• Ico Costa – Alva (2019)

    2011-2020ArthouseCrimeIco CostaPortugal

    After committing a crime, Henrique, a man in his thirties, hides in the forest.Read More »

  • Alice Diop – Nous (2021)

    Alice Diop2021-2030DocumentaryFrance

    Synopsis
    The RER B is an urban train that traverses Paris and its environs from north to south. Multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker Alice Diop takes us through these suburban spaces and confronts us with some of the faces and stories of which they are composed.
    A moving testament to the importance of filming as a process of bearing witness and remembering, Nous is timely in many ways. It is subtle and shrewd in a world that favours shortcuts and easy answers. Justifiably adopting the fragmented structure of a patchwork portrait in order to describe a riven society, Diop displays impressive control of her essay and its impact. In the film’s first few minutes, a deer is observed, through binoculars. A certain sense of awkward, man-made distance stays with us. Isolation, discrimination and nostalgia for hierarchies, inherited from a monarchical past … Divisions haunt France’s present. But the human urge to give as well as to receive stubbornly creeps into every situation, observed or triggered. Could this be the one thing that still keeps a nation together?
    (excerpt from berlinale.de)Read More »

  • Gleb Panfilov – Proshu slova (1977)

    Gleb Panfilov1971-1980DramaUSSR

    Proshu slova (1977)

    Quote:
    The title is a Russian expression meaning “I wish to speak”. This is one of my three favorite Panfilov films which I consider masterpieces, the other two being “Nachalo” and “Tema”; Panfilov wrote this script by himself it seems. It shows, this film is genius. For me, this is honestly one of the most thought-provoking films of my life. Perfectly written. It is about a family woman who was made the mayor of a town. I am mystified by this film. Not since Tarkovsky have I felt this strange spiritual energy, and that’s saying something. This is the last Panfilov film I saw, I’ve seen five others. The incredible world of the characters is what reminds me of a Tarkovsky movie. This movie is about a family. It could be said to be about a lot of things.Read More »

  • Veit Harlan – Opfergang AKA The Great Sacrifice [+Commentary] (1944)

    Veit Harlan1941-1950GermanyThird Reich Cinema

    IMDb wrote:
    Idle intellectuals Albrecht, Octavia and Äls, are given to quoting and emulating their philosopher hero, Nietzsche. Albrecht later contracts typhus bringing the foster child gravely ill Äls out of an infected area.Read More »

  • Renata Litvinova – Severnyy veter AKA The North Wind (2021)

    Renata Litvinova2021-2030DramaFantasyRussia

    Quote:
    The matriarchal clan led by gorgeous Margarita (Renata Litvinova) enters a turbulent period when her son loses his beloved fiancée. Using the structure of a repetitive ritual, the action spans years but takes place mostly during the annual gatherings of Margarita’s extraordinary family in their mansion on New Year’s Eve. Margarita believes in the magical 13th hour that can break the eternal circle of repetition, defeat death and bring her much-awaited love.Read More »

  • Ben Rivers – Ah, Liberty! (2008)

    Ben Rivers2001-2010ExperimentalShort FilmUnited Kingdom

    A family’s place in the wilderness, outside of time; free-range animals and children, junk and nature, all within the most sublime landscape.Read More »

  • John Ford – Steamboat Round the Bend (1935)

    John Ford1931-1940ComedyDramaUSA

    Quote:
    “Steamboat ‘Round the Bend” was a personal project for Ford who saw the novel (Ford purchased the adaptation rights from writer Ben Lucien Burman) as a potential opportunity to work with his good friend Will Rogers. The pictures he directed at Fox were usually lighter affairs with a sustained focus on entertainment rather than art. Ford is generally not remembered for such films because his precise framing and noble themes brought him far more recognition and acclaim. Nevertheless, Ford still had the sense to know how to present a good comedy.Read More »

  • Xueshu Yan – Ye shan AKA In The Wild Mountains (1986)

    1981-1990ChinaDramaXueshu Yan

    Quote:
    Two mismatched farming couples experience both sexual and social change in 1980s China. Husband-swapping and entrepreneurial zeal fuse in this superbly shot, wittily realised take on a country where rambunctious capitalism and desiring bodies are two sides of the same coin.
    NY : ‘Hard life in country’ indeed – the country being rural China, the time being some unspecified point in the mid-70s. Plausible in both details and atmosphere, the film is more concerned with character-development than plot – and topical/political references, though scattered throughout (“the government wants us to make money now”… “Not the police has changed, it’s a good chance for us all”), aren’t delivered in too heavy-handed a fashion.Read More »

  • Gregg Araki – The Living End (1992)

    Gregg Araki1991-2000CultDramaQueer Cinema(s)

    Quote:
    Luke is a gay hustler. Jon is a movie critic. Both are HIV positive. They go on a hedonistic, dangerous journey, their motto “Fuck the world”.Read More »

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