• László Szabó – Les Gants Blancs du Diable aka The White Gloves of the Devil (1973)

    1971-1980CampFranceLászló Szabó

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    László Szabó is mostly famous as actor : his filmo as an actor is like a best of the so-called french new wave from the early 60s up to now, or something like that…he also directed a very few films himself, in Hungary (his homeland) and in France.

    the AMG clerk wrote :

    “An enigmatic man, blind in one eye […] is the hit man in this French thriller. The films opens with this man, in dark glasses, walking into a bar and shooting a barkeeper. With the help of an unscrupulous doctor, the gunman has donated one of his eyes to a government official who is sitting in the bar at the time. As the film proceeds, he is shown receiving training in shooting at targets using sound, alone. As the gunman continues his devastating activities, it appears clear that his actions are part of an elaborate conspiracy by high-ranking government officials.”Read More »

  • Joon-ho Bong, Leos Carax & Michel Gondry – Tokyo! (2008)

    Drama2001-2010FranceJoon-ho BongLeos CaraxMichel Gondry

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    This triptych of tales set in the titular city of Tokyo suggests an Eastern version of NEW YORK STORIES, but there is a significant difference: in this case, none of the three writer-directors (two French and one Korean) are natives; consequently, their short films emerge less as love letters to the city than as skewed points of view from outsiders looking in on what what they consider to be a strange, exotic land, bordering on a freak show. With their surreal touches, fanciful symbolism, and at least one outright refernce to Japanese kaiju cinema, TOKYO! emerges as a boderline genre effort – not quite a fantasy film but definitely a curious piece of cinefantatique. Unfortunately, the weirdness is not always entertaining – in some cases it is merely boring – but there is enough going on to make this interesting for fans of art house cinema.Read More »

  • Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Worldly Desires (2005)

    2001-2010Apichatpong WeerasethakulExperimentalThailand

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    From link
    This digital featurette, not quite a companion piece to Tropical Malady but certainly related to it, shows Joe operating at the height of his formalist powers. One of the things I’ve valued about Weerasethakul’s work since Mysterious Object at Noon is his commitment to exploring the traditions of avant-garde cinema while taking those idioms into uncharted territory. While some works by Joe have displayed an interest in bending the strategies of Andy Warhol and Bruce Baillie to the needs of Thai folklore and narrative gamesmanship, Worldly Desires takes a more structural approach. However this piece bears little resemblance to structural film as we usually think of it; if there are specific touchstones for Worldly Desires in film history, they would be those “other” structuralists, so wonky and off the beaten track as to thwart easy categorization. Like Morgan Fisher’s early film projects, Worldly Desires is a documentation of the filmmaking process. Within a single expansive jungle location, portions of a Thai soap opera are being filmed by day, and a music video is being made by night.Read More »

  • Various – O Estado do Mundo aka State of the World (2007)

    2001-2010DramaExperimentalPortugalVarious

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    O Estado do Mundo is a compilation of 6 different short movies, retracting differents views of people above the world, showing people from different continents.

    Luminous People from Thailand.
    People traveling from Thailand to Laos on a boat, most part of the people seems to be dislocated with the travel, every one lost in their own reverie.

    Germano from Brasil.
    Some fishermans are trying to explore different parts of the ocean, trying to find better fishes and unpolluted areas. In their trip, their boat broke down, and they need help to back home safely.

    One Way from India.
    A man travel from Nepal to India. At his new country, he’s working as a security man, thinking about his trip, his expectations from a new and free Nepal and his future.Read More »

  • Apichatpong Weerasethakul – Thirdworld (1998)

    Documentary1991-2000Apichatpong WeerasethakulThailand

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    “This film depicts landscapes, metaphorically and actuality, of the southern island called Panyi. It reflects the impression of the shooting time at the island for several days. The sounds are taken from different sources, but all were recorded while the subjects were not aware of the recording apparatus. Thus, this piece may be called a re-constructed documentary. The title is intended as a parody of the word that is being used by the West to describe Thailand or other “exotic” landscapes. This film is the voice from individuals who reside in such environment. The film is presented in crude and rugged quality, as it is a product from the uncivilized.”

    by Apichatpong WeerasethakulRead More »

  • Leos Carax – Hymn to Merde (2009)

    2001-2010FranceLeos CaraxShort Film

    Quote:

    A clip by Leos Carax, inspired by his film “Merde” (part of the feature film “Tokyo!’), with Denis Lavant singing in Merdogon.Read More »

  • Andrei Tarkovsky – Sculpting in Time (1989)

    1981-1990Andrei TarkovskyBooksUSSR

    Quote:

    This extraordinary book is not just about filmmaking, it’s about all art…about life, faith, inner exploration and the Russian soul. It contains exquisite poetry, mostly written by his father, Arseniy Tarkovsky, and detailed descriptions of the making of several of his films as well as photos of them that are eerie, mystical, and incredibly beautiful. Tarkovsky is the master of making us see the wonder of creation in the most mundane subjects. He brings us one step closer in our journey towards the light. From page 43: “The allotted function of art is not, as is often assumed, to put across ideas, to propagate thoughts, to serve as an example. The aim of art is to prepare a person for death, to plough and harrow his soul, rendering it capable of turning to good”.Read More »

  • Olivier Assayas – Irma Vep (1996)

    1991-2000DramaFranceOlivier Assayas

    Quote:
    As much as Olivier Assayas resists having his themes and styles pinned down, one is tempted to put Irma Vep at the center of the French filmmaker’s shape-shifting oeuvre. A virtually ad-libbed project—written, shot, and edited, like Wong’s Chungking Express, in a creative rush between larger productions—it uses a gallery of frazzled characters to crystallize many of Assayas’s obsessions and, casually and boldly, makes the medium itself the most frazzled character of all. Appropriately, the setting is a hectic Parisian movie shoot in which director René Vidal (Jean-Pierre Léaud), once respected but now shaky and befuddled, plans to remake Louis Feuillades’s 1915 serial Les Vampires. Read More »

  • Olivier Assayas – “Carlos” (2010)

    1991-2000CrimeDocumentaryDramaFranceOlivier Assayas

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    The story of Venezuelan revolutionary, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez

    Review:
    A television production in format but not form, Olivier Assayas’ ambitious Carlos spans many years and many hours in recasting the life story of Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal. With a script that hews closely to the facts of the life of Illch Ramírez Sánchez (who adopted the “Jackal” moniker once he became a revolutionary), this action-oriented drama finds its talented director in territory that he recently explored with his similarly themed, but entirely fictional, works Boarding Gate and demonlover. Just as those two movies depicted espionage as a globalized phenomenon, Calros shows the international face of terrorism. Like those movies, this globe-trotting epic has as many scenes set in anonymous airports as in identifiable cities. Even more peculiarly, though, like those genre exercises, Carlos offers a kinky combination of sex and guns that, making this more titillating and exciting than standard biopic fare.Read More »

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