• Richard Pinhas & Oren Ambarchi – Tikkun (Rune 389, Cuneiform Records 2014) (2014)

    2011-2020ExperimentalPerformanceRichard Pinhas and Oren AmbarchiUSA

    Richard Pinhas, the founder of 70s progressive legends Heldon, is one of the most uncompromising artists on the international rock scene, having remained constantly innovative and true to his personal artistic vision for 40 years and some 35 full length releases.

    Oren Ambarchi is a guitarist, drummer and sound-artist who has performed and/or recorded with a huge array of artists, including Fennesz, John Zorn, Jim O’Rourke, Otomo Yoshihide, Evan Parker, Merzbow and others. Since 2004, he has worked with the avant-metal band Sunn O))), contributing to many of their releases and side- projects.Read More »

  • Bertrand Tavernier – Des enfants gâtés AKA Spoiled Children (1977)

    1971-1980Bertrand TavernierDramaFrance

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    Quote:
    Some films cry out to be made. Others whisper, and some just offer the tiniest, weariest shrug. ”Spoiled Children,” which opened yesterday at the Public Theater, is one of the latter. Its main character is a film director who rents an apartment in which he plans to create his latest screenplay. While living in the apartment, he joins the tenants’ committee, has a desultory affair with a woman much younger than he, pays visits to his wife that are even more desultory, and otherwise whiles away time.

    This director, Bernard (Michel Piccoli), appears to be assembling material for his film with an arty randomness, selecting occasional snippets of his own experience and shaping his screenplay around them. He even has a collaborator, who chimes in ”It’s strange how the cemeteries in Berlin are colder than elsewhere.” The collaborator then proclaims the remark ”Great!” and wonders how he can wedge it into the film. Bertrand Tavernier, the film’s director, may have worked in much the same way.Read More »

  • Allan King – Memory for Max, Claire, Ida and Company (2005)

    2001-2010Allan KingCanadaDocumentary

    Quote:
    Finally, King expands his exploration of the aging process with Memory for Max, Claire, Ida, and Company, an intimate personal diary for eight patients suffering from dementia and memory loss at the Baycrest Geriatric Health Care System. Whereas Dying at Grace documented patients succumbing to the inevitable, Memory focuses on the terrifying doubts, palpable relationships, and relentless patterns of the individual patient and their fragile grip on reality. The titular trio makes up a close-knit group linked by emotional necessity, and Memory delves deep into the haunting alienation each feels when one unexpectedly dies, and the others have to relive the tragic news over and over again. The process is difficult to watch, but in a final coup de grace, King upends stereotypes about the sick and aged by never abandoning them no matter how difficult the situation, his camera a tracker of the small, delicate emotions cinema usually can’t recreate.Read More »

  • Stina Werenfels – Dora oder Die sexuellen Neurosen unserer Eltern AKA Dora or The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents (2015)

    2011-2020DramaStina WerenfelsSwitzerland

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    Quote:
    At the age of 18, Dora is just beginning to blossom. Her mother Kristin has recently decided that Dora’s psychotherapeutic medication is no longer necessary. As the mentally disabled young woman rushes headlong into life, a man takes a liking to her. The two soon become sexually involved – much to Kristin’s dismay. Unbeknownst to her parents, Dora continues meeting the dubious man, who is obviously taken with her unrestrained sensuality. Whilst her mother’s attempts to have a second child have thus far been of no avail, Dora becomes pregnant…Read More »

  • Albert Serra – El Senyor ha fet en mi meravelles AKA The Lord Worked Wonders in Me (2011)

    2011-2020Albert SerraArthouseDocumentarySpain

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    The original dvdr announce wrote:
    This filmic exchange is based on two works that reflect on the way each director films, on the crew and the actors, on the way they see and make cinema. Albert Serra took the characters of Honor de Cavalleria and his regular team of collaborators to follow in the steps of Quixote. Lisandro Alonso returned to La Pampa province to film his work, for which he recalls Misael Saavedra, the lead of his first film, La Libertad.Read More »

  • Werner Herzog – Herz aus Glas AKA Heart of Glass (1976)

    1971-1980DramaGermanyWerner Herzog

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    Quote:
    If Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is, as I contend, an exegesis on the human tendency to contextualize life through custom – not to mention, of course, the inculcative parallels through which both we and less domesticated species glean long-term behavioral patterns – then his 1976 work, Heart of Glass, is an admonishment on holding such traditions in too high of sentiment. Despite revolving ostensibly about an 18th century Bavarian village, the director appears to be simply employing this milieu as but a microcosm for any culture that’s extinction draws nigh, painting progress and evolution as more reliable entities than ritual and superstition. Heart of Glass’s diaphanous narrative is laden with hints to such contemplations, though in the end, none reads as poetically oblique as the opening sequence: A formal and spoken manifestation of death.Read More »

  • Kleber Mendonça Filho – Aquarius (2016)

    2011-2020ArthouseBrazilDramaKleber Mendonça Filho

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    Synopsis wrote:
    Clara, a 65 year old widow and retired music critic, was born into a wealthy and traditional family in Recife, Brazil. She is the last resident of the Aquarius, an original two-story building, built in the 1940s, in the upper-class, seaside Boa Viagem Avenue, Recife. All the neighboring apartments have already been acquired by a company which has other plans for that plot. Clara has pledged to only leave her place upon her death, and will engage in a cold war of sorts with the company. This tension both disturbs Clara and gives her that edge on her daily routine. It also gets her thinking about her loved ones, her past and her future.Read More »

  • Allan King – Come on Children (1973)

    1971-1980Allan KingCanadaDocumentary

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    Quote:
    For Come on Children, from 1972, King returns to the lives of troubled Toronto youths, but this time he creates the environment of study himself. After doing extensive interviews with local teenagers, King sent 10 of his subjects on a country retreat to a farmhouse where they could live collectively without the interference of adults, hierarchies, or rules. Each of the teens, ranging in age from 13 to 18, gets a musical introduction from one of the more charismatic subjects, a pimply ex-drug addict named John. His Dylan-esque folk narration gives Come on Children a reflexive identity, the best example his last lyric, “I’m not sure what the film’s about, but I hope the movie makes you feel that you wished you were here.” These kids understand the camera’s perspective, but that doesn’t stop them from unveiling a disturbing mixture of naiveté and hardnosed cynicism at the adult life waiting around the corner. Once again, King uses a collective set piece—a visit from everyone’s parents to the farmhouse—to show the dynamic drama breathing through the core of every conversation. If Come on Children is less successful at engaging the viewer’s sympathies, it’s because the Vietnam-era teens don’t see much to look forward to, an ideology King never sugarcoats.Read More »

  • István Ventilla – Nicole aka Crazed (1978)

    1971-1980DramaExploitationIstván VentillaUSA

    29f7c043f76a2bde437fd0d52a185152

    Features Dukes Of Hazzard’s Daisy Duke only nude scenes!

    Crazed features a fully-nude lesbian scene between Daisy Duke herself Catherine Bach and critically acclaimed character actress Leslie Caron (Chocolat, Gigi)! Because of this notorious scene, Crazed has become one of the most sought-after movies on the cult film collector’s circuit. Nicole (Leslie Caron), a reclusive widow who lives alone in her mansion with only her housemaids and butlers to keep her company, leads a decadent and lustful life. Using her voluptuous body and her vast fortune to manipulate those around her, Nicole is obsessed with controlling all the people in her life. However, as she finds love with a dashing suitor and friendship with a young aspiring dancer (Catherine Bach), Nicole begins to change for the better…that is until she suspects her new lover may be cheating on her. As her crazed suspicions begin to spin her life out of control, Nicole weaves a devious web of deception and betrayal, all leading up to bloody murder! Read More »

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