A girl from a troubled family befriends two younger girls and begins to feel a sense of normalcy as they go adventuring at the seaside.Read More »

In an hour’s chat with two French interviewers, Sternberg laments the failure of critics and the public to truly understand his work.Read More »

Cine-Gazzettino, 23 September 1929 wrote:
Wilhelm Dieterle’s strong and manly art and Marcella Albani’s suave charm intermingle here in a splendid natural setting, to depict a drama where love and duty, compassion and hate, purity and crime merge together in a very interesting story.Read More »

Quote:
A father decides to put his delinquent daughter into a temple in Kyoto known for its austere novitiate. Initially resistant to all forms of discipline, she ends up falling in love with the nun who is in charge of her.Read More »

imdb:
Niños de la Calle examines the gritty reality of four children living on the streets of Mexico City. Filmed in 2001, this dramatic and moving documentary follows Marcos, Erika, Antonio and Juan as they get high, visit their families and struggle to survive in the world’s largest metropolis. Niños de la Calle was nominated for two Mexican Academy Awards (Arieles), and won the Best Feature Documentary prize at the inaugural edition of the Morelia International Film Festival in 2003.Read More »

In his first feature film, Juraj Herz established himself as an original auteur with a flair for refined style. In accord with Hana Bělohradská’s novel Poslední večeře (The Last Supper), he created a dark atmosphere filled with suspicion and despair around a criminal plot. Znamení Raka (1966) is set in the hospital where the crime will take place. In a consulting room, somebody will murder Dr. Hahn – and due to the physician’s reputation as a womaniser, the list of suspects grows… Herz filled the unusual setting with bizarre figures, among whom shines the character of the terminally ill Prokopa, as embodied by Iva Janžurová. Znamení Raka (Sign of the Cancer) faced a series of problems, as Herz was forced to change the post-synchronisation and to omit a series of sexually explicit scenes. Real-life physicians, outraged by the unqualified communist physician character (Ilja Prachř), also protested against the film.Read More »

On a shortlist with Eiichi Yamamoto’s BELLADONNA OF SADNESS and René Laloux’s FANTASTIC PLANET as one of the most surreal, psychedelic and truly cosmic animated features ever made, German director Helmut Herbst’s utterly insane THE CATHEDRAL OF NEW EMOTIONS follows a commune of Berlin stoners and intellectuals who get set adrift in space in 1972 in a packing container clutched in a giant flying hand. Various space flotsam smashes into the windshield – enormous insects, Mighty Mouse, a Bird Man from “Flash Gordon” – while hypnotic Krautrock drones in the background moaning “Where am I??”, and a naked man bounces up and down off a massive red pepper. Read More »

Quote:
Hiromi Go plays a high school student who needs a role model in his life badly. He’s raised by his older sister played by Keiko Matsuzaka who is a hostess at a night club. She meets a man who becomes her boyfriend. He races in a off-road car rally professionally. The same man becomes Go’s role model and teaches him sophisticated car driving techniques. One of the techniques taught is ‘double clutch’ ( Thus the movie’s title Double Kuracchi ) to make gear transition smoothly between shifts. Due to an unfortunate accident, Matsuzaka’s character dies and Go is left to fend for his life. Hiromi Go was a big pop idol in Japan when this movie was created. Both Go and Matsuzaka still enjoys high celebrity status in Japan.Read More »

Plot : Squareworld has a stark, minimal narrative: a drug-addicted man kidnaps a young woman from the hills and torments her. We learn almost nothing about either the victim or her tormentor, and the film contains no moral judgments.Read More »