Two American Audiences (Richard Leacock, Mark Woodcock, 1968, 40 min., 16mm): Announcing itself as “a typical Pennebaker production of a typical Godard visit,” JLG speaks with grad students and Serge Losique at NYU in April 1968. Pennebaker: “When Jean-Luc Godard came to New York to make a film [1 A.M./1 P.M.] with me and Ricky Leacock, he was anxious to see America before the revolution broke out, torn up as it was with the Vietnam furor. Godard’s most recent film, La Chinoise, was playing, and Columbia University students, who had initiated their student uprising on the day the film opened, were pouring into the theater.Read More »

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The latest film by Hartmut Bitomsky is, just like much of his early work, a original film essay about film and film history. Just as in earlier films, he makes inventive use of the potential offered by the medium video to analyse films.The history of the UFA is the story of a risky financial venture in the twenties and a propaganda instrument in the thirties. Bitomsky’s approach stands out because he involvesthis social and political context in investigating and dissecting films.Read More »

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This long-lost film by Luigi Bazzoni is something of an oddity for Shameless whose 19 previous releases have comprised gialli and other thrillers or films with copious sex and/or nudity. Footprints is a very moody, atmospheric and tense mystery thriller about a woman, Alice, who wakes up late one Tuesday, finishes a translation and gets to the office in time for the twelve o’clock deadline. There she is asked if she knew when it had to be in and, replying ‘midday’, is asked which day? She is surprised to learn that it is, in fact Thursday, and she has lost two days. Hooked on sedatives and haunted by dreams of a film that may or may not be real, her fragile mental state is completely rocked by this news.Read More »

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However a VW is put together, what comes out is always the Federal Republic of Germany.

The VW factory is a museum of industrial technology, and at the same time it is its Utopia. The old factory buildings convey the impression of almost like being in a cathedral. In order to communicate with the crane operators high above, the workers beat on the steel griders with heavy hammers. The new buildings, however, are much lower – like in a complex of new apartments, in which you can touch the ceilings with your hands. While going around inside the buildings, you can follow the creation of an automobile and at the same time bid farewell to the industrial age.Read More »

The strength of mind of Mikhailo Lomonosov was comparable only to that of the Russian Spirit itself. An amazing mixture of natural (rather than ancestral) nobility, overwhelming intellect, sense of the beauty, humour, kind heart, and a total dedication, self sacrifice to the most deserving ideals, would make any true Russian, including Peter the Great, the most proud for the land that gave birth to this unimaginably capable human being. And the film brings out this point to you, not only using great talent of the inspired actors and director, but also by quoting historical facts and documents, and precisely reproducing events, scenes and even emotions. Read More »

The Jewel in the Crown (1984) is a British television serial about the final days of the British Raj in India during World War II, based upon the Raj Quartet novels by Paul Scott.
Granada Television produced it for the ITV network.Read More »

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A failed musician wanders in Paris, with a crossword puzzle as only guide. An initiatory journey between Good and Evil.Read More »

Lee Hazelwood plays Smoke. An American in Sweden, who works at a local factory and lives in a collective with other hippies and factory workers (among them Christina Lindberg). Together these youngsters go on strike. The owner’s daughter, who Smokes dates, gets murdered (‘smoked’) by one of the factory worker whom later blames Smoke. Smoke gets shot and wounded, and everything is down from there.Read More »

Documentary filmmaker Oscar (Oscar Alvarez) is researching machismo in Cuba. He learns that the nation’s chauvinistic men have problems with strong and autonomous females and expectations that fidelity is essential for women, but not for men.
However as the project progresses he begins to fall for his spirited colleague (Mirtha Ibarra), presenting a dilemma.
Should he be honest about his feelings and leave his wife for this new love, and can he make an objective documentary when he is himself entwined in the issues he is studying.Read More »