• Sacha Guitry – De Jeanne d’Arc à Philippe Pétain AKA From Joan of Arc to Philippe Petain AKA 1429-1942 (1944)

    1941-1950DocumentaryFranceSacha Guitry

    This film was shown in the movie theaters two months before the landing and afterward completely disappeared only to reappear in 1993. This is of course a propaganda movie .But not more than Stelli’s “Le Voile BLeu” .

    Beginning his movie with an evocation of Joan of Arc was not completely incongruous ; Guitry probably thought it was a sign from God ;1429: Joan’s odyssey begins ;birth of the Homeland ,1942: under the yoke of the Nazis ,but still proud of its past ,the country remembers .1429,1942 sinister anagram.Joan found since taken over by the far right wing .Read More »

  • D. Ross Lederman – The Last Ride (1944)

    USA1941-1950CrimeD. Ross LedermanMystery

    Synopsis:
    A police lieutenant sets out to break up a ring of tire bootleggers–criminals who sell defective tires to customers who can’t get new ones because of the rubber shortage brought about by the war. His task is complicated by the fact that his brother is mixed up in the racket and that they are both in love with the same girl.Read More »

  • Matthew Barney – Cremaster 4 (1995)

    1991-2000ArthouseExploitationMatthew BarneyUSA

    Cremaster 4 adheres most closely to the project’s biological model. This penultimate episode describes the system’s onward rush toward descension despite its resistance to division. The logo for this chapter is the Manx triskelion – three identical armored legs revolving around a central axis. Set on the Isle of Man, the film absorbs the island’s folklore as well as its more recent incarnation as host to the Tourist Trophy motorcycle race. Myth and machine combine to narrate a story of candidacy, which involves a trial of the will articulated by a series of passages and transformations. The film comprises three main character zones. Read More »

  • Matthew Barney – Cremaster 3 (2002)

    2001-2010ArthouseExperimentalMatthew BarneyUSA

    CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character – host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect (played by Richard Serra), and the Entered Apprentice (played by Barney), who are both working on the building. They are reenacting the Masonic myth of Hiram Abiff, purported architect of Solomon’s Temple, who possessed knowledge of the mysteries of the universe. The murder and resurrection of Abiff are reenacted during Masonic initiation rites as the culmination of a three-part process through which a candidate progresses from the first degree of Entered Apprenticeship to the third of Master Mason.Read More »

  • Matthew Barney – Cremaster 2 (1999)

    1991-2000ArthouseExperimentalMatthew BarneyUSA

    Cremaster 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney’s abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1. Cremaster 2 embodies this regressive impulse through its looping narrative, moving from 1977, the year of Gary Gilmore’s execution, to 1893, when Harry Houdini, who may have been Gilmore’s grandfather, performed at the World’s Columbian Exposition. The film is structured around three interrelated themes – the landscape as witness, the story of Gilmore (played by Barney), and the life of bees—that metaphorically describe the potential of moving backward in order to escape one’s destiny.Read More »

  • Matthew Barney – Cremaster 1 (1996)

    1991-2000ArthouseExperimentalMatthew BarneyUSA

    Cremaster 1 is a musical revue performed on the blue Astroturf playing field of Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho – Barney’s hometown. Two Goodyear Blimps float above the arena like the airships that often transmit live sporting events via television broadcast. Four air hostesses tend to each blimp. The only sound is soft ambient music, which suggests the hum of the engines. In the middle of each cabin interior sits a white-clothed table, it’s top decorated with an abstract centerpiece sculpted from Vaseline and surrounded by clusters of grapes. In one blimp the grapes are green, in the other they are purple. Under both of these otherwise identical tables resides Goodyear (played by Marti Domination). Read More »

  • Matt Ross – 28 Hotel Rooms (2012)

    2011-2020DramaMatt RossUSA

    Quote:
    A novelist and an accountant meet while they are traveling for work, and though they both are in relationships, their one-night stand could become something more.Read More »

  • Ahmed Imamovic – Belvedere (2010)

    Drama2001-2010Ahmed ImamovicBosnia Herzegovina

    The film deals with the tragedy of the women survivors of the Srebrenica genocide, or rather, the consequences of the horrors they experienced – it is about women whose sole purpose in life is to locate the bones of their loved ones and give them a decent burial. Fifteen years later, they still want just one simple thing – the truth. As a contrast, the film deals with trivialities of modern living, obsessed with different reality shows…Read More »

  • Elia Suleiman – Segell Ikhtifa AKA Chronicle of a Disappearance (1997)

    Drama1971-1980ComedyElia SuleimanPalestine

    Deceptively simple and executed with a documentary feel, this drama represents a highly personal journey home for expatriate Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman. The film is divided into two sections. The first documents the paradoxical but sleepy existence in the Arab part of Nazareth. The second part takes a more political view of the city and in it, Suleiman takes a more active role. He has come to his former home in search of inspiration, but what he sees are many disturbing images of Arab people trapped in a cultural identity crisis, a point best illustrated by the plight of a young Arab woman who wants more independence than traditionally allowed in her part of town but cannot find it because of prejudiced residents on the Jewish side.Read More »

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