• Janelle Balnicke & David Kennard – The Hero’s Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell (1987)

    1981-1990David KennardDocumentaryJanelle BalnickeUSA

    Quote:
    Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a scholar who achieved legendary status as an explicator of myths, is reverently profiled in this documentary that encompasses his long life and career. During his childhood in New York City, Campbell was taken to see “Buffalo Bill” Cody’s Wild West Show at Madison Square Garden. Young Campbell was fascinated by the Native Americans in Cody’s performing troupe and eventually became obsessed with mythology. Read More »

  • Farzad Motamen – Shabhaye roshan AKA White Nights (2003)

    2001-2010DramaFarzad MotamenIranRomance

    A young university professor, who leads a quiet and reclusive life and fills his life with reading and teaching literature, meet a young girl who has altered the course of her life for the sake of a man she loves. She has promised to meet her beloved at a certain spot on four consecutive nights exactly one year after their last meeting. The young professor’s encounter with the young and passionate girl during four nights brings about significant changes in both of their lives and beliefs. Now concepts like love, literature and expection have a new meaning for them.Read More »

  • Harun Farocki – Erkennen und verfolgen AKA War at a Distance (2003)

    2001-2010GermanyHarun Farocki

    Quote:
    In 1991, when images of the Gulf War flooded the international media, it was virtually impossible to distinguish between real pictures and those generated on computer. This loss of bearings was to change forever our way of deciphering what we see.Read More »

  • Heinz Emigholz – Die Wiese der Sachen (1988) (DVD)

    1981-1990ExperimentalGermanyHeinz EmigholzQueer Cinema(s)

    Quote:
    Jedes Jahrzehnt hat seinen eigenen Zugang zum Himmel.

    Clonetown, 1974 bis 1979, die Chronik eines Abschieds. Charon, ein abgesprungener Terrorist, sitzt am Ufer zur Vergessenheit und kommentiert die bevorstehende Vermoderung eines entführten Autohändlers. In seiner Erinnerung ziehen seine zweiten und dritten Ichs herauf, der megalomanische Künstler und der perverse Teppichhändler. Die ehedem achtlos mißhandelten Dinge rächen sich in seinem Kopf.Read More »

  • Xu Xin – A Yangtze Landscape (2017)

    2011-2020ChinaDocumentaryXu Xin

    Synopsis
    A Yangtze Landscape utilizes a non-narrative style, setting off from the Yangtze’s marine port Shanghai, filming all the way to the Yangtze River’s source, Qinghai/Tibet – filming a total distance of thousands of kilometers. Experimental music and noise recorded live on scene are used in post-production, painstakingly paired with relatively independent visuals, creating a magically realistic atmosphere contrasted with people seeming to be ‘decorative figures’ right out of traditional Chinese landscape scrolls.Read More »

  • Valeria Sarmiento – Elle (1995)

    1991-2000FranceRomanceValeria Sarmiento

    Quote:
    Elle is an alienating mixture of South American surrealism and the classic Hollywood melodrama of e.g. Douglas Sirk (of whom Sarmiento is a great fan). The husband is in love, the wife is not averse to being loved and yet they are not happy. At least, not in the usual sense of the word. The man is after all rather too much in love to be not a little paranoid and the wife, slightly Hitchcock and fairly nervous, is too carried away by his love to be not a little shocked. He regards her as a match for the Venus of Milo, cherishes her as a work of art and tries to perfect her, with all the obsessiveness that entails. Read More »

  • Cristi Puiu – Malmkrog (2020)

    2011-2020Cristi PuiuDramaRomania

    IMDb wrote:
    A landowner, a politician, a countess, a General and his wife gather in a spacious manor house and discuss death, war, progress and morality. As time passes by, the discussion becomes more serious and heated.Read More »

  • Ulrike Ottinger – Paris Calligrammes [German narration] (2020)

    2011-2020ArthouseDocumentaryGermanyUlrike Ottinger

    “In 1962, as a young artist, I came to live and work in Paris. That period until 1969, when I left the city, was not only one of the most formative for me, it was also an era of intellectual, political, and social upheaval in modern history. The film Paris Calligrammes combines my personal memories of the 1960s with a portrait of the city and a social cartography of the age. Like Guillaume Appolinaire’s poetry collection ‘Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War’, I have given it the form of a filmic “picture-poem” (calligram) in which the words and images, complemented by language, sound, and music, form a mosaic that emerges from the vivacity of those exciting years while speaking to the fragility of all cultural and political achievements.” ––Ulrike OttingerRead More »

  • Pascal Aubier – Valparaiso, Valparaiso (1971)

    1971-1980Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtComedyFrancePascal AubierPolitics

    Review by Jonathan Rosenbaum:
    It’s been a full quarter of a century, but I still harbor fond memories of a low-budget French comedy called Valparaiso Valparaiso, a first feature starring Alain Cuny and Bernadette Lafont that I saw at Cannes in 1973. A lighthearted satire about the myopia of romantic French revolutionaries, it details an elaborate hoax perpetrated on a befuddled leftist–a character so absorbed in the glory of departing for Chile to fight the good fight as a special agent that he doesn’t even notice the political struggle going on around him on the French docks when he leaves. Read More »

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