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Maurice Pialat’s portrait of contemporary France mocks prosperity as a substitute for social and sexual revolution. Nelly abandons her bourgeois friends and a steady relationship for the unemployed layabout Loulou, whose charms include focusing his energy into sex.Read More »
When the lives of Sheikh Mahmoud, a Muslim preacher (played by Omar Sharif), and Boulos, a Christian priest (played by Adel Emam), are threatened by religious extremists on both sides, the Egyptian government inducts them into a witness protection program that requires them to disguise themselves as the Christian Marcus and the Muslim Sheikh Hassan, in a reversal of their religious identities. When they unwittingly move into the same building, a friendship blossoms that must, along with a romance between their respective children, withstand the difficulties of prejudice and social persecution. The film addresses issues of religious extremism, intolerance and sectarian violence, and emphasizes the possibility of friendship and love between members of different religions.Read More »
Identical twin brothers become hybrid A.I (artificial intelligence) entities, yet torn in different directions to achieve justice for humanity.Read More »
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An orange Chevrolet Impala drives across a cemetery towards an abandoned shipwreck in the middle of a desert landscape. It is the 22nd of January, 1965. The day before, the Iranian prime minister was shot dead in front of the parliament building.Read More »
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The second film by Jean-Claude Brisseau is this gritty story of working women in the modern world. Originally shot on 16mm for French television, Life the Way It Is (La Vie Comme Ca) may be the director’s most radical film, with its images of suicide, group violence, and sexual pressure. Agnes Tessier leaves the comfortable confines of school to work at a chemical factory in a slum district with her friend Florence. When greeted with sexual harassment, harsh conditions, and volatile coworkers, Agnes responds by applying for the union rep position in order to challenge the status quo at the factory. Stripped down to the essentials, the film reflects the fury of working-class women everywhere.Read More »
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One of several Pre-Code dramas helmed by Warner Bros. contract director Archie Mayo in 1932, Under Eighteen is a cautionary tale for the working girl that was lost in the shuffle of too many similar programmers released that same year. Seen today, it provides a unique window into the past when studios like Warner Bros. catered to blue collar audiences, particularly women, with movie plots that mirrored situations and circumstances in the lives of their audience.Read More »
Spain – the Civil War is raging. Fanny Horn, an English aristocrat looking for adventure, is caught up in the turmoil in Madrid. Here, for the first time, she meets Father Heredia – a monk of the Jesuit Order. Obsessed by her passion for him, she enrolls as a nurse at Peña Ronda, a focus of epidemic typhoid fever, where the Jesuit has set up a field hospital. The monk tries to reject the English woman, but, for a short while, loses control of his feelings. Fanny is ready to take desperate action, but she is once again confronted with Father Heredia’s fanaticism, which is capable of destroying everything around him.Read More »
A documentary record shot on the 24th and 25th July 1944 of the concentration camp in Majdanek. Comparable to Resnais’ Nuit et bruillard, it’s filled with images of such staggering awfulness that they take on an almost abstract quality – one might regard the images of mountains of shoes, spectacles and hairbrushes as beautiful if one was unaware of the horrifying reality behind them.Read More »
A ‘generation film’ about 30-somethings in Romania who deal with totally different issues than those of their parents. The businessman Bogdan (alias Boogie) is on a holiday with his family at the Black Sea and bumps into two old friends with whom he hopes to re-live the good old days.Read More »