A compilation of sixteen short films from British filmmakers: Includes: About A Girl – Brian Percival, Boy And Bicycle – Ridley Scott, Dear Phone – Peter Greenaway, Doodlebug – Christopher Nolan, Eight – Stephen Daldry, Gasman – Lynne Ramsay, Girl Chewing Gum – John Smith, Home – Morag McKinnon, Joyride – Jim Gillespie, Inside Out – Tom and Charles Guard, Je T’aime John Wayne – Toby McDonald, The Sheep Thief – Asif Kapadia, The Short And Curlies – Mike Leigh, Telling Lies – Simon Ellis, UK Images – Martin Parrand, and Who’s My Favourite Girl? – Adrian McDowall.Read More »

Storyline:

Daniel and Ana, brother and sister, best friends. Both are at pivotal, defining moments in their contented lives. Ana is about to be married, Daniel is a gregarious teenager discovering his personal and sexual identity. Yet their harmony is instantly shattered when they are kidnapped and something shocking happens which forces them to confront their desires and fears. Suddenly their old lives are a distant memory. Now, nothing they have known will ever be the same again.Read More »

Interesting short film collection from Europe – from experimental to political ironica.

01 – Lukas Moodysson – Bara prata lite (Talk) (1997)
02 – Patrice Leconte – Batteur du boléro, Le (1992)
03 – Jean-Luc Godard – Charlotte et Véronique, ou Tous les garçons s’appellent Patrick (1959)
04 – Virgil Widrich – Copy Shop (2001)
05 – Tom Tykwer – Epilog (1992)
06 – Peter Mullan – Fridge (1996)
07 – Nanni Moretti – Giorno della prima di Close Up, Il (Opening Day of Close-Up) (1996)
08 – Jan Kounen – Gisele Kerozene (1989)
09 – Roy Andersson – Härlig är jorden (World Of Glory) (1991)
10 – Juan DiegoSolanas – Homme sans tete, L’ (2003)
11 – Krzysztof Kieslowski – Koncert zyczen (Concert) (1967)
12 – Jan Svankmajer – Zvahlav aneb Saticky Slameného Huberta (Jabberwocky) (1971)
13 – Christopher Morris – My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117 (2002)
14 – Lars von Trier – Nocturne (1980)
15 – Javier Fesser – El Secdleto De La Tlompeta (1995)
16 – Anders Thomas Jensen – Valgaften (ElectionNight) (1998)Read More »

Synopsis
This effective drama about crisis and change in an unorthodox family is directed by Franco Brusati, best known for his earlier Bread and Chocolate. Marta (Hella Petri) lives in a large country estate after retiring from her career as an opera singer. She is not alone. Two women live with her, Claudia (Eleonora Giorgi) and Anna (Mariangela Melato), of uncertain familial ties, though perhaps nieces. Claudia and Anna are established in a lesbian affair and both depend on Marta like daughters would depend on a mother. Marta’s brother Nicky (Erland Josephson) and his lover Picchio (David Pontremoli) arrive one day because Marta wants to take the two couples for a brief trip to Venice. Circumstances conspire to change those plans as one crisis after another, as well as a tragedy, make Claudia, Anna, and Nicky rethink their dependent behavior.
Eleanor Mannikka, RoviRead More »

IMDB:
User Review

A great fairy tale from a great storyteller
26 May 2005 | by simon-bensasson (Greece)

This is the story of a woodcutter in Bohemia during a war between Austria and Turkey. Wandering in the forest he finds a golden fern whose seed turns into a beautiful young woman – they fall in love. After a village feast in which he gets drunk he gets to sign up to the army. The fairy gives him a shirt to wear and asks him to swear he will never part with it. At the war front he falls in love with the the colonels daughter; cold beauty who asks him to perform various feats in order to respond to his courting (bring her the horse of the grand-vizier, then the necklace of the grand-vizier’s wife and finally his nightingale). In performing these feats he proves invulnerable to bullets, swords and other calamities – protected by the fairy’s shirt. Before performing the last feat, however, the colonel’s daughter asks him to throw away his ugly shirt, which he does. He returns, wounded and disguised in Turkish clothes to escape from the enemy camp. He gets arrested as a spy and condemned to death by a thousand strikes. His comrades who are assigned to throw his body at the river discover he’s still alive and let him go. Returning to his village he does not find Sylvana (the fairy of the golden fern) and the film ends with him wandering in the forest shouting her name in a beautiful photograph in which the camera moves high up the trees.Read More »

A renegade superspy infiltrates a violent gang of international jewel thieves in this fast-paced crime thriller from Nikkatsu Studios. His killer instincts honed to deadly perfection by a shadowy espionage bureau, Yabuki (Akira Kobayashi) abandons the organization that rained him and joins forces with fearless mercenary Yamawaki (Hideki Takahashi) to follow a trail of jewels stolen during the last days of World War II. When that trail leads Yabuki and Yamawaki to the highest levels of government and corporate malfeasance, the conspiracy is blown sky high and the bullets start to fly.Read More »

Description: Stop-motion animated version of the classic TinTin story. Tintin is informed by the Thompsons of a case involving the ramblings of a drunken man, later killed, found with a scrap of paper from what appears to be a tin of crab-meat with the word Karaboudjan scrawled on it. His subsequent investigation and the kidnapping of a Japanese man interested in talking to him leads Tintin to a ship also called the Karaboudjan, where he is abducted by a syndicate of criminals who have been hiding opium in the crab tins. Escaping from his locked room, Tintin encounters Captain Haddock, an alcoholic who is manipulated by his first mate, Allan, and is unaware of his crew’s criminal activities. Escaping the ship in a lifeboat in an attempt to reach Spain, they are attacked by a seaplane. They hijack the plane and tie up the pilots, but a storm and Haddock’s drunken behaviour causes them to crash-land in the Sahara.Read More »

Quote:
The 1001 transformations of a woman into a witch and vice versa.

Boris Lehman wrote:
When Roland Lethem says, referring to Le Vampire de la Cinémathèque (1971), a tribute to Joseph Plateau, the brilliant inventor of the phenakistoscope, that ‘you have to let yourself be sucked dry by the film’, most viewers immediately close their eyes, shout their disapproval, break their seats and leave the theatre furious and frustrated. They cannot see because they are not free, and as Philippe Bordier said, ‘because they have shit in their eyes’.Read More »

The first short film by Pedro Almodóvar in 30 years. It’s a spin-off of his upcoming film, “Los Abrazos Rotos”. The short film was broadcast on Spanish television Feb 13 2009.

Quote:

This short film is part of the film-within-the-film Girls and Suitcases. Chicas y maletas is the film being shot in Los abrazos rotos aka Broken Embraces.
La concejala antropófaga basically consists of a humorous monologue by Carmen Machi. She snorts a generous amount of coke throughout and continues her lewd observations about men begun in Chicas y maletas.Read More »