• Pierre Rissient – Alibis AKA One Night Stand (1977)

    1971-1980DramaFrancePierre Rissient

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    Richard Jordan plays Paul, a disillusioned American in search of the meaning of life. After his ex-wife attempts suicide, Paul retreats to Hong Kong. Here he tries to assuage his angst by becoming involved with several local lovelies. Still unsatisfied, Paul leaves the British protectorate, once more trying to find himself. The film was shot entirely in Hong Kong.Read More »

  • Raymond Depardon – 12 jours AKA 12 Days (2017)

    2011-2020DocumentaryFranceRaymond Depardon

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    A young woman stares across a table at the judge who is reviewing her case. Her gaze is both searingly intense and curiously blank. Holding herself preternaturally still, muscles tensed against the turmoil of emotions, she pleads to see the two-year-old daughter who has been removed from her care. “Not all the time, I accept that. But just to change her diaper, to love her.” If there’s a more achingly sad moment in any film of the 2017 Cannes film festival, it’s hard to imagine what it could be. For 12 Jours, veteran documentarian Raymond Depardon (Modern Life, Journal de France) turns his lens on to the desperate, broken souls of the patients who have been involuntarily committed into the care of a Lyon psychiatric institution.Read More »

  • Clarence Brown – A Free Soul (1931)

    1931-1940Clarence BrownClassicsDramaUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    from imdb:
    An alcoholic lawyer who successfully defended a notorious gambler on a murder charge objects when his free-spirited daughter becomes romantically involved with him.Read More »

  • Fred Tan – Li gui chan shen AKA Split Of The Spirit (1987)

    1981-1990Fred TanHorrorTaiwanThriller

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    The ghost of a murdered woman possesses a dancer’s body in order to exact vengeance on her killer.

    Light Industry wrote:
    A rarity unearthed from Harvard’s vaults, Fred Tan’s Split of the Spirit is a macabre tale of supernatural possession, necromantic battles, and the vengeful phantom of a woman scorned. In Tan’s stylish neo-noir thriller, a renowned female choreographer becomes overtaken by the specter of a murdered woman, who forces her to enact revenge upon the men who have wronged her. After a string of gruesome slayings, the film culminates in a searing conflagration, an allegorical avant-garde dance finale, and ultimately an Orphic journey to the afterworld and back. Tan worked as an assistant director to King Hu and made only three features before his death at age thirty-five; placing the forces of ancient sorcery in contemporary Taiwan and Hong Kong, he deploys an ominous synth soundtrack and an expressive, haunting mise-en-scène to bring primeval frights into the modern world.Read More »

  • Claudia Llosa – Aloft (2014)

    2011-2020Claudia LlosaDramaSpain

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    As we follow a mother (Jennifer Connelly) and her son (Cillian Murphy), we delve into a past marred by an accident that tears them apart. She will become a renowned artist and healer, and he will grow into his own as a peculiar falconer who bears the marks of a double absence. In the present, a young journalist (Mélanie Laurent) will bring about an encounter between the two that puts the very meaning of life and art into question, so that we may contemplate the possibility of living life to its fullest, despite the uncertainties littering our paths.Read More »

  • Nils Malmros – Skønheden og udyret AKA Beauty and the Beast (1983)

    1981-1990DenmarkDramaNils Malmros

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Quote:
    When Mette and her father are left alone over the Christmas holidays to paint the new nursery the father ends up alone most of the time. The 16-year-old Mette is always off with her friends at the disco or skating, and the father does not mind until he discovers that young Jønne has taken some semi-nude photos of Mette and clearly is intending to go further in their relationship. Suddenly the father starts hanging out with Mette and her friends as they practice winter sports together – and there is hardly anything stranger, or more embarrassing, as far as Mette is concerned. It is clear that father and daughter are heading toward a change in their relationship as both have to adjust to her “growing up.” Read More »

  • Helmut Herbst – John Heartfield, Fotomonteur (1979)

    1971-1980DocumentaryGermanyHelmut HerbstPolitics

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    A documentary which looks at Heartfield primarily as a political activist working in a specific historical context. It demonstrates this relationship by the use of documentary material, such as archive footage of inter-war Germany, in juxtaposition with Heartfield’s works. (These are here frequently shown, as they are rarely reproduced, in their original format as magazine or book covers.) Far from manifesting an obsequious reverence for the works, the film takes the bold step, thoroughly justified by its results, of re-using the elements of Heartfield’s montages for short snippets of photo-animation. It also documents artistic influences on Heartfield’s work – Berlin Dada, which was in general more immediately political in nature than its Zurich counterpart, and George Grosz in particular – and includes a detailed demonstration of how the photomontages were produced and printed.Read More »

  • Júlio Bressane – Miramar (1997)

    1991-2000ArthouseBrazilJúlio BressaneMusical

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    qUOTE:
    Story with some autobiographical touches taken from director’s life. Miramar is a teenager raised by his parents to be an artist. But a tragedy occurs in his life: both his parents commit suicide. He then discovers the movies, and dreams of being a director.Read More »

  • Fredi M. Murer – Höhenfeuer aka Alpine Fire (1985)

    1981-1990DramaFredi M. MurerSwitzerland

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Alpine Fire is as heady and intoxicating as the thin mountain air of the Alps in which it takes place. The entire film is set far above the rest of the world, and the isolated location influences both the characters and the film style.

    The exact location is a lonely home pitched on the side of a mountain. Communication with neighbors is done with signs and binoculars; other people may be miles away, on the slope of the next Alp. The time is the present, but the home has no television or telephone, and it seems remote in many ways.

    In this house live the elderly parents (Rolf Illig, Dorothea Moritz) and their two children: a daughter, Belli (Johanna Lier) and a son (Thomas Nock) called simply the boy.

    The boy is deaf, temperamental and stunted in his learning. The early part of the film details his struggle with the world, and his fascination with ways of seeing; he uses mirrors, binoculars and various looking glasses to examine the silence around him. He becomes enraged when he spots his sister moving to the sounds of a transistor radio, which he immediately finds and destroys.Read More »

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