Synopsis:
Cries from Syria is a searing, comprehensive account of a brutal five-year conflict from the inside out, drawing on hundreds of hours of war footage from Syrian activists and citizen journalists, as well as testimony from child protestors, leaders of the revolution, human rights defenders, ordinary citizens, and high-ranking army generals who defected from the government. Their collective stories are a cry for attention and help from a world that little understands their reality or agrees on what to do about it. A documentary by Evgeny Afineevsky, director of the Oscar-nominated film Winter on Fire, Cries From Syria premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.Read More »
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Evgeny Afineevsky – Cries from Syria (2017)
2011-2020DocumentaryEvgeny AfineevskyPoliticsUSA -
Negar Azarbayjani – Fasl-e Narges AKA Season of Narges (2017)
2011-2020DramaIranNegar AzarbayjaniQuote:
“Season of Narges” is parallel stories of three women who are named “Gisoo”, “Aylar”&“Narges”. These women each have their own story, but they’re all somehow connected to each other.Read More » -
Aarne Tarkas – Yö on pitkä AKA The Night Is Long (1952)
1951-1960Aarne TarkasCrimeFinlandThrillerSynopsis:
Åke Strandberg has managed to get a fine education and a good job at the bank, but he wants more. He wants to get rich no matter what. After holidays with his girl Rita, he comes back to Helsinki completely broke and meets up with his buddy Jussi in a bar.
For months they embezzle money from the bank, but eventually do relize they have to cover the missing amount by orchestrating and comitting a robbery which will then rouse the intrest of the police. A hide and seek follows as they try to make their way abroad.Read More » -
Anthony Mann – T-Men (1947)
1941-1950Anthony MannClassicsFilm NoirUSASynopsis wrote:
Two U.S. Treasury (“T-men”) agents go undercover in Detroit, and then Los Angeles, in an attempt to break a U.S. currency counterfeiting ring.Read More » -
Asia Argento – The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things (2004)
2001-2010Asia ArgentoDramaQueer Cinema(s)USAQuote:
The dysfunctional twenty-three-year-old Sarah takes her six-year-old natural son Jeremiah from the home of his beloved foster parents with the support of the social service to live with her. Along the years, the boy shares her insane and low lifestyle and is introduced to booze and drugs and mentally, physically and sexually abused by Sarah, her lovers and her religiously fanatic family.Read More » -
Robert Bresson – Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
1961-1970ClassicsDramaFranceRobert BressonJim Ridley wrote:
With exquisite, heartrending calm, Bresson’s 1966 masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar lays out the life of a donkey, from first brays to final rest. Baptized Balthazar, the donkey goes through passages of life parallel to his early owner, a farmer’s daughter named Marie (played as an adult by Anne Wiazemsky).
Together and separately, they experience the full spectrum of man’s failings: Balthazar is kicked by passing thugs, beaten by an owner, and eventually used for theft, while Marie is seduced, abandoned and ultimately assaulted. Yet while Bresson’s vision is harsh, it’s also redemptive, even merciful. It ends on a note of quiet transcendence, as if to say all suffering, no matter how grave, cannot last.Read More » -
Maureen Blackwood & Isaac Julien – The Passion of Remembrance (1986)
1981-1990ArthouseDramaMaureen Blackwood and Isaac JulienUnited KingdomThe first film by Sankofa Film and Video, THE PASSION OF REMEMBRANCE has gained classic status as a representation of the totality and diversity of Black experience. Within a dramatic framework the film gives a mosaic impression of the different dimensions of Black experience lived and imagined by a generation of filmmakers in the UK. As beautiful as it is eloquent, THE PASSION OF REMEMBRANCE is critical viewing for those interested in race, gender, history and cinema studies.
“Really radical filmmaking…the filmmakers intend to raise the intelligence and consciousness of their audience.” Armond White – Film CommentRead More »
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Teuvo Tulio – Laulu tulipunaisesta kukasta AKA Song of the Scarlet Flower (1938)
1931-1940ClassicsDramaFinlandTeuvo TulioSynopsis:
Song of the Scarlet Flower was Teuvo Tulio’s first independently produced film, and the earliest of his surviving films. The plot was about Olavi, a farmer’s son who leaves his home after a dispute with his father and leads a life of a womanizing logger.Read More » -
Various – Deutschland im Herbst AKA Germany in Autumn (1978)
1971-1980DramaGermanyVariousQuote:
Germany in Autumn does not have a plot per se; it mixes documentary footage, along with standard movie scenes, to give the audience the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The movie covers the two month time period during 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped, and later murdered, by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction). The businessman had been kidnapped in an effort to secure the release of the orginal leaders of the RAF, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang. When the kidnapping effort and a plane hijacking effort failed, the three most prominent leaders of the RAF, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Enslin, and Jean-Carl Raspe, all committed suicide in prison. It has become an article of faith within the left-wing community that these three were actually murdered by the state. The movie has several vignettes, including an extended set of scenes with the famous director Rainer Werner Fassbinder discussing his feelings about Germany’s political situation at the time. Fassbinder’s scenes almost seem to be candid documentary footage, but aren’t. Other scenes include documentary footage of the joint funeral of Baader, Enslin, and Raspe.Read More »








