Romi, a Japanese woman living in Paris, works in a karaoke bar. At home in the suburbs, she tends to her paraplegic lover Milou. To pass the time she recounts to him a story alluding to a period they once spent together in Japan.Read More »

The second in a projected trilogy by artist and filmmaker Andrew Kötting, Ivul marks the director’s successful return to narrative filmmaking. A family drama in which the close relationship between teenage siblings Alex and his older sister Freya (Leroux) increases to such an intensity that it develops sexual overtones, adding to the cracks in their not so happy home. An astonishingly distinctive and distinguished work located in the French Pyrenees, Ivul deftly blends the avant-garde, high wire performance and assured storytelling. Ambitious, challenging and yet also accessible, this is Kötting’s most sensory and purely satisfying feature to date. (-Curzon)Read More »

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Wealthy, sheltered Joan Fontaine is swept off her feet by charming ne’er-do-well Cary Grant. Though warned that Grant is little more than a fortune-hunter, Fontaine marries him anyway. She remains loyal to her irresponsible husband as he plows his way from one disreputable business scheme to another. Gradually, Fontaine comes to the conclusion that Grant intends to do away with her in order to collect her inheritance…a suspicion confirmed when Grant’s likeable business partner Nigel Bruce dies under mysterious circumstances. To his dying day, Hitchcock insisted that he wanted to retain the novelist Francis Iles’ original ending, but that the RKO executives intervened. Fontaine won an Academy Award for her work.Read More »

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In this lyrical and wry coming-of-age story set in Mexico City, wayward pre-teen Tomas (Sebastián Aguirre) is taken in by his aimless older brother Federico (Tenoch Huerta) and joins him on a quest in search of a local folk-rock legend who’s taken ill.Read More »

Synopsis: A lonely housewife begins an affair with a man in her tenement building.Read More »

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Between 1922 and 1925, a total of 23 issues of Dziga Vertov’s newsreel series Kino-Pravda (Kino-Truth) appeared (albeit irregularly and in very few copies). Vertov’s goal was to create a kind of “screen newspaper”; the title is a tribute to the newspaper Pravda founded by Lenin. Just like the Kinonedelja newsreel series (1918–19), the Kino-Pravda issues offer a fascinating insight into the early Soviet Union and demonstrate the rapid development of Vertov’s film language.

The 22 surviving issues (No. 12 is lost) have been digitized and subtitled in German and English by the Austrian Film Museum in 2017/18 and are now available online.Read More »

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Between 1922 and 1925, a total of 23 issues of Dziga Vertov’s newsreel series Kino-Pravda (Kino-Truth) appeared (albeit irregularly and in very few copies). Vertov’s goal was to create a kind of “screen newspaper”; the title is a tribute to the newspaper Pravda founded by Lenin. Just like the Kinonedelja newsreel series (1918–19), the Kino-Pravda issues offer a fascinating insight into the early Soviet Union and demonstrate the rapid development of Vertov’s film language.

The 22 surviving issues (No. 12 is lost) have been digitized and subtitled in German and English by the Austrian Film Museum in 2017/18 and are now available online.Read More »

Criterion: David Hudson
February 18, 2018 | Berlinale | Critic’s Rating: +++ (jury.critic.de)
None of that was on my mind as I luxuriated in the vibrant grain. Those, like me, who’ve been familiar only with Benning’s later work may be surprised by how entertaining and, at times, even funny 11 x 14 is. . . . Dialogue is rare, muffled, and all but indecipherable, but that doesn’t mean 11 x 14 isn’t a film to listen to as well as admire for its framing and composition.Read More »

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In 16th century Japan, protracted feudal wars have created a prevailing sense of lawlessness. Bandits have organized into formidable armies that scavenge the countryside in search of villages to loot. One morning, a band of thieves arrive at the outskirts of a farming community, but is persuaded to delay their attack until the barley has been harvested. A peasant farmer overhears their plan, and summons the villagers for a town meeting. The farmers seek counsel from the village elder (Kuninori Todo) who advises them to hire “hungry samurai” who would protect their village in exchange for meals. But the task of finding formidable samurais who will accept such a meager compensation proves to be a difficult task. One day, the farmers witness a middle-aged ronin (masterless samurai) named Kambei Shimada (Takashi Shimura) single-handedly rescue an abducted child by relying solely on his cunning intelligence and precise technical skill. Kambei has grown weary of fighting, but the plight of the farmers wins his sympathy, and he agrees to take up their seemingly hopeless cause.Read More »