• Ulrike Ottinger – Bildnis einer Trinkerin aka Ticket of no Return (1979)

    1971-1980ArthouseGermanyQueer Cinema(s)Ulrike Ottinger

    She purchased a ticket of no return to Berlin-Tegel. She wanted to forget her past, or rather to abandon it like a condemned house. She wanted to concentrate all her energies on one thing, something all her own. To follow her own destiny at last was her only desire. Berlin, a city in which she was a complete stranger, seemed just the place to indulge her passion undisturbed. Her passion was alcohol, she lived to drink and drank to live, the life of a drunkard. Her resolve to live out a narcissistic, pessimistic cult of solitude strengthened during her flight until it reached the level at which it could be lived. The time was ripe to put her plans into action.Read More »

  • Roberto Minervini – Stop the Pounding Heart (2013)

    2011-2020DocumentaryDramaRoberto MinerviniUSA

    Quote:
    Sara is a young girl raised in a family of goat farmers. Her parents homeschool their twelve children, rigorously following the precepts of the Bible. Like her sisters, Sara is taught to be a devout woman, subservient to men, while keeping her emotional and physical purity intact until marriage. When Sara meets Colby, a young amateur bull rider, she is thrown into crisis, questioning the only way of life she has ever known. In a stunning portrayal of contemporary America and the insular communities that dot its landscape, Stop the Pounding Heart is an exploration of adolescence, family and social values, gender roles, and religion in the rural American South. Minervini s contemplative, inwardly-focused filmmaking method has evoked comparisons to such auteurs as Robert Bresson, Terrence Malick and Carlos Reygadas, while the way he approaches his subjects gives his work an almost ethnographic flavor à la Jean Rouch.Read More »

  • Glenda Nicácio & Ary Rosa – Café com Canela AKA Coffee with Cinnamon (2017)

    2011-2020Ary RosaBrazilDramaGlenda Nicácio

    Five friends drink beer and chat at Violeta’s house. Bit by bit, their stories of love, loss and suffering are told, revealing the acts of love and friendship that helped them through the hardest times of their lives.

    Margarida lives in São Félix, isolated by the pain of losing her son. Violeta follows her life in Cachoeira, between daily adversities and traumas of the past. When they meet again, a process of transformation begins, marked by visits, cleanings and coffees with cinnamon.Read More »

  • Charles Barton – Smooth as Silk (1946)

    1941-1950Charles BartonCrimeFilm NoirUSA

    Lawyer Kent Taylor (Mark) helps writer John Litel (Steve) by defending his relative Danny Morton (Don) in a drink-driving case where he is guilty. Taylor manipulates witness accounts so that Morton goes free and he does this on the understanding that Litel will give his girlfriend Virginia Grey (Paula), the lead role in his new play. Well, after the court case, Litel goes back on his word and, understandably, Taylor is not happy, especially when Grey’s true character begins to reveal herself as she ruthlessly pushes her self-interest. Time for a murder……Read More »

  • Raphael Nussbaum – Pets (1973)

    Drama1971-1980ExploitationRaphael NussbaumUSA

    IMDB wrote:
    Naive, but brash and sultry teenage runaway Bonnie finds herself lost and adrift in America. The lovely young lass runs afoul of a colorful array of evil oddballs who all treat her like an object: violent criminal Pat makes Bonnie help her kidnap the middle-aged Dan Daubrey; domineering lesbian painter Geraldine Mills wants Bonnie to be her kept girl and uses her as a model; and wicked misogynistic rich sicko Vincent Stackman desires poor Bonnie as the ultimate prized possession in his menagerie of caged female animals he keeps locked up in the basement of his swanky remote mansion.Read More »

  • Jen Wan – Youma caizi AKA Ah Fei AKA Rapeseed (1983)

    1981-1990DramaJen WanTaiwan

    Quote:
    After graduating foreign languages department at Soochow University, he moved to USA, where he received MA in Film from Columbia College in California. While in America, he managed to create two well-received short films. In the early 80s he came back to Taiwan. In 1983 he was invited to direct one of the segments in an omnibus film The Sandwich Man. His episode is entitled The Taste of Apple (蘋果的滋味). The two other parts were directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien and Zeng Chuang-hsiang. This movie, together with another anthology film – In Our Time (1982), is considered a landmark in the emergence of the so-called Taiwanese New Wave. Among his other films, the most significant are Ah Fei (1984), Super Citizen Ko (1995) and Connection by Fate (1998). Read More »

  • Mohsen Makhmalbaf – Honarpisheh AKA The Actor (1993)

    1991-2000ComedyDramaIranMohsen Makhmalbaf

    An Iranian actor named Akbar is trying to become a serious actor instead of the clown everyone considers him to be. However financial problems force him to abandon his dream of being an artistic actor. He also has to deal with his family problems and his wife’s inability to become pregnant.Read More »

  • John Pilger – The War On Democracy (2007)

    USA2001-2010DocumentaryJohn Pilger

    Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
    John Pilger’s angry story of how a rapacious US covertly brutalised its Latin American neighbours should be a compelling documentary. And so it often is, despite being marred by a dewy-eyed interview with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, which has moments of almost Hello!-magazine deference. Pilger does not try to be a comedian like the Michael Moore generation; austerely, he recounts the shabby tale of how the postwar United States set about doing what we failed to do with Nasser over Suez: namely, remove inconvenient nationalisers in small countries, using phoney pretexts cooked up with the help of compliant media – what’s now known as “spin”. All over South America, the US found ways of toppling democratically elected leaders, replacing them with brutal strongmen who would protect US interests.Read More »

  • Philipp Döring – Nagel zum Sarg aka The Nail (2012)

    2011-2020DramaGermanyPhilipp DöringShort Film

    The film is set in Berlin in 1965. Τhe old woman welcomes the Commissioner at her doorstep with the words “I have been waiting for you for 30 years”. She has been maintaining for years the grave, where now by accident, this skull was found. The skull, has a rusty nail in it. In a long monologue, the woman confesses for the first time, her tragic life story.Read More »

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