This film has been called the “Uruguayan ‘Slacker’”, a reference to Linklater’s movie. It has also been called a landmark film in a (low-key, small-scale) renaissance in Uruguayan cinema – a national cinema with a terrible memory problem (“El Dirigible”, from 1994, was routinely cited as “the first Uruguayan film”, which is very false, but understandable when one sees how little movies that country has managed to preserve).

Whatever its place in film history, it’s worth a watch, and rings very much true.Read More »

In Madrid, the family of Don Luis, his wife Dolores and their children, Manolita and Luisito, share the daily life of the Civil War with their maid and neighbours. Despite having failed his exams, Luisito wants his father to buy him a bicycle. However, the situation forces them to delay the purchase and the delay, like the war itself, is to last much longer than expected.

The movie, and the book it was drawn from, show how daily life was conducted during the war. Unexpected things happen, but people find ways to survive. Above all, it is a story of survival and adaptation.Read More »

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Fictionalized documentary showing the evolution of witchcraft, from its pagan roots to its confusion with hysteria in modern Europe. Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen’s legendary silent film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages and early modern era suffered from the same ills as psychiatric patients diagnosed with hysteria in the film’s own time. Far from a dry dissertation on the topic, the film itself is a witches’ brew of the scary, the gross, and the darkly humorous. Christensen’s mix-and-match approach to genre anticipates gothic horror, documentary re-creation, and the essay film, making for an experience unlike anything else in the history of cinema.Read More »

As adapted from the roman by Antonia Arslan and co-directed by legendary Italian brothers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, The Lark Farm marks one of the few international features to tackle the Armenian genocide head-on. The story (with its thematic parallels, in the early scenes, to De Sica’s 1970 Garden of the Finzi-Continis) concerns the Avakian clan. An Armenian family living an affluent lifestyle and periodically shuttling back and forth between their two comfortable homes, the Avakians feel convinced that the rising tide of Turkish hostility on the horizon means little to them and will scarcely affect their day to day. Read More »

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Employing natural sound and contemplative proscenium shots, Benning skillfully composes a series of pure and majestic images that at once evoke a sense of nostalgic splendor as well as deliver a subtle, yet penetrating, political commentary. Benning tells the story of how water irrigates this valley and how the produce is carted away in boxcars for the nation’s consumption. He shows the lifestyle of a modest and growing rural community, whose concerns are often drowned out by the powerful railroads, oil companies and insurance conglomerates which own the farms and ranches and benefit from undocumented immigrant labor while insisting on imprisoning an American population of color.Read More »

Ummuye, Behiye, Ummu, Fatma K., Cennet, Saniye, Fatma F., Zeynep and Nesime are nine peasant women living in Arslankoy, a mountain village in southern Turkey. They spend their days working hard in the fields, on the construction site and at home. To lighten the burden of life, these women come together for a wholly different reason. They intend to write and perform a play based on their own life stories. They gather at the local high school, which they were shy of even stepping into until that day and they work with the principal, Mr. Huseyin. They reveal their life stories that they were even afraid to tell themselves and confront. For days on end, under the curious gazes of the village men, they work tirelessly, discuss and create with much fun a play, “The Outcry of Women!” This documentary is about the development process of this play and the change the women went through during this period.Read More »

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Rome Express is a fast-moving British imitation of Hollywood’s Grand Hotel formula. The film concentrates on the various passengers of a European express train. On this particular run, the train is a veritable hotbed of intrigue, with crooks and blackmail victims seemingly in every coach. Among the naughty and nice characters are continental favorites Conrad Veidt, Cedric Hardwicke and Finlay Currie, as well as American silent film star Esther Ralston. Rome Express enabled director Walter Forde to graduate from inexpensive regional comedies to prestige British productions. The film was also an obvious inspiration for such later intrigue-on-the-rails epics as The Lady Vanishes (38) and Night Train (39). Rome Express was remade in 1948 as Sleeping Car to Trieste.Read More »

Three teenagers are shaken up by their first loves in the turmoil of their youth. At a time when others are conforming, they stand their ground and assert their right to love and be free.Read More »

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Disney animators set pictures to Western classical music as Leopold Stokowski conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra. “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” features Mickey Mouse as an aspiring magician who oversteps his limits. “The Rite of Spring” tells the story of evolution, from single-celled animals to the death of the dinosaurs. “Dance of the Hours” is a comic ballet performed by ostriches, hippos, elephants, and alligators. “Night on Bald Mountain” and “Ave Maria” set the forces of darkness and light against each other as a devilish revel is interrupted by the coming of a new day.Read More »