Synopsis:
This year, the Viennale has once again succeeded in garnering a great director of world cinema for the creation of the traditional festival trailer. At the Viennale’s invitation, the Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang, known through works such as REBELS OF THE NEON GOD, THE RIVER, THE HOLE and WAYWARD CLOUD, created a short, approximately two-minute homage to Lee Kang-sheng – the actor who has appeared in almost all of Tsai Ming-liang’s films over the past thirty years and significantly influenced his entire oeuvre.

The film XIAO KANG shows Lee Kang-sheng roaming through a bamboo forest in a succession of simultaneously mysterious and unintentional movements. These again are alienated by the projection of silent black-and-white footage, accompanied only by the sound of a projector. It’s a fine, minimalist work, oscillating between dream and memory and kept entirely in the style of Tsai Ming-liang’s great films.Read More »

Description: Welcome in the underworld, on your left there’s some gangsters, on your right be careful there’s shootings, murders, betrayals… Enjoy the jazzy mood !
Three killers stole money and drugs from a gangsters meeting. They left with a hostage and a lot of dead bodies behind. Well, that’s not a big deal for them, they stay relax, and don’t rush to sell the drugs. After the massacre, they just go back to their flat and spend a good time. Except one of them, who decides otherwise. He’s tired of staying there doing nothing, and so leave with the hostage. Does he want to start his life again or he’s just too ambitious ?
Wakamatsu has already shown the underworld, but until now, it was just a bunch of men living out of the system whose function, was to disturb the story of the prime characters.Read More »

Quote:
Ali (Salem), is a young Moroccan Gastarbeiter (guest worker) in his late thirties, and Emmi (Mira), a 60-year-old widowed cleaning woman. They meet when Emmi ducks inside a bar, driven by the rain and drawn by the exotic Arabic music. A woman in the bar (Katharina Herberg) suggests Ali ask Emmi to dance, and she accepts. A strange and unlikely friendship develops, then a romance and finally they decide to marry.

What follows is a bitter and noxious reaction over their relationship. Gossipy neighbors treat them with contempt, complaining their (already noticeably dilapidated) tenement building has now become filthy. Emmi is shunned by her coworkers, and Ali faces discrimination at every turn. Emmi tells her son-in-law Eugen and daughter Krista (Fassbinder himself and Irm Hermann) that she is in love with Ali; Eugen thinks she is screwy.Read More »

Quote:
A man and a woman meet by accident on a Sunday evening at their childrens’ boarding school. Slowly they reveal themselves to each other, finding that each is a widow/widower. Each is slow to reveal anything personal so that each revelation is hidden by a misperception. They become friends, then close friends, and then she reveals that she can’t have a lover because, for her, her husband’s memory is still too strong. Much of the film is told wordlessly in action, or through hearing one of their thoughts as they go about their day.Read More »

Quote:
Commissioned to promote the sleepy Portuguese city of Guimarães as a 2012 European Capital of Culture, this omnibus curio brings together an illustrious quartet of international cinema auteurs and invites them to roam through picturesque town squares, abandoned industrial sites and the ghostly remains of national history. In the first segment, Finnish favorite Aki Kaurismaki, in customary deadpan mode, finds bleak humor in the comings and goings of a hapless café proprietor whose business and romantic prospects dwindle as he daydreams of dancing. Next, native son Pedro Costa deploys his rigorous formalism (static shots, unstinting gazes, disembodied speech) to interrogate a former Cape Verdean revolutionary who flees the unnerving accusations of a calcified soldier through dead-of-night forays into an enchanted forest.Read More »

Quote:
For his feature debut, Rainer Werner Fassbinder fashioned an acerbic, unorthodox crime drama about a love triangle involving the small-time pimp Franz (Fassbinder), his prostitute girlfriend, Joanna (future Fassbinder mainstay Hanna Schygulla), and his gangster friend Bruno (Ulli Lommel). With its minimalist tableaux and catalog of New Wave and Hollywood references, this is a stylishly nihilistic cinematic statement of intent.Read More »

Romance between a saleswoman and a driver of the Department Store. Charged with a petty theft, she is blackmailed by the chief of staff to enjoy her favors, but the driver, after doubting her, discovers the real culprits.Read More »

Synopsis:
Also known as Three-Cornered Hat, this Italian comedy is based on a Spanish folk tale, which had previously been adapted as a ballet by Manuel de Filla. Director Mario Camerini and his team of screenwriters have refashioned the material as a vehicle for the popular De Filipo brothers, Peppino and Eduardo. The story is a mistaken-identity affair, predicated on the fact that a pompous governor is the exact look-alike of a poor miller. Much of the fun is derived from the efforts to pass off the miller’s homely wife as the governor’s gorgeous spouse. Described by one Mario Camerini devotee as “pretty, noisy and accomplished,” ‘Il Cappell a Tre Punte’ was filmed in 1934, and released in the U.S. two years later.Read More »

Quote:
Elizabeth, a voluptuous, shy and unpopular girl, is the object of ridicule at school by the cool in-crowd. Her life spirals downward after the death of her only friend, her grandmother. But she has a crush on a popular boy at school, and a deranged plan to make all her dreams come true!Read More »