• Ralph Thomas – The 39 Steps (1959)

    1951-1960DramaRalph ThomasThrillerUnited Kingdom

    A remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s film of the same name. A man meets a woman and goes home with her, only to find her murdered. When he finds out that she was a secret agent and that he’s now mixed up in the matter, he must try to solve the mystery.Read More »

  • Heinz Emigholz – 2+2=22 [The Alphabet] AKA Streetscapes – Chapter 1 (2017)

    2011-2020ArchitectureDocumentaryGermanyHeinz EmigholzMusical

    Celebrated for his rigorous films about the experience of architecture (Schindler’s Houses, Loos Ornamental), Heinz Emigholz launches a new chapter of his “Photography and Beyond” project with an ambitious four-film cycle titled “Streetscapes” (which premiered to great acclaim at the recent Berlinale). The first installment is an open-ended response to Godard’s One Plus One, which chronicled the Rolling Stones in the studio at the height of the 1960s counterculture. This 21st-century update documents the German post-rock band Kreidler at work on their album ABC in a wood-paneled hall in Tbilisi, Georgia. Throughout Emigholz cuts to shots of the city streets outside and to the briskly leafed pages of his densely illustrated notebooks, while a voiceover ruminates on the nature of art and desire.Read More »

  • Marco Dutra & Juliana Rojas – As Boas Maneiras AKA Good Manners (2017)

    2011-2020BrazilDramaHorrorJuliana RojasMarco Dutra

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Clara, a lonely nurse from the outskirts of São Paulo, is hired by mysterious and wealthy Ana as the nanny for her unborn child. The two women develop a strong bond, but a fateful night changes their plans.
    Read More »

  • Jean-Claude Brisseau – Que le diable nous emporte (2018)

    2011-2020EroticaFranceJean-Claude BrisseauThriller

    Quote:
    Camille, a beautiful fourty-year-old woman, finds a mobile phone that Suzy lost in a station. When Suzy calls her own number, they arrange to meet at Camille’s place so that Suzy can get her phone back. During this encounter, Suzy also meets Clara, Camille’s girlfriend. But they are interrupted by Fabrice, Suzy’s rejected lover, who is drunk and tries to take Suzy back to his place. While Clara takes Suzy to hide in the apartment above theirs, where “Tonton,” a strange old man with a love of yoga, lives, Camille tries to calm down Fabrice. Little by little she consoles him. This is when strange interactions start to occur: Camille becomes passionately involved with Fabrice, while Tonton initiates Suzy into meditation and levitation. Little by little, everyone finds their own path toward happiness, their own place in the game of feelings.Read More »

  • Jean-Pierre Melville – Bob le flambeur (1956)

    Drama1951-1960CrimeFranceJean-Pierre Melville

    Bob, a middle-aged gambler and thief, plans a complicated heist. He deals with a number of underworld characters while planning the robbery of the Deauville Casino. Bob eventually hires a gang that includes an ace safecracker. Unfortunately for them, Bob’s nemesis, an old cop who Bob once saved from death, is tipped off after a money-hungry croupier’s wife betrays them. The police are waiting when the gang begins the seemingly impossible task of robbing the casino vault. Meanwhile in the casino, Bob starts to gamble.Read More »

  • Daniel Asadi Faezi – The Absence of Apricots (2018)

    2011-2020Daniel Asadi FaeziDocumentaryFantasyPakistan

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    A village in the mountains of Northern Pakistan. One day, a landslide congested a river. Thousands of homes and fields were inundated. Villages vanished. What is left are the people and their stories, passed on from one generation to another. And the ghosts, that are still roaming the region.

    Quote:
    A documentary fairy-tale about the struggle for identity in the Hunza Valley set in a village located in the Northern-Pakistan somewhere between the past and the future. A magnificent turquoise lake in between rough, steep cliff surrounds the small village. But the lake hasn’t been always there. One day, an enormous landslide blocked a river. In a few months, this river turned into a huge lake, which is now up to 30km long. Thousands of homes and fields were flooded. Entire villages disappeared forever. Thousands of people got dislocated and had to look for different places where to live. What is left are the stories of those that once used to live there which are passed on from generation to generation. Weaving together the past and the future, myths and sketches of everyday life, director Daniel Asadi Faezi creates a rich tapestry of images that create a sensual and textured dance of death and resurrection. And the ghosts that still roam the cliffs and the valley, join the humans in their dance.Read More »

  • Mohsen Makhmalbaf – Salaam Cinema (1995)

    1991-2000DocumentaryDramaIranMohsen Makhmalbaf

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Synopsis:
    Makhmalbaf puts an advertisement in the papers calling for an open casting for his next movie. However when hundreds of people show up, he decides to make a movie about the casting and the screen tests of the would-be actors.

    Review:
    A seminal film for Makhmalbaf (it laid the foundations for Moment of Innocence) and a key film for Iran’s new cinema. In 1994, to celebrate the medium’s upcoming centenary, Makhmalbaf placed an ad for aspiring movie actors in a newspaper. Five thousand people of all ages showed up (this opens with scenes of the riot) and the resulting film is a highly selective compilation of episodes from the screen tests. It packs a lot into 70 minutes. It’s a spot-sample of Iranian society in 1994, noting the rise of assertive young women. There’s a wry perspective on Khomeini’s revolution (note the man who trades on his prison friendship with Makhmalbaf to ask favours for his sons). There are reflections on cinephilia, from the idiots who think they look like Hollywood stars or want to show off their macho gunplay to the would-be actor who pretends to be blind and claims to be able to ‘feel’ the films he sits through. And there’s Makhmalbaf deconstructing the film-making process: acting the directorial bully, then watching others (women!) emulate his bullying. Read More »

  • Otto Jongerius – Twee vorstinnen en een vorst AKA Two Queens and One Consort (1981)

    1981-1990DramaNetherlandsOtto Jongerius

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Synopsis:
    At the deathbed of his used-to-be militant mother an older man looks back at his childhood, when he was in love with his sensual aunt Coleta. Read More »

  • Pedro Almodóvar – Julieta (2016)

    2011-2020DramaPedro AlmodóvarRomanceSpain

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    Julieta (Emma Suarez) is a middle-aged woman living in Madrid with her boyfriend Lorenzo. Both are going to move to Portugal when she casually runs into Bea, former best friend of her daughter Antia, who reveals that this one is living in Switzerland married and with three children. With the heart broken after 12 years of total absence of her daughter, Julieta cancels the journey to Portugal and she moves to her former building, in the hope that Antia someday communicates with her sending a letter. Alone with her thoughts, Julieta starts to write her memories to confront the pain of the events happened when she was a teenager (Adriana Ugarte) and met Xoan, a Galician fisherman. Falling in love with him, Julieta divides her time between the family, the job and the education of Antia until a fatal accident changes their lives. Slowly decaying in a depression, Julieta is helped by Antia and Bea, but one day Antia goes missing suddenly after a vacation with no clues about where to find …Read More »

Back to top button