• Reha Erdem – Bes Vakit AKA Times and Winds (2006)

    Reha Erdem2001-2010DramaTurkey

    Three youngsters lead difficult lives in a poor, rural mountain village in northern Turkey. Omer (Ozkan Ozen) hates his father, the village Imam, and imagines different ways to kill him. His friend Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali) has a secret infatuation with his teacher. Yildiz (Elit Iscan) must handle the housework handed out by her severe mother. Their tough existence is tempered by the wonder and excitement of youth, as their daily lives are divided into five sections, separated by prayer sessions.Read More »

  • Paul Vecchiali – Les ruses du diable (Neuf portraits d’une jeune fille) AKA The Devil’s Tricks (1966)

    Paul Vecchiali1961-1970ClassicsDramaFrance

    Quote:
    Ginette, a young and free lifestyle dressmaker’s apprentice, receives each day a 10,000 francs bill, in an anonymous sealed letter. Her search among some old and wealthy acquaintances is vain. The young Ginette, first disturbed, then worried, eventually becomes used to this wonderful income transforming her life. She gives up – not without insolence – her work at the sewing workshop, and goes on holiday at her mother’s farm, in Saint-Gervais-du-Cantal. The young Parisian is in sharp contrast with her family background and her childhood friends.Read More »

  • Robert Redford – Quiz Show (1994)

    Robert Redford1991-2000DramaUSA

    Set in 1958. On an NBC game show, “Twenty-One”, a working-class Jewish student remains king of the show for weeks. The show’s producers decide to create a new champion by feeding a new contestant, middle-class Charles Van Doren, with the right answers. He becomes a symbol of intellect to students and the nation. Based on a real life incident.Read More »

  • Vatche Boulghourjian – Tramontane (2016)

    2011-2020DramaLebanonVatche Boulghourjian

    Synopsis:
    Rabih, a young blind man, lives in a small village in Lebanon. He sings in a choir and edits Braille documents for an income. His life unravels when he tries to apply for a passport and discovers that his identification card, which he has carried his entire life, is a forgery. Traveling across rural Lebanon in search of a record of his own birth, he meets people on the far fringes of society who tell their own stories, open further questions and give Rabih minor clues about his true identity. Descending into a void at the heart of his existence, Rabih encounters a nation incapable of telling his or its own narrative.Read More »

  • Werner Herzog – Lebenszeichen AKA Signs of Life (1968)

    Werner Herzog1961-1970Amos Vogel: Film as a Subversive ArtArthouseDramaGermany

    “A soldier is assigned to guard a fortress on a remote Greek island and finds himself unable to cope with the crushing boredom of the task in this interesting drama, an early film by renowned-director Werner Herzog. The story is set during WW II and concerns a soldier who was wounded and stationed on the Nazi-controlled island. He is accompanied by his wife and two other guards. It is a very quiet island and soon the men begin looking for constructive things to do. First they paint houses. Then they try raising goats. One of them finds a small stockpile of explosives, so the men begin making bombs. Another of the men can read Greek and so begins translating some of the ancient inscriptions on the castle walls.Read More »

  • Steve Boyum – King Solomon’s Mines (2004)

    2001-2010ActionAdventureSteve BoyumUSA

    Safari hunter, Allan Quartermain, heads into Africa in order to rescue a man, who had disappeared while searching for the fabled lost gold mines of King Solomon.Read More »

  • Phil Jutzi – Berlin-Alexanderplatz – Die Geschichte Franz Biberkopfs AKA Berlin-Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf (1931)

    Phil Jutzi1931-1940CrimeDramaGermanyWeimar Republic cinema

    Quote:
    If you’ve read the book, this film version comes as a surprise – how does it manage to make so little of so much? Or is it so much of so little? Döblin co-authored the screenplay, which compresses his sprawling novel into a breathless eighty-eight minutes. Of course, much is sacrificed, but the skeleton plot still compares favourably to that of many modern movies. Technically, too, this flick has aged magnificently – considering this is one of the first German films with sound, what we see and hear is a lot smoother than I’d expected. The cinematography is astonishing by the standards of the decades that followed…Read More »

  • Werner Herzog – Woyzeck (1979)

    Werner Herzog1971-1980ArthouseDramaGermany

    Quote:
    Everything in town appears calm, placid, lovely. But Woyzeck, a rifleman assigned as an orderly, hears voices — the times are out of joint, at least in his cosmos. To his captain, Woyzeck is a comic marvel: ignorant but courageous, full of energy to little purpose. To a local doctor, Woyzeck is a curiosity, the object of cruel study. Woyzeck, 40, has a young wife, Marie, and a small child. He dotes on them, but Marie, even though she has periods of guilt and remorse, carries on affairs and flirtations. When the captain lets drop broad hints of Woyzeck’s being a cuckold, his inner demons and the voices of the spheres take over. Will madness bring action? Of what sort?Read More »

  • John D. Hancock – Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

    1971-1980HorrorJohn D. HancockMysteryUSA

    After a stint in a psychiatric facility Jessica, her husband and a friend move to remote farm they have recently purchased. There they find a young woman by the name of Emily living in the house and they invite her to stay. When Jessica goes for a swim in the lake, she sees a body just below the water’s surface. When they go into the village to sell some old furniture, they learn that a woman by the name of Abigail Bishop drowned in the lake and her body was never found. Local folklore has that Abigail is now a vampire roaming the countryside. A mute blond girl leads her to the body of a dead man but the body is not there when Jessica goes for help. Jessica and those around begin to wonder if she is losing her mind.Read More »

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