Wealthy industrialist Robert Talbot arrives early for his annual vacation at his luxurious Italian villa to find three problems lying in wait for him. Firstly, his long-time girlfriend Lisa Fellini has given up waiting for him to pop the question and has decided to marry another man. Secondly, the major domo of his villa, Maurice Clavell, has turned the estate into a posh hotel to make some easy money while the boss isn’t around. And, finally, the current guests of the “hotel” are a group of young American girls trying to fend off a gang of oversexed boys, led by Tony, who are ‘laying siege’ at the outer walls of the villa. Talbot, to his own surprise, finds himself becoming an overprotective chaperone. —Alfred Jingle, imdbRead More »

Two teenage girls, one of them desperate to lose her virginity, take a hitchhiking road trip.Read More »

Pedro and Sol are two best friends that coming to age. Their personal paths drive them thru different directions. He’s interested in writing theatre, she’s training as piano player.Read More »

Written and directed by renowned Japanese filmmaker Kaneto Shindo (Onibaba, Hadaka no shima, Genbaku no ko), “Black Board” tells the story of middle school bullying taken to the point of homicide in this 1986 classic.Read More »

Quote:
In 1929, Steiner made his first film, H2O, a poetic evocation of water that captured the abstract patterns generated by waves. Although it was not the only film of its kind at the time – Joris Ivens made REGEN that same year, and Henwar Rodekiewicz worked on his similar film PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN (1931) through this whole period – it made a significant impression in its day and since has become recognized as a classic: H2O was added to the National Film Registry in December 2005. Among Steiner’s other early films, SURF AND SEAWEED (1931) expands on the concept of H2O as Steiner turns his camera to the shoreline; MECHANICAL PRINCIPLES (1930) was an abstraction based on gears and machinery.Read More »

From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
This deceptively humorous cinema verite study of a travelling evangelist emerges as a ruthless expose of an aspect of America’s national psyche, with implications far beyond its immediate subject matter. Marjoe began by performing marriage ceremonies at the age of four (seen in marvelous newsreels of the time) and graduated to fame on the “Holy Roller” Pentecostal circuit, throwing women into convulsions, performing miracles, providing sex substitutes and mass therapy to the countless victimized poor and ignorant who flock to his meetings with their offerings. While the sequences of a prancing Mick Jagger imitation (complete with rock rhythms and brimstone) and of his huge and suffering audience in themselves constitute an impressive achievement of non-fiction cinema, simultaneous private interviews reveal the fiery evangelist to be a cynical atheist and hedonist, with contempt for his “work” and at best an ambiguous solicitude for his flock.Read More »

Sixteen-year-old Ali Boulala is thrust into the heart of the global skateboarding scene when he is recruited onto a professional crew in the mid-1990s. He spends a decade touring the world with his teammates and living a life without limits. His creativity on the board and his reputation for partying gains Ali the status as the most fearless and eccentric skateboarder of his generation.Read More »

Cultures and families clash in Mira Nair’s exuberant Monsoon Wedding, a mix of comedy and chaotic melodrama concerning the preparations for the arranged marriage of a modern upper-middle-class Indian family’s only daughter, Aditi. Of course there are hitches—Aditi has been having an affair with a married TV host; she’s never met her husband to be, who lives in Houston; the wedding has worsened her father’s hidden financial troubles; even the wedding planner has become a nervous wreck—as well as buried family secrets. But Nair’s celebration is ultimately joyful and cathartic: a love song to her home city of Delhi and her own Punjabi family.Read More »

Teresa, 42, changes her vacation plans to spend the summer with her mother, Ani. The forced coexistence of living together after so many years brings tension as well as revealing moments for the two women accustomed to living alone.

2 wins, 1 nomination.Read More »