A revered filmmaker, Andrei Tarkovsky is secure in the long and illustrious line of Russian masters in arts and letters. Linking cinematic technique to broader questions of meaning and intrepretation, Robert Bird offers a wholly original investigation into the aesthetic principles of Tarvkovsky’s filmmaking. While providing a comprehensive analysis of his work in all media, including radio, theatre and opera, Bird argues that Tarkovsky was most at home in the cinema. Accordingly, the author dwells chiefly on Tarkovsky’s major films: Ivan’s Childhood, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, Mirror, Stalker, Nostalghia and Sacrifice. With its wealth of film stills and photographs, this book is a key text for all admirers of Tarkovsky and European cinema.Read More »
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Robert Bird – Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema (2008)
2001-2010Andrei TarkovskyBooksRobert Bird -
Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Dokfa nai meuman AKA Mysterious Object at Noon (2000)
1991-2000Apichatpong WeerasethakulArthouseExperimentalThailandQuote:
Apichatpong Weerasethakul brought an appetite for experimentation to Thai cinema with his debut feature, an uncategorizable work that refracts documentary impressions of his homeland through the surrealist concept of the exquisite corpse game. Enlisting locals to contribute improvised narration to a simple tale, Apichatpong charts the collective construction of the fiction as each new encounter imbues it with unpredictable shades of fantasy and pathos. Shot over the course of two years in 16 mm black and white, Mysterious Object at Noon established the director’s fascination with the porous boundaries between the real and the imagined.Read More » -
Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Phantoms of Nabua (2009)
2001-2010Apichatpong WeerasethakulExperimentalShort FilmThailandLike A Letter to Uncle Boonmee, Phantoms of Nabua is a portrait of home. The film portrays a communication of lights, the lights that exude, on the one hand, the comfort of home and, on the other, of destruction.
Synopsis :
A fluorescent tube illuminates an empty playground in the evening. Nearby a flash of light is projected on a makeshift screen. This outdoor movie is a portrait of a village repeatedly struck by lightning. As night falls, the silhouette figures of young men emerge, they are playing with a football raging with fire. They take turns kicking the ball which leaves illuminated trails in the grass. The lightning on the screen flickers amid the fire and the smoke rising from the ground. The game intensifies with each kick that sends the fireball soaring into the air. Finally the teens burn the screen and crowd around it to witness the blazing canvas, behind which is revealed the ghostly white beam of a projector.Phantoms of Nabua is part of the multi-platform Primitive project which focuses on a concept of remembrance and extinction and is set in the northeast of Thailand.Read More »
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Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Haiku (2009)
2001-2010Apichatpong WeerasethakulShort FilmThailand -
Olivier Assayas – L’enfant de l’hiver AKA Winter’s child (1989)
1981-1990DramaFranceOlivier AssayasRomance

Synopsis:
Feckless aspiring architect Stéphane leaves his pregnant girlfriend for theater designer Sabine; Sabine in turn vainly attempts to overcome her violent obsession with an actor in her theater company. A game of emotional chutes and ladders ensues as these two nearly-lost souls awaken to their true feelings and futilely attempt to regain their former lovers. –InbaselineRead More » -
Vladimir Paskaljevic – Sestre aka Sisters (2011)
Drama2011-2020CrimeSerbiaVladimir Paskaljevic
Sisters is a 2011 film based on a true story from Serbia. Sisters is about human trafficking.
Two sisters from Krusevac, Serbia, decided to take part-time job in Italy, little did they know that they will become victims of human trafficking, prostitution, and well organized crime organization.Read More » -
Hanns Schwarz – Die Wunderbare Lüge der Nina Petrowna AKA The Wonderful Lies of Nina Petrovna (1929)
Drama1921-1930GermanyHanns SchwarzSilentWeimar Republic cinema
Imdb:
Extraordinary Soap Opera
12 August 2009 | by GManfred (Ramsey, NJ)I am not a fan of Soaps. Too often they are predictable and boring and descend into bathos -‘Womens’ Pictures’. But this picture was so spectacular in all respects that I was taken aback by its sheer accomplishment. Critic Kenneth Tynan said that one must ‘suspend one’s disbelief’ to take part in the movie experience. If that is the case, this picture became real; it was not a play on the screen performed by mere actors.
The story is familiar but the production is not. Direction is skillful and the photography is perfect. The picture moves quickly and the acting is superb. Francis Lederer was good, Brigitte Helm was even better, and Warwick Ward, who plays Col. Beranoff, spit and polish and bent on revenge, was outstanding. He was the glue that held the cast together and was a riveting presence whenever he was on screen.Read More »
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David Lynch – Rabbits (2002)
2001-2010ArthouseDavid LynchExperimentalUSAThis is a series of shorts that Lynch made after Mulholland Drive, using the actors from that film.
A story of a group of humanoid rabbits and their depressive, daily life. The plot includes Jane ironing, Suzie sitting on a couch, Jack walking in and out of the apartment, and the occasional solo singing number by Suzie or Jane. At one point the rabbits also make contact with their “leader”. A really Lynch-esque series of episodes.
A slow, stylish, eerie and extremely interesting story set “in a city deluged by constant rain where three rabbits live with a constant mystery”. Mr Lynch has a great talent for establishing atmosphere and this series is soaked with his trademark (weird) mood. When I watched the first episode I was not sure whether to laugh or be baffled at what I was seeing. 3 Rabbits talk out of sequence, an unseen audience claps whenever one of them enters the room and laughs (not because something funny is said, but at the misery of the rabbits), a candle burns in the corner, a demon face chants something undecipherable (reminds me of the litanies of Satan, the camera seems to be disturbed in the beginning of the 7 out of 8 episodes by something I can only guess to be a spirit.Read More »
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David Lynch – The Straight Story (1999)
1991-2000David LynchDramaFranceAlvin Straight is a very old man with a quiet life in a small country town. When his brother gets seriously sick, he decides to put away their differences and visit him after many, many years. So, alone, he begins a long journey through hundreds of miles, just to see again his brother, even if it’s the last thing he will ever do… Based on a true story.Read More »





