A full description of the film can be found in James Quandt’s edited collection of writings on (and by) Ichikawa Kon from the Cinemateque Ontario (in Sato Tadao’s essay “Kon Ichikawa” on pages 109 – 111). A Billionaire was one of a handful of 50s comedies that Ichikawa directed that were extremely successful at the box office. These films were characterized by rapid-fire dialogue and biting social commentary (others like this include Pu-San and Mr Lucky). This is definitely a period of Ichikawa’s career that deserves more focus from the West.Read More »

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“A filmmaker and academic, Stephane Marti has pursued cinema as a visual art form, divorced from the codes of the dominant narrative cinema, since 1976. He is a passionate and militant advocate of Super-8, a filmmaking tool which he has used for 30 years.

His work has been shown in festivals and international presentations and has elicited numerous articles and interviews. His flamboyant, baroque and sensual style focuses principally on the Body and the Sacred.

Baroque shades of red and gold fill the frame and dominate the color palette. These pure colours are captured by a mobile, trembling camera, whose gaze is projected with desire towards the bodies of the actors. The plasticity of the masculine subject’s skin is the axis of its gaze.Read More »

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It was Rivette’s second feature, after the puzzling ‘Paris Nous Appartient,’ and eschewed the nouvelle vague in favour of something altogether more structured, indeed rigorously so. “This film is a work of imagination,” the opening caption informs us, “not a portrait of religious institutions, 18th century or other. It should be viewed from a double perspective; history and romance.”Read More »

A fiercely active Communard, Louise Michel is condemned for taking arms against Bismarck. Along with thousands of other revolutionaries, she is deported to New Caledonia, whilst, back in Paris, a young parliamentarian Georges Clemenceau campaigns for a truce with the Communards. During her exile, Louise Michel becomes a teacher and wins the admiration of the other deportees, inspiring them to rise up against the colonial order…Read More »

The film follows England fans from Frankfurt to Gelsenkirchen and infiltrates groups of troublemakers.
A record 170,000 England fans travelled to Germany for the cup and the majority were peaceful causing no problems.
But the worst rioting happened the day before the England vs Ecuador game.
Police believe rioters consumed or threw about 17 litres of beer each in Stuttgart and 400 England ‘fans’ were taken into preventative custody.
The motto of World Cup 2006 was ‘a time to make friends’ but undercover cameras reveal England ‘fans’ ‘mobbing up’ and singing songs about World War Two which visibly shock German police officers.Read More »

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In 2003, a man with a lifelong cannibalistic obsession placed an advertisement on the Internet in search of a victim to eat. Unbelievably he received a replay from a willing victim, whereby the stage was set for one of the most awful and depraved crimes of modern times. The gruesome incident was captured on camcorder and the footage formed part of the evidence at the trail of the world’s most infamous cannibal.Read More »

Over the years Mexico has gained itself quite a reputation as one of the countries with the strongest traditions in cinematic horror with films like Brainiac (El Baron Del Terror) and Curse of the Doll People proving exactly why. This particular film from the early 60’s is an effective tale of a voodoo curse bringing terror to those who are afflicted by it. It is the usual horror formula of ancient mystical traditions pitted against the modern word of cold hard facts and rational science where there is no room for myth or superstition.Read More »

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For the extraordinarily beautiful second film in his Fontainhas trilogy, Pedro Costa jettisoned his earlier films’ larger crews to burrow even deeper into the Lisbon ghetto and the lives of its desperate inhabitants. With the intimate feel of a documentary and the texture of a Vermeer painting, In Vanda’s Room takes an unflinching, fragmentary look at a handful of self-destructive, marginalized people, but is centered around the heroin-addicted Vanda Duarte. Costa presents the daily routines of Vanda and her neighbors with disarming matter-of-factness, and through his camera, individuals whom many would deem disposable become vivid and vital. This was Costa’s first use of digital video, and the evocative images he created remain some of the medium’s most astonishing.—The Criterion CollectionRead More »

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In the arid mountains of the remote and inaccessible Huangyangchuan, Gansu Province, a simple small countryside clinic welcomes the local sick and injured. Ma Bingcheng is a respected country doctor. Thanks to his good medical skills, day after day his waiting room is filled with patients wanting to consult him or get a prescription. His cramped country clinic is an open space where information and personal experiences intertwine, offering the audience a rare dissecting view of the lives and living conditions of the local farmers.Read More »