“BUTTERFLIES is the bonafide masterpiece… the best of the three Sarno-Nebe films and probably the sexiest “softcore” film he ever made. If BUTTERFLIES could be called “softcore”…the film was shot hardcore and then the penetration cut out to focus on the reactions and intense chemistry between the performers. Some fleeting moments of hardcore are still present, but this qualifies more as a hard softcore feature which would still be rated X today. Marie Forsa returns as Denise, a beautiful country girl whose life is filled with joy and love for her handsome boyfriend, Freddy. But living in an idyllic existence soon bores her, and she is off to the big city to experience the glamour and glitz for herself. She meets Frank, a dashing nightclub owner who takes her under his wing. But she doesn’t take kindly to the fact that she’s just one of his stable of women and must choose between the big city life and her dreary farm life.Read More »

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‘Tenderness’, to the astonishment of High Court judges and some others, was D.H. Lawrence’s working title for what became ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’. Lawrence perceived a ‘taboo on tenderness’ in his time, and it’s apparent that the West has nowhere near cracked that taboo even today, eight patchily ‘liberated’ decades later. Enter Roy Stuart with Glimpse 3, the third in his richly packed series of probingly erotic videos. Whilst every sizeable episode in no’s 1 and 2 has, for the alert, its quotient or infusion of tenderness, only a minority of Stuart’s viewers/voyeurs may spot it amid the intense provocation – of mind as much as groin — of the so-much that can be found going on in them.nnThe first six minutes of Glimpse 3 give flashing hints of the kind of whirling whole we’ve already had to thank Roy Stuart for, albeit there happen to be no male-female conjunctions shown (fear not, we shall encounter them aplenty, since there’s some 140 minutes on this disc). But the accomplished Anna Bielska, who can look any age from 13 to 23, is there dancing, now clothed now naked, in parks and alleys of Rome. Then a sternly entrancing brunette, legs wide-spread on a gilt chair, holds knickers (whose?) aloft; soon she will be near-naked on the carpet, beginning a magical self-caressing journey.Read More »

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Colourful feature debut from experienced producer Miñarro offers an almost hallucinatory look into the world of Amadeo van Savoy, who for two years was king of an ungovernable Spain around 1870. This intriguing episode is transformed into a plea for beauty, creativity and joy.

At first sight, Falling Star presents itself as a historic film about the brief rule of Amadeo van Savoy, a prince from Turin who was king of Spain for two years. His mainstay, the powerful General Prim, was murdered before Amadeo was properly installed and then he had no one to fall back on; Spain in 1871 was already plagued by administrative and financial crises.
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This is a story of strange, impossible, inexplicable love between a Muslim Turk woman and a non-Muslim Bulgarian man. Ivan (the Bulgarian) is a pure and romantic young fellow, who gets caught up in the so-called “regeneration process” (when ethnic Turks’ names were forcibly changed to Bulgarian ones). He is responsible for the official seals, which is required to issue the new identity documents after the forced name changes. The schoolteacher Ayten tries to steal the seals, thinking that this way she can slow down the ethnic genocide. Their unexpected and unusual meeting brings these two characters together and makes them fell close, forcing Ivan to take a fateful decision -he must either “rename” Ayten, or face the consequences if he does not. Later on fate bring them together once again. Ayten’s small child is killed during an action by the special forces. Ivan, who has been among the main participants of this action is paralyzed with shock. The security forces decide to “erase” his memory. Ayten is also put in isolation, in the same hospital. From death, which is the only choice left to each of them, comes the common past of Ayten and Ivan. They gradually overcome their animosity; accept their differences and draw towards each other. But will the people around them accept their choice? Happy ending are a rarity in the Balkans. Then Ayteh’s brother returns from Turkey…Read More »

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This 1973 first feature by Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambety is one of the greatest of all African films and almost certainly the most experimental. Beautifully shot and strikingly conceived, it follows the comic misadventures of a young motorcyclist and former herdsman (Magaye Niang) who gets involved in petty crimes in Dakar during an attempt to escape to Paris with the woman he loves (Mareme Niang). The title translates as “Hyena’s Voyage,” and among the things that make this film so interesting stylistically are the fantasy sequences involving the couple’s projected images of themselves in Paris and elsewhere. – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago ReaderRead More »

It is not yet on IMDb.

Not much info about this movie on the web, but this is a good summary:

Created at irregular intervals, Pierre Léon’s small oeuvre oscillates between experimental home movie and theatrical mise-en-scène, found footage and documentary assemblages. PHANTOM POWER is a kind of sum of these rich and lavish efforts, a poetic series of cinematic fragments, an inventory of his cinematic output. What unfolds between russian folk songs and Ingrid Caven’s singing, between micro-dramas and found footage, is the poetic world of this wayward and still unknown artist, whose discovery and recognition is long overdue. (www.viennale.at)Read More »

Review I

In 1938 Berlin, Gudrun Landgrebe, wife of Nazi functionary Kevin McNally, begins taking art lessons. She makes the acquaintance of another student, Japanese ambassador’s daughter Mio Takaki. Soon afterwards, the two women begin a passionate lesbian affair. This leads to a chain reaction of disaster and tragedy, culminating with the inevitable intervention of the Gestapo. Despite the film’s galloping sexual passions, The Berlin Affair is an exercise in aloofness, keeping the characters at arm’s length-surprising, considering that the director was Liliana Cavani, auteur of the erotic classic The Night Porter (1974). The film was based on The Buddhist Cross, a novel by Junichiro Tanizaki. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »

Based on the play by the russian playwright Alexander Ostrovsky. The film adaptation of the Comédie-Française theatre’s spectacle with their actors.
A “vibrantly spontaneous and brutally funny family drama, and a glorious tribute to acting and theater,” according to the Film Society.Read More »

Faced with diminishing returns on his harvest, a poor young farmer in Myanmar pawns his cow for a moped and seeks alternative income as a taxi driver.
Among his first fares is a woman who has returned home for her grandfather’s funeral and is making a new start after escaping an arranged marriage in China.
Together, they are lured into one of the few lucrative business opportunities available in the area: selling “ice poison” (crystal meth) around town…Read More »