In the nineteenth century, a young police captain, Langlois, is sent to a remote snow-covered village to investigate the disappearance of a girl. He is helped in his investigation by a local magistrate, who is convinced that the murderer is an ordinary man who has killed merely to relieve his boredom. When he finally confronts the killer, Langlois becomes aware of his own identity and discovers that he too has the impulse to take the lives of others…Read More »

Synopsis:
“Uptight” is an updated remake of John Ford’s 1935 film, “The Informer”. Dublin becomes the Cleveland ghetto and the Irish Republicans are replaced by black revolutionary fighters. Days after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Tank Williams (Julian Mayfield) is an unemployed and itinerant steelworker who turns over his militant friend, Johnny Wells (Max Julien) to the police for $1,000 reward, resulting in an underground all-points bulletin to exact vengeance on the squealer. Legendary director, Jules Dassin’s unrelenting directional pace is complemented by the driving score of Booker T. Jones. The stellar cast includes Raymond St. Jacques, Ruby Dee, Roscoe Lee Browne, and Frank Silvera.Read More »

Synopsis
The vibrancy of gypsy life has been brought to the fore on film by Tony Gatlif, himself of gypsy heritage. Galtif has covered much European territory with films such as his much-loved Gadjo Dilo (1997). Vengo tells a romantically tragic tale of vendetta and sacrifice for family, which is the closest to home of all; it tells of the Andalusian gypsies of southern Spain – Gatlif’s own background.Read More »

Synopsis:
A blonde fashion model, Tulia is lured to an isolated country estate by a creepy older woman, Sara. There she meets Theo, orphan and homeless boy who has given a home by Sara. They call each other as aunt and nephew. He is photography-obsessed and even creepier than Sara. Tulia doesn’t seem too perturbed to learn that a previous female model, Rhonda that went there has disappeared without a trace, nor does she find it strange that her first night there they get her drunk and engage her in perverse game of strip poker. She almost has sex with the boy while the old woman secretly watches but he isn’t able to rise to the occasion. The next day he takes her into town and pays a friend to rip her clothes off and nearly rape her while he takes pictures. This doesn’t seem to bother her either because soon she’s involved in another bisexual three-way sex/photography session with them. There is also an allusion to the old Bluebeard story-the model has been forbidden to enter the boy’s mysterious darkroom.Read More »

Synopsis:
Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat U.S.S. San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the “rice-bowl” system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat’s presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission.Read More »

Synopsis:
In 1930’s Austria, a young woman named Maria is failing miserably in her attempts to become a nun. When the Navy captain Georg Von Trapp writes to the convent asking for a governess that can handle his seven mischievous children, Maria is given the job. The Captain’s wife is dead, and he is often away, and runs the household as strictly as he does the ships he sails on. The children are unhappy and resentful of the governesses that their father keeps hiring, and have managed to run each of them off one by one. When Maria arrives, she is initially met with the same hostility, but her kindness, understanding, and sense of fun soon draws them to her and brings some much-needed joy into all their lives — including the Captain’s.Read More »

Synopsis:
Frustrated by illegal competition from Russians in the seal fur trade, Capt. Jonathan Clark (Gregory Peck) struggles to raise funds to purchase Alaska from Russia. Another competitor, unscrupulous trader Portugee (Anthony Quinn), is hired to transport Russian Countess Mariana Selanova (Ann Blyth) to marry the callous Prince Semyon (Carl Esmond). After Jonathan falls in love with Mariana, he squares off against Portugee, the prince and the Russians to rescue her and restore the trading business.Read More »

Synopsis
Often described as “the first American independent film”, von Sternberg’s The Salvation Hunters is an austere and obscurely naturalist drama about “humans who crawl near the floor.”

“It’s hard now to appreciate the bomb-shell that Sternberg’s first feature must have been in Hollywood at the time: its slow pace, its lyrical pessimism, and its strong emphasis on the psychological over the physical set it far apart from anything that the American cinema had produced” (Tony Rayns, Time Out Film Guide). Shot for less than five thousand dollars in the span of three weeks, the groundbreaking Salvation Hunters announced the emergence of a major new talent, even if audiences of the day didn’t quite know what to make of its grimy settings, glum tone, and overt symbolizing.Read More »

Director Wu Nien-Jen’s autobiographical portrait of his father and the family conflict that develops around him, set against the background of dramatic political change in Taiwan.

Sega, a coal-miner who grew up in the years of Japanese colonial rule over Taiwan, is more strongly attracted to Japanese identity and culture than to the Mainland Chinese model imposed after the Kuomintang takeover in 1945. His son Wen-Jian on the other hand, typically for his generation, has a natural allegiance to Chinese culture. He is baffled by and impatient with his father’s fondness for the Japanese, a bafflement intensified by the harshly negative portrayal of Japanese imperialist ambitions and wartime atrocities he is exposed to at school.Read More »