirically emphasizing the wide schism between an actor’s public and private life. Adding to the Pirandellian ambience of the project is Guitry’s wife, Catherine (Lana Marconi), cast as one of Lucien’s various mistresses.Read More »

Malou feels that the difficulties she is experiencing in her relationships lie in her past and so she searches out information about her mother. Her mother, a nightclub singer who lived in Germany, France and Argentina, becomes the focus of a series of flashbacks through which we learn of her mother’s stormy life and the difficulty she had in bringing her up. These insights enable Malou to sort out the difficulties in her own life.Read More »

Violeta, 40 years old, dentist, married, a teenage son, is ready start another ordinary day, between her office and her new apartment in Copacabana. A phone message will take her to a journey in the streets of Rio till sunrise.Read More »

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The film was shot in live-action, then adapted with rotoscope animation. That process creates realistic scenes of Chinatown — from the lion dance in the Chinese New Year’s parade to senior citizens performing tai chi in Columbus Park to the neighborhood’s open air markets. The shots of the corners, nooks and crannies throughout Chinatown are instantly recognizable to New Yorkers.Read More »

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It’s the New York Department of Weights and Measures vs. a systematic effort to cheat the public by giving them less product than they pay for…organized by crooked city alderman Marty Cavanaugh, who put the last chief deputy inspector in the hospital. The new man, pugnacious Johnny Cave, steps on the toes of influential merchants and gets increasing pressure, both political and strong-arm, to desist. Will the luck (if not the pluck) of the Irish pull him through?Read More »

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Filmmaker/critic Pare Lorentz was the creative force behind the landmark documentary The Plow That Broke the Plains. The project was underwritten by the United States Resettlement Administration, a New Deal organization. Lorentz’ film accomplished visually what President Roosevelt’s radio speeches had been doing orally: serving as a wake-up call to those Americans unaware of the deprivations of the “Dust Bowl.” The film details the ecological causes for the natural disasters befalling farmers in Oklahoma and Texas. It then illustrates in up-close-and-personal fashion the devastating effect those disasters had on the farmers and their families, who were already reeling from the Depression. Lorentz concludes his film on an upbeat note, showing the efforts made by the Resettlement Administration to improve conditions for the unfortunate farmers, and to make certain that environmental reforms are put into effect to prevent another Dust Bowl. The Plow That Broke the Plains was followed by the Tennessee Valley Authority-sanctioned The River, likewise assembled by Lorentz.Read More »