Plot Synopsis by Mark Deming:

Elia Kazan directed this drama inspired by a true story. Karel Cernik (Fredric March) is the leader of a troupe of Czechoslovakian circus performers who have been plying their trade in Eastern Europe for years. When Czechoslovakia falls under Communist rule, the proud and independent Cernik finds that he is no longer free to operate his circus as he sees fit. Many of his performers are conscripted into military service, and his equipment and possessions are declared government property, though the state fails to maintain it properly, or even to give him access to the material to fix it himself. Finally, when Cernik’s remaining performers are ordered to insert pro-Communist messages into their acts, he decides that he can take no more and begins making plans to escape to Bavaria during an upcoming tour. Read More »

Synopsis
Davies’ film is divided into three segments entitled “Children”, “Madonna and Child”, and “Death and Transfiguartion”. The segments tell the life of Robert Tucker. The first segment looks at his birth and formative years in school, an austere boy’s school. The bleak environment is not aided by the loveless, violent domestic life he experiences. Nonetheless, his father’s death has a major impact on him. In the second segment, he is a closeted homosexual working in a grim office and still living at home with his daunting mother. In the final segment, he deals with his mother’s death and then faces his own impending doom. As his death approaches he flashes back to his life’s events.Read More »

Shut inside their cars, two women face off in a silent duel that is fought out in the intimate violence of their stares. A wholly female duel punctuated by the refusal to drink, eat and sleep; more obstinate than the sun of Palermo and more stubborn than the ferocity of the men who surround them. For, as in every duel, it is a question of life or death… It’s a Sunday afternoon. The sirocco is blowing pitilessly in Palermo when Rosa and Clara lose their way in the streets of the city and end up in a sort of alley: Via Castellana Bandiera. Read More »

Liu and Deng are a couple both in their 70s who have been married for nearly half a century and lived in a small inland city of China. The family of Liu and Deng is a typical ordinary family of China. The eldest daughter Liqin, divorced with a teenage son, lives with them. The second daughter Xiaomin and youngest son Xujun live in far away cities, married and with their own families. They are also too busy to visit the parents, therefore the old couple decide to travel a long way to visit them. It will be a special journey where they will do everything they can to keep the family tied together despite the distance, being the family their sole purpose in life.Read More »

An unlikely film for Maurice Elvey to direct, this is a 1930s vision of what life might be like twenty years later. The film was made in two versions – silent and sound – this is the silent version (and literally silent, no soundtrack on this one). So this is something of an oddity: A British silent sci-fi film! There aren’t many of those around.Read More »

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“The longest-running, weirdest, loneliest enigma is popular music is a guy from Texas who calls himself Jandek.” (Dougals Wolk, Providence Phoenix) 25 years, 35 albums and not a single live show or public appearance. The documentary film Jandek on Corwood definitively explores the most intriguing mystery in modern music. Featuring revealing interviews, evocative imagery and one of the most bizarre and compelling soundtracks in film history, Jandek on Corwood will challenge the viewer’s conception of music, Art and the nature of celebrity.Read More »

One of the most talked-about films at this year’s Sundance festival, writer-director Shane Carruth’s long-awaited follow-up to his micro-budget 2004 time-travel thriller Primer is even more mindbending and boldly experimental than its celebrated predecessor. Kris (Amy Seimetz), a young office worker, is kidnapped and drugged by a thief, who implants her with a strange foreign body. Read More »

(from arte.tv)
Quote:
Gilliam war der kreativste Kopf der unvergleichlichen Komikertruppe Monty Python, bevor er als Regisseur Meisterwerke wie “Brazil” und “12 Monkeys” schuf – aber auch ebenso große Flops. Mit seinem Projekt “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” scheiterte er spektakulär. Dokumentiert wurde der katastrophale Dreh und dessen Abbruch in dem inzwischen legendären Film “Lost in La Mancha”.Read More »

[SPOILER] A woman tries to give a pair of shoes to her husband, who is in prison. The story takes place in Diyarbakır,Turkey in 1984 after the military coup in 1980. In prison only allowed language to speak is Turkish. The film won “Palme D’or” for short film in Cannes Film Festival 2012. [SPOILER]Read More »