Paris, summer 1982. The day to day life of a police station in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. Day and night a reporter follows small groups of uniformed police officers who patrol the neighbourhood in their vans, intervene at the slightest radio call, prepare reports or question defendants at the central station.

Shot alone by Depardon, Faits divers (News Items) is a live report, without a commentary, on the day to day activities of police officers in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. By observing the police officers, Depardon’s camera reveals the hidden side of Paris. The Paris of everyday assaults, poverty and distress. In a way, he opened a cycle of films on those who had been forgotten by everyone and began to give them a voice as he explained: “The shooting was laborious, but in this film, I was able to record the words of individuals who never have access to the media […] Is Paris a difficult city to live in? Or a city where you get help? There is probably a French-style violence, and the police officers are poorly prepared social workers.”Read More »

The camera was pointed at right angles across a busy park pathway connecting one part of the city to another. On the other side of the path are many trees receding into the distance. Many people move through the picture, both on and off the pathway. One frame was taken each time a person on the pathway moved into the picture and one frame was taken again as they moved out. The procedure was repeated over a period of three days with filming beginning at dawn and ending at dusk. Two of the days were sunny and the other was very stormy. The speed at which people, clouds and shadows move in the film is directly related to the flow of people through the park.Read More »

Filmed in Parisian parks and on a terrace, LE DIVERTISSEMENT foreshadows the labyrinthine walks that would be a part of Rivette’s cinema, in which the characters look for, follow and find each other like in a romantic scavenger hunt.
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Rivette’s three shorts—Au quartre coins (“The Four Corners,” 1948), Le quadrille (1950), and Le divertissement (“The Diversion,” 1952)—were found in 2009 after the filmmaker and his wife, Véronique, discovered the 16 mm films when going through his materials. Describing them as amateur, made when the filmmaker was barely out of his teens, the trio have been dubbed “apprenticeship films.”(MUBI)Read More »

In 1971, Ingmar Bergman made his first English-language film, THE TOUCH, starring ensemble regulars Max von Sydow and Bibi Andersson, along with seventies everyman Elliott Gould. Thirty years later, Marie Losier decided to recast herself in Gould’s role, breathing new life into Bergman’s most maligned filmic endeavor.Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Hal Erickson
Adapted by F. Hugh Herbert from Andre Roussin’s risque stage farce that has become a staple of community theatres, The Little Hut is totally reliant upon the charms of stars Ava Gardner, Stewart Granger and David Niven. Granger is a businessman who is too busy to pay attention to wife Gardner (is he blind?) David Niven is the couple’s best friend, who harbors a secret longing for Gardner. All three are stranded on a desert island; you take it from there. Despite the much-touted scenes of Ava Gardner in a skimpy negligee, the film version of The Little Hut is about as racy as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.Read More »

One lesser known Vorliceks movie. Unfortunately NO ENGLISH SUBS yet.

Radek Simek, the driver of a postal car, is shot dead on his regular route. The Investigators give up initial suspicions of robbery, because he carried no greater amount of money. Even questioning Honza Marek, another mail car driver, brings no result. When the circumstances are becoming more and more suspicious. Marek decides to track down the killer on his own.Read More »

This film is made in three sections, each leading towards the final abstraction, and each resembling a search for meaning and order amidst a plethora of electronic, chemical and mechanistic information. In sky light the layers of imagery are gradually stripped away: Rivers, trees, snow covered rocks and clouds gradually give way to an ominous cobalt blue sky and the rotating blades of the camera shutter. In the final sequence the layers of the photographic emulsion are gradually striped away until only dust and the light of the film projector remains.Read More »

One frame was taken every ten seconds throughout the hours of daylight. The camera was mounted on an equatorial stand, which is a piece of equipment used by astronomers to track the stars. In order to remain stationary in relation to the star field, the mounting is aligned with the Earth’s axis and rotates about its own axis once every 24 hours. Rotating at the same speed as the Earth, the camera is always pointing at the either its own shadow or the sun. Selection of image, (sky or Earth; sun or shadow), was controlled by the extent of cloud coverage, i.e. whether the sun was in or out. If the sun was out, the camera was turned towards its own shadow; if it was in, the camera was turned towards the sun. A directional microphone was used to sample sound every two hours. These samples were later cut to correspond, both in space and time, with the image on the screen.Read More »

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Funeral Feast, the film with the unforgettable masterfully-edited seven-minute shoot-out in the Tivoli park, takes place in the spring of 1941, when the war engulfs the lives of the Ljubljana youth as well. The affairs of the heart result in a liaison with an enemy officer, while the rebellion leads to organized resistance.

Like in the majority of Slovenian films, in Funeral Feast the actors from the other former Yugoslav republics were overdubbed by Slovenian actors: Boris Juh lent his voice to Rade Šerbedžija, Mojca Ribič to Snežana Nikšić, and Štefka Drolc to Milena Dravić.Read More »