IMDb wrote:
A Bulgarian youth and a foreign girl meet at a Bulgarian seaside resort. They like each other and joking begin first a word game, and then another game called ‘The Pope Is Ill’. It turns out, however, that it is not the Pope who is really ill, but the girl’s father, an eminent western nuclear physicist who is terminally ill with cancer. His daughter is scared to death of the possible nuclear Armageddon, which has repeatedly been discussed in her presence. Gradually the carefree beach side mood is replaced by a serious conversation rich in implied meanings. A series of ‘visions’ reveals the view of each of two young people, which turn out to be very different. The girl imagines the apocalyptic end of the world, while the boy thinks of the evolution of life from its origins to the colonization of other space.Read More »

In this second of a four part series, media artist Harun Farocki explores the interplay between modern warfare and electronic media using computer simulation and documentary footage. Originally presented as a simultaneous four-screen gallery video installation, the separate films are available exclusively on realeyz.tv. Director’s notes to Part II “In Twentynine Palms, we filmed an exercise with around 300 extras playing both Afghan and Iraqi civilian populations. A few dozen Marines stood guard and went on patrol. The maneuver town lay on a piece of land that rose slightly above the desert; its buildings were assembled out of containers. The scene looked like something modeled on the reality of a computer simulation.”Read More »

This chapter considers the fact that the pictures with which preparations were made for war are so very similar to the pictures with which war was evaluated afterward. But there is a difference: The program for commemorating traumatic experiences is somewhat cheaper. Nothing and no-one casts a shadow here.Read More »

For Immersion, Harun Farocki went to visit a research centre near Seattle specialized in the development of virtual realities and computer simulations. One of their projects consists in using virtual reality (environments created to simulate this world) for therapeutic reasons for soldiers suffering traumas after the Iraq war. The double projection creates a parallel between animations and testimonies by soldiers reliving their mission, the explosions, gunshots and ambushes, their fears and their guilt. The chosen direct rendering and simplicity of the edit places us like the voyeur of a personal and difficult experience. Read More »

Plot
The brief life and extraordinary times of American jazz great Charlie Parker is the subject of this Argentinian biography by director Osias Wilenski. One of the greatest saxophonists of all time, Parker was also riddled with serious addictions and mental instabilities that eventually claimed his life in New York at the age of thirty-four. Born in Kansas City, MO, Parker — known as the “Bird” — was addicted to heroin as a teen. As his jazz career took off and he played with some of the biggest talents, like Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis, Parker was battling his own demons. This drama moves forward and backward in the saxophonist’s life and does so with more examples of his music than of pithy dialogue. Sergio Renan plays Parker. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, RoviRead More »

Synopsis:
This beautifully-filmed CinemaScope western spins the familiar plot of a greedy cattle baron taking the law into his own hands to monopolize a rich valley before legal claims can be filed on the land. Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood are the headliners here and their chemistry works well. Hunter is okay as a cowboy who wants to square matters for his brother’s murder. However, Ms. Wood is not very convincing as a Mexican girl, in spite of her fetching looks. Predictably, romance blooms, and Hunter and Wood team up to battle the bad guys who trail them like bloodhounds. The action is spotty but a solid cast of familiar character actors nudges the story along. The film has a fine climax, a derring-do affair in the spirit of the old west. The movie was based on a good Louis L’Amour novel and nearly measures up to this great storyteller’s work.Read More »

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Emma Mae (1976)

While writer-director Jamaa Fanaka intentionally frustrates any association with Blaxploitation, he courts the forms of that money-grubbing action subgenre for the purposes of his 1976 film Emma Mae, if only to subvert them. As such, the film occupies a lonely middle ground between such well-remembered grindhouse titles as Black Mama, White Mama (1972) and The Mack (1973) and the scattering of Black family dramas to which the big studios condescended in the early to mid-70s, such as Oscar Williams’ Five on the Black Hand Side (1973) and Michael Schultz’s Cooley High (1975). The latter was a direct influence on Fanaka while he was a student at UCLA’s film program and Emma Mae, his second feature, reflects a similar interest in depicting the texture of African-American community and family life in all its contrasting and contradictory patterns. Read More »

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Max was 13 when he was offered his first camera. For 25 years, he will not stop filming friends, loves, successes and failures. From the 90s to the 2010s, this is the portrait of a whole generation that is emerging through its objective.Read More »

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Pablo and Tina have complicated sexual lives. Pablo writes and directs plays and films; he’s gay and deeply in love with Juan, a young man who won’t reply to Pablo’s affection or letters. Pablo’s sibling Tina is a transsexual, angry at men, raising Ada, and trying to make it as an actress. Pablo takes up with Antonio, a youth who becomes jealous of Pablo’s love for Juan. Antonio seeks out Juan, and violence leads to Pablo’s grief and a temporary loss of memory. When memory returns, he learns that Antonio has taken up with Tina. In horror, he hurries to Tina’s rescue and must face Antonio and his desire.Read More »