Synopsis
Ni Vu, Ni Connu (Neither Seen Nor Recognized) is built around the talents of rubber-faced Gallic comedian Louis De Funes. Our hero is a poacher in a small provincial village, who always manages to stay one step ahead of the Law. Through a fluke, De Funes finds himself the town’s Leading Citizen when he is falsely arrested on another charge, forcing the village elders to bend over backwards making amends.

Blaireau, un braconnier très adroit, ravitaille tout le pays en gibier. Un soir, son ennemi de toujours, le garde champêtre Parju, se fait rosser. Ce dernier, persuadé, à tort, d’être la victime de Blaireau, le fait arrêter. Néanmoins, grâce à un directeur de prison compréhensif et aux attentions de la belle Arabella, son séjour en cellule ne sera pas trop rude. D’autant plus que « l’erreur judiciaire » sera découverte, Parju ridiculisé et le retour de Blaireau au village sera triomphal.Read More »

Synopsis:
Ali grew up as an orphan in a village in Kapadokia and became one of Haceli´s henchmen who is the village´s mafia boss. On his orders Ali killed the young Avanos’ son Yasin and went to prison for 15 years. The film starts with Ali being released and returning to the village. He visits Yasin´s grave and then calls on the old Avanos and begs his forgiveness. Avanos refuses, his daughter Zeliha strikes Ali down with a log. Then they carry the unconscious Ali inside and tend to his wounds. Ali takes Yasin´s place and helps the old Avanos on the fields.Read More »

From IMDB:
Ten women, most of them in Vancouver or Toronto, talk about being lesbian in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s: discovering the pulp fiction of the day about women in love, their own first affairs, the pain of breaking up, frequenting gay bars, facing police raids, men’s responses, and the etiquette of butch and femme roles. Interspersed among the interviews and archival footage are four dramatized chapters from a pulp novel, “Forbidden Love”: Laura leaves her hick town and heads for the city, where she meets Mitch in a bar. Sparks fly, and so do laughter and joy. Ann Bannon, one of the writers of those paperback novels about forbidden love, talks about the genre.

***Not erotica or porno – this is a documentary.***Read More »

Plot / Synopsis

The movie St. Peter’s Umbrella, is an adaptation of one of the best-known works of Kálmán Mikszáth, and based on a real-life story. In the plot, a new priest is appointed in Glogova, a town in the Hungarian highlands. The priest has to take care of his two-year-old orphaned sister, Veronka. On a summer day, she is sheltered from a shower by an umbrella put above her. As people begin to gossip that the mysterious helper was Saint Peter himself, the umbrella becomes a holy relic bringing a lot of money. Yet one day the truth is revealed: the benefactor was not Saint Peter and the umbrella is indeed worth a fortune. A bitter chase begins, at the end of which something far more precious than money is found. The enchanting story is in fact a fully elaborated anecdote about finding happiness in discovering sincere love rather than in the pursuit of wealth.Read More »

Plot / Synopsis

For many years, three Romanian village boys, Stelica, Aurel and Mitu, have remained the closest of friends. In their youths, they planned to pursue careers as shepherds, but in time their individual paths diverged – leading Mitu into the military, Stelica into the local police force and Aurel into the employ of Maricel, a wealthy resident of the community. The men’s worlds change forever when a newcomer arrives in the hamlet – a young woman named Lilica, accompanied by Maricel. She’s toting two trucks full of Dutch chickens with her, which inadvertently spreads the bird flu to much of the local populace. The boys, however, soon realize how they can ingeniously turn this potential crisis into a solid profit-making venture for themselves.Read More »

By the eighties, as the communist regime was slowly crumbling, making films about the 1956 revolution was no longer a taboo.

In Whooping Cough, we see how the failed revolution unfolds through the eyes of a middle-class family and especially their two young children.

By seeing the children experience the revolution as they come of age, we see the early socialist Hungarian society becoming increasingly disillusioned and coming to grips with its new reality.

— Ábel Bede (kafkadesk.org)Read More »

Plot Synopsis from allmovie.com
Two aging bronc-busters (Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda) make their meager money by breaking wild horses. They dream of better days–possibly retiring to some island paradise–but they never put any money in the bank because they spend it all on booze and girls. They think their no-dough days are done until they acquire a wild drunkard horse which they enter in a bucking contest–no one can ride the wild, hiccupping nag. This is a pretty funny ’60s western-style comedy.Read More »

ferdyonfilms.com wrote:
CIFF 2010: The Happy Housewife (De gelukkige huisvrouw, 2010)

Director: Antoinette Beumer

2010 Chicago International Film Festival

By Marilyn Ferdinand

“I hate actors,” the cinephile said to me after a screening of a personal essay film that had no actors in it at all. I vaguely understood what he was saying, that actors are tricksters whose presence can take away from the sincerity of a film. As someone who treasures the films of Robert Bresson, the Neorealists, the Nouvelle Vague directors, as well as a slew of more contemporary films that use nonprofessionals, I find the unstudied spontaneity of the performances helps me appreciate the film as a whole rather than focusing on the accomplishments of a single performer.Read More »

Quote:
In the harsh post-war years’ Catalan countryside, Andreu, a kid that belongs to the loser side, finds the corpses of a man and his son in the forest. The authorities want his father to be made responsible of the deaths, but Andreu tries to help his father by finding out who truly killed them. In this search, Andreu develops a moral consciousness against a world of adults fed by lies. In order to survive, he betrays his own roots and ends up finding out the monster that lives within him.Read More »