Synopsis:
Epic film of the legendary Spanish hero, Rodrigo Diaz (“El Cid” to his followers), who, without compromising his strict sense of honour, still succeeds in taking the initiative and driving the Moors from Spain.Read More »

A Gestapo officer arrives in a small asylum. His mission: to find the enemy agent who’s hiding among the insane…Read More »

Quote:
A day in the life of a rain-shower. As a city symphony Joris Ivens films Amsterdam and its changing appearence during a rain-shower. A very poetic film with changing moods, following the change from sunny Amsterdam streets to rain drops in the canals and the pooring rain on windows, umbrellas, trams and streets, untill it clears up and the sun breaks through once again. Although it seems to be one day it took Ivens a long time to film what he wanted to film (for even in Amsterdam it doesn’t rain every day). With The Bridge, Rain became his major breakthrough as an avant-garde film artist. In 1932 Joris Ivens asked Lou Lichtveld (who also made the music for Philips Radio) to make a sound version of it, and in 1941 the film inspired Hanns Eisler to compose his “Fourteen ways to describe rain” in the context of a ‘Film Music Project’.Read More »

“Seven Seas, the first of Shimizu’s great silent films of the 30s, was scripted by Kogo Noda, Ozu’s close associate, from a novel by Itsuma Maki (a pen name of the noted writer, Umitaro Hasegawa). The film is a lengthy work interweaving characters from different backgrounds and social strata in a narrative centered around the experiences of its heroine, Yumie Sone. Over two hours long, Seven Seas was released theatrically in two parts, with the first part entitled “Virginity Chapter” coming out in December 1931, while the second part, “Frigidity Chapter,” followed in March 1932. Near the beginning of the narrative, at a garden party given by the wealthy Yagibashi family in Tokyo, Yumie meets Takehiko, the Yagibashis’ playboy son and the brother of Yumie’s fiancé, Yuzuru. Yumie, a young middle-class woman, lives with her ailing father, a retired ministry official, an older sister, and a younger sister still a child (played by a very young Hideko Takamine). Read More »

In the saga of Hollywood’s slow, slow maturation in the depiction of Native Americans, Geronimo highlights an early ’60s turning point — his character is drawn with sympathy — but no more than that. Chuck Connors, an obviously Caucasian actor, plays the great chief, and there is not a single Native American actor in the cast. The story centers on Geronimo’s escape from oppressive conditions on his reservation, and his garnering of forces in Mexico to wage war against the U.S. Several misconceptions are still scattered throughout the tale, especially the indication at the end that Geronimo was successful in obtaining fair treatment for all Native Americans at the hands of the U.S. government.

~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie GuideRead More »

Synopsis
Jean-Marie Straub’s new film closes the circle. The years 1954–2013 are displayed as representing a film produced in collaboration with Danièle Huillet. The two had met in Paris in 1954, around the year they came across the text by Georges Bernanos, to whom Straub has now dedicated a half-hour film. A man and a woman engaged in a dialogue, talking about their love, as if talking across an abyss. Then, in the last take, the two of them close together, motionless for a long time.Read More »

Quote:
“…What sounds rather bookish and intimidating, in fact unfolds an enormous sensual stimulus on screen. In more than 20 sequences, based in part on work by Stifter and Camus, Hamburg’s experimental film director and a number of students from Braunschweig and Göttingen demonstrate a higher school of hearing and seeing. With manipulations of sight and sound, which are at times highly complex and mathematically precise, he shows the tension between optical and acoustic elements, inventing ever new combinations from which an abstract poetry issues forth. Nekes works with single frame mechanism and multiple copying of the images, thus defamiliarizing the sound at the same time. The title of the film pertains to Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’. Lagado is the name of the academy in which scientists of the most diverse disciplines work at strange projects.” – Hans C. BlumenbergRead More »

Quote:
Ed Novak, a two-bit bookie, goes to prison rather than squeal on his Syndicate higher-ups. Novak’s silence exacts a toll on his wife Frances, who is expecting a child. The longer Novak remains in prison, the more he becomes aware that the mob has deserted him — and the more he’s willing to spill what he knows. Fellow prisoner Steve Marlin intends to see that Novak keeps his mouth shut permanently.Read More »

IMDB:
Shoichi is a violent young man just released from jail who aspires to be a drummer. He works his way up by playing gigs in a hip Ginza club, an eventually wins a drumming contest. But what he really desires is the approval of his mother, who hates music and musicians.Read More »