As random events unfold in an ordinary and busy London street, a commanding voice-over directs the action.Read More »

Quote:
Ombres chinoises was produced for the French TV magazine Juste une Image, a monthly show which in its almost three years of production cataloged all kinds of visual experimentations: from Muybridge to the latest computer animation of the New York Institute of Technology. I.N.A. asked for Ruiz’s participation for the April 1982 show. He decided to produce Ombres Chinoises (probably a project that was wandering in his mind long before), a catalog of dramatic situations acted out by Chinese shadows with voice-over narrations (depositio: actually, as Torrent notes below, these are only voiceovers in the technical sense. The “tragic situations” are represented through shadow, puppetry, and dialog not narration). Nothing comes closer to the Ruizian aesthetics. After the first dramatic situation, titled “enigma,” a panel reads:Read More »

Bright green leaves stripped from ears of corn, and later, the vibrant yellow ears placed steaming in the waiting bowl.Read More »

This work is the result of a montage of the director’s filmed diary, material he has filmed for nearly ten years.Read More »

The director, a French veteran of the Indochina war (La 317e Section), returned to follow a platoon of American soldiers for six weeks at the height of fighting in Vietnam in 1966. The documentary discusses the background and fate of the soldiers and emphasizes how much American culture pervades the soldiers’ behaviors in the midst of jungle life and fighting.Read More »

Quote:
Rouzbeh arrives in Prague, away from his troubled family life in Tehran, and drowns himself instead in a research about his father’s past as a communist expatriate in the former Czechoslovakia. Upon visiting the flat where his father used to live 50 years ago, he’s stopped by the police investigating a recent accident. The resident of the flat (Vladimir) has fallen from the window and his father’s name is identical to Rouzbeh’s. This can be no accident and he must accept that Vladimir is his own half brother. As he gets closer to the soul of Vladimir and discovers the hidden corners of his life, he learns a shocking fact about his father’s past, in total contrast to the hero he always admired. This directs him to a course of events identical to the one which brought Vladimir to his fall from the window.Read More »

Plot:
A contraband dealer living in Kabukicho discovers that there is danger lurking behind every corner when his untrusting exterior is slowly eroded by love in director Lee Chi-ngai’s hard-boiled crime drama. An ex-gangster who now makes his living selling illegal goods and trusts no one, half Taiwanese/half Japanese outlaw Lau Kenichi (Takeshi Kaneshiro) exists in a land where no one seems to speak the same language and three rival factions struggle to be the most powerful in the city. When the go-to man for one of the top crime bosses is murdered and Kenichi is given three days to find the killer, the appearance of a mysterious femme fatale threatens to cost the resourceful underworld dealer more than just his livelihood.Read More »

When two childhood friends get an unexpected opportunity to keep their fish restaurant open all year round, one of them comes out of the closet as a trans woman, putting a strain on their friendship and they see their lives in a new light.Read More »

Quote:
The boundary-breaking composer and performer Meredith Monk overcame a hostile critical establishment to become one of the great innovators of her generation. Now, Monk faces mortality: can such singular work be performed without her?Read More »