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In the years between Je tu il elle and her fourth feature, Les rendez-vous d’Anna (1978), Chantal Akerman had become an art-film sensation, thanks to Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Her ultimate expression of the reassurance and anxiety of routine and her most evocative visual exploration of space and time, Jeanne Dielman tied Akerman’s distinct long-duration camera approach to a challengingly drawn-out narrative of domestic confinement. Made with an entirely female crew and focusing on the stultifying household routines of an isolated woman, it was hailed in Europe and America as possibly the greatest, purest feminist film ever made, even if Akerman insisted that was not her intention.Read More »
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Chantal Akerman – Les rendez-vous d’Anna AKA Anna’s Meetings (1978)
1971-1980ArthouseChantal AkermanDramaFrance -
Eliza Hittman – Beach Rats (2017)
2011-2020DramaEliza HittmanQueer Cinema(s)USAQuote:
An aimless teenager on the outer edges of Brooklyn struggles to escape his bleak home life and navigate questions of self-identity, as he balances his time between his delinquent friends, a potential new girlfriend, and older men he meets online.Read More » -
Aleksandr Dovzhenko & Yuliya Solntseva – Pobeda na Pravoberezhnoi Ukraine i izgnaniye nemetsikh zakhvatchikov za predeli Ukrainskikh sovietskikh zemel AKA Victory in Soviet Ukraine (1945)
Documentary1941-1950Aleksandr DovzhenkoUSSRWarYuliya SolntsevaYuliya Solntseva and Aleksandr DovzhenkoDescribes the Russian attack against the Germans, which drove them away from the Dneiper river, and finally out of Ukraine.Read More »
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Béla Tarr – Sátántangó AKA Satan’s Tango (1994)
1991-2000ArthouseBéla TarrDramaHungaryQuote:
In a small, dilapidated village in 1990s Hungary, life has come to a virtual stand-still. The Autumn rains have started. A few of the villagers expect to receive a large cash payment that evening, and then plan to leave. Some want to abscond earlier with more than their fair share of the money. However they hear that the smooth-talking Irimias, who they thought had died, is returning. They are apprehensive that he will take all their money in one of his grandiose schemes to keep the community going.Read More » -
Virginie Despentes & Coralie – Baise-moi AKA Fuck me (2000)
1991-2000CrimeDramaFranceVirginie Despentes and CoralieTwo young women, marginalised by society, go on a destructive tour of sex and violence. Breaking norms and killing men – and shattering the complacency of polite cinema audiences.
Baise-moi (Fuck Me) is a 2000 French thriller film written and co-directed by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi and starring Karen Lancaume and Raffaëla Anderson. It is based on the homonymous novel by Despentes, first published in 1999. The film received intense media coverage because of its graphic mix of violence and explicit sex scenes. Consequently, it is sometimes considered an example of the “New French Extremity”.Read More »
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Bertrand Tavernier – Voyage à travers le cinéma français AKA My Journey Through French Cinema (2016)
2011-2020Bertrand TavernierDocumentaryFranceSynopsis wrote:
Bertrand Tavernier’s personal journey through French cinema, from films he enjoyed as a boy to his own early career, told through portraits of key creative figures.Embark on an cinematic experience with writer-director Bertrand Tavernier’s personal voyage through French cinema. Tavernier explores the auteurs from the 1930s up to his own first breakout feature in 1974, The Clockmaker of St. Paul.
Included in the analysis are the contributions of directors such as Jacques Becker and François Truffaut and actors such as Jean Renoir and Jean Gabin balanced with those of lesser known French filmmakers who have also illuminated emotions and revealed surprising truths. Hundreds of clips comprise this magnificent tribute to French filmmakers, scriptwriters, actors, and musicians with rare and behind the-scenes insights that are eye-opening, scandalous and funny.
Tavernier’s dissection draws a reference line to the influences of American cinema at the time.Read More »
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Otto Preminger – Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)
1941-1950CrimeFilm NoirOtto PremingerUSAQuote:
Dana Andrews is brutal metropolitan police detective Dixon, who despises all criminals because his father had been one. When the cops pick up two-bit gambler Ken Paine (Craig Stevens) as a murder suspect, Dixon subjects Paine to the third degree—and accidentally kills him.In disposing of the body, Dixon inadvertently places the blame for the killing on cab driver Jiggs Taylor (Tom Tully). Having fallen in love with Jigg’s daughter (Gene Tierney), Dixon tries to clear the cabbie without implicating himself, but ultimately he becomes trapped in a web of his own making; luckily Tierney promises to stand by him.
Where the Sidewalk Ends was adapted from a novel by William A. Stuart; its director was Otto Preminger, who’d previously put Andrews and Tierney through their paces in Laur (1944).Read More »
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Su Friedrich – I Cannot Tell You How I Feel (2016)
2011-2020ArthouseDocumentarySu FriedrichUSASu Friedrich continues her ongoing quest to film the battleground of family life. Her mother plays the lead, kicking and protesting against being taken to an “independent living” facility. Friedrich and her two siblings fill out the supporting roles—cajoling, comforting, and freaking out.
One of the great and most personal experimental filmmakers, we are proud that Su Friedrich is premiering her latest work here. It is a portrait of the artist’s relationship with her aging mother—making it a follow-up to The Ties That Bind—a wry, turbulent documentary of the complexities of family.Read More »
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Helmut Käutner – Schwarzer Kies AKA Black Gravel (1961)
1961-1970DramaFilm NoirHelmut KäutnerQuote:
In 1960, in a rural part of West Germany, an American military base is set up in a small village of 250 inhabitants. Now, 6000 soldiers are living in the region, and although no one really likes them, everybody is doing business with them. Some turn old barns in “typically American bars” where GIs can spend their pay for drinks; numerous prostitutes are visiting the region regularly to allow the Americans to forget about their homesickness for several costly minutes; others benefit from the construction of a military air base.Read More »








