Synopsis:
In a Tehran hospital, a woman awaits anxiously for news about her grandchild – and she’s shattered when she learns that the baby is a girl. Outside the hospital are three young women – they’re anxious, fearful – and their attempts to leave the city are constantly thwarted. One of them, Nargess, tries unsuccessfully to make contact with her friend, Pari, who is recently out of prison and has been thrown out of her family home. Pregnant and desperate, Pari seeks help from Monir, a friend married to a Pakistani doctor.

In addition to these frightened, disenfranchised women we meet Nayereh, who is forced to abandon her little girl, and Mojgan, a prostitute. As the story spirals from one character to another, it eventually turns full circle. Read More »

Plot:
Early Talkie titanness Dorothy Mackaill stars in this steamy pairing of racy dramas that tested the limits of the censors – and of marriage! The Office Wife features Mackaill playing a “welcome danger to the tired businessman” while sharing the screen alongside a scene-stealing and clothes-shedding Joan Blondell (in her sophomore screen appearance!). Party Husband finds ex-Ziegfield Girl Dorothy playing the better half of a thoroughly “modern marriage” whose openness threatens to bring about its premature end. Fellow Ziegfield alum Mary Doran plays the coquette whose intended conquest of the free-thinking hubby (James Rennie) starts to throw the couple’s “understanding” awry. From Warner Brothers!Read More »

Synopsis:
Oft-filmed black-and-white thriller of coincidence or inexorable fate based on the popular play by W.W. Jacobs. The Monkey’s Paw was filmed at Kay Carlton Hill Studios at St Johns Wood in London by low-budget producers Butchers. Despite its atmospheric finale amid the thunder and rain, the films expectant chills fail to materialise leaving only a tale of morality.

A curio shop owner sells a monkey’s paw an antiques dealer (Sydney Tafler) that can grant three wishes, but warns it has its drawbacks and tragedy follows each wish. The paw comes into the possession of Irish shopkeeper Trelawne (Milton Rosmer) who needs to pay off his gambling debts. As a consequence his son Tom is killed in a speedway race; the compensation pays the debt. Mrs Trelawne (Megs Jenkins) wishes her son back to life but her husband counters this by wishing he rest in peace.Read More »

A group of freshmen in an orthodox college are introduced in a world of cons, pleasure and money, but they soon discover that’s not the way one’s life should be lead.
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Synopsis:
Review from Midnight Eye:
Credits roll over a static shot of a prostitute, lying prone on her back with all the aloofness of Manet’s Olympia and nothing but the prostrate figure of a hulking black American GI stretched over her to mask her nudity. As the camera slowly pans along her bare flank, she raises her arm above her head to reveal a dense thicket of underarm hair.

Provocative stuff in a country where the one real taboo in the sexual arena is the onscreen portrayal of pubic hair, but it wasn’t this scene which landed its director in court for Japanese cinema’s first obscenity trial. As the screaming sound of jet planes which dominate the soundtrack of this brazen opening might suggest, Black Snow’s subversion goes beyond the mere carnal.
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Kyoko is a twenty-one-year-old artist who loves being at the center of attention. One day, feeling down, she lashes out against her assistant, sexually humiliating her in front of the rest of the staff. Suddenly someone yells “Cut!” and we realize that they are actually on a movie set.
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Synopsis:

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a country with a very strong social cohesion and the unprecedented admiration of the people for their leader, which is absolutely unique and incomprehensible especially from a Western point of view. The native Korean director Sung-Hyung Cho tries to understand this by accompanying several Koreans from different backgrounds in their daily lives. The film shows the country and its people in a way, as it is rarely done in Western media, non-judgmental and respectful towards the people. Read More »

Like Piccolo mondo antico, Malombra is a film set in a grandiose, but a bit crowded aristocratic house, which is itself squashed between the beautiful, but deadly see, and the stolid, un-romantic mountains. A claustrophobic space with no escapes, a space of directionless hauntings and self-induced psychosis. Also, of course, a space of late, musty fascism. The reality of the second world war and the twilight of the Mussollini era is never directly alluded to, but it seems to penetrate all walls, clothes, the flesh itself.Read More »

Synopsis:
Melé is a bar singer, her husband Chaka is out of work and the couple is on the verge of breaking up… In the courtyard of the house they share with other families, a trial court has been set up. African civil society spokesmen have taken proceedings against the World Bank and the IMF whom they blame for Africa’s woes… Amidst the pleas and the testimonies, life goes on in the courtyard. Chaka does not seem to be concerned by this novel Africa’s desire to fight for its rights…

— IMDb.Read More »