Quote:
Can you find happiness in the big city? The young hat maker Natascha, who lives with her grandfather in a suburb covered in winter snow, has to commute by train from the village to Moscow to deliver her creations to the extravagant Irene’s hat shop. For the administration, Irene claims Natascha to be her subtenant in order to be able to have more living space. The clumsy railway official woos the lovely country girl with his ravishing smile. But she enters into a fictitious marriage with the provincial Ilya in order to get him a room in Moscow. With an apparently worthless lottery ticket, which Irene’s husband gives to Natascha, the entanglements become turbulent. Boris Barnet describes the contrasts between city and country and the new living conditions in Moscow in a stylish and socially critical way. Three great acting talents, Anna Stén, Iwan Kowal-Samborski and Vladimir Fogel, form the triangle of relationships. Originally ordered as a vehicle to advertise the State Lottery, the film made the studio rich and the natural talent director Boris Barnet famous as the founder of lyrical comedy.Read More »
-
Boris Barnet – Devushka s korobkoy AKA The Girl with the Hat Box (1927)
1921-1930Boris BarnetComedySilentUSSR -
Frank Cole – Life Without Death (2000)
Drama1991-2000CanadaDocumentaryFrank Cole

Quote:
The Sahara Desert occupies most of the northern continent of Africa. It’s eight-and-a-half-million square kilometres in area, and stretches from Mauritania on the Atlantic coast, through Mali, Niger and Chad, and ends at the Red Sea in Sudan. It’s arid, bleak and unforgiving. Outbreaks of civil war between various desert tribes spring up continuously along the entire route. The carcasses of the desert’s victims — camels, goats and scorpions – litter its vast expanse, having succumbed to the heat or the lack of water or the violence of its storms. What, then, would possess someone to traverse this hell on earth – alone?Read More » -
Andrew Douglas – Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus [+commentary] (2003)
2001-2010Andrew DouglasDocumentaryPerformanceUSA

Quote:
Searching for The Wrong-Eyed Jesus is a captivating and compelling road trip through the creative spirit of the the Southern U.S. Director Andrew Douglas’s film follows “Alt Country” singer Jim White through a gritty terrain of churches, prisons, truck stops, biker bars and coal mines. This is a journey through a very real contemporary Southern U.S., a world of marginalised white people and their unique and home-made society. Along the way are road-side encounters with modern musical mavericks including The Handsome Family, Johnny Dowd, 16 Horsepower and David Johansen; old time banjo player Lee sexton; rockabilly and mountain Gospel churches – and novelist Harry Crews telling grisly stories down a dirt track.Read More » -
Spencer Gordon Bennet – The Secret Code (1942)
1941-1950ActionDramaSpencer Gordon BennetUSAIMDB:
A police detective goes undercover and joins a gang of Nazi agents using explosive gases and artificial lightning to sabotage the war effort, whom he battles in disguise as The Black Commando.Read More » -
Spencer Gordon Bennet – Manhunt of Mystery Island (1945)
1941-1950ActionSci-FiSpencer Gordon BennetUSAPlot summary for
Manhunt of Mystery Island
A young couple journeys to Mystery Island to rescue the girl’s father, who is being held prisoner by the evil Captain Mephisto, a pirate from 200 years ago who uses his Transformation Machine to travel forward in time and disguise himself as one of the four owners of Mystery Island. Written by AnonymousRead More » -
Anton Vidokle – This Is Cosmos (2014)
2011-2020Anton VidokleExperimentalRussiaVideo Art

This is Cosmos is the first film in a trilogy inspired by the ideas of Russian cosmism, which is a unique phenomenon that emerged in the late 19th century, bringing together religious, philosophical, scientific and aesthetic theories united by a common idea of cosmos as a universal order.
Drawing widely on poems, philosophical texts, scientific writings, academic papers, and historical studies from followers of Cosmism, Anton Vidokle has focused on the writings of philosopher Nikolai Fyodorov, the founder of the movement. In creating his theories of the “Common Cause,” Fyodorov advocated for the development of scientific methods for the radical extension of life and the resurrection of the dead, believing that death was a mistake, “because the energy of cosmos is indestructible, because true religion is a cult of ancestors, because true social equality is immortality for all.”Read More »
-
Wael Shawky – Cabaret Crusades: The Path to Cairo (2012)
2011-2020EgyptMusicalVideo ArtWael ShawkyWael Shawky presents his epic video trilogy that recounts the history of The Crusades from an Arab perspective. Inspired by The Crusades Through Arab Eyes by Lebanese historian Amin Maalouf, Shawky’s videos chart the numerous European campaigns to the Holy Land, starting from the early Crusades from 1096–1099 A.D. that are depicted in CABARET CRUSADES: THE HORROR SHOW FILES (2010) and the First and Second Crusades from 1099–1145 A.D. in CABARET CRUSADES: THE PATH TO CAIRO (2012).Read More »
-
Levan Gabriadze – Rezo (2018)
2011-2020AnimationDocumentaryLevan GabriadzeRussia

The rich inner world of the renowned Georgian screenwriter, artist and puppeteer Rezo Gabriadze is as fantastic as the animation into which he has poured this story of his life. Rezo’s director son, Leo Gabriadze, who previously made the hit horror film Unfriended (2014), leaves it to his father to talk about a life suffused with magical thinking.
The movie is an autobiographical animated documentary questioning ideas of deep humanity, kindness and survival during the uneasy times after the 2nd World War.
Winner of Best Animated Feature Film at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.Read More »
-
Simon Lereng Wilmont – Olegs krig AKA The Distant Barking of Dogs (2017)
2011-2020DenmarkDocumentarySimon Lereng WilmontWarSynopsis
The Distant Barking of Dogs is set in Eastern Ukraine on the frontline of the war. The film follows the life of 10-year-old Ukrainian boy Oleg throughout a year, witnessing the gradual erosion of his innocence beneath the pressures of war. Oleg lives with his beloved grandmother, Alexandra, in the small village of Hnutove.Read More »




