Unlike many of the filmmaker’s subjects, John le Carré knows who Errol Morris is, and more importantly, the author of spy literature also knows Morris’ techniques of getting to some core of the person whom he’s interviewing. Le Carré, the pen name of former intelligence agent David Cornwell, has been on Morris’ side of an interview many, many times, too, but if he was talking to a subject in an enclosed room, that discussion was usually an interrogation.Read More »
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Dorothee, a would-be writer and journalist, leaves Germany for the Oz of San Francisco, searching for her long-lost mother and a cure for the malady of love. Installed in the Tenderloin, she peeps in on neighbors’ bizarre sex rituals as well as does sightseeing of the more traditional kind. But encounters with male impersonator Ramona, charming Hungarian bohemian Dominique, and Susie Sexpert, barker for an all-girl strip show, lead to exploratory adventures of self-discovery and fun. When Dorothy surfaces like a dazzled tourist on the wilder shores of the city’s lesbian community, she has discovered her true sexuality and left some illusions behind. (Written by Monika Treut)Read More »
Follows the lives of firefighters as they deal with joys and hardships, both on the job and with their own personal lives.Read More »
Apolonia Sokol was born in 1988 to a French father and a Polish mother, the two of whom owned a Paris theater, Lavoir Moderne Parisien. This was a hub for all kinds of subversive plays, cabaret acts, and other performances, a space that was constantly running into rent troubles. Here Apolonia was surrounded by bohemian figures (artists, writers, performers) who were integral to her upbringing. Though she came and went from Paris after her parents split up (she left with her mother for Denmark), this theatre was her actual home when she caught the attention of young film student Lea Glob.Read More »
In 1858, in the Jewish quarter of Bologna, the Pope’s soldiers burst into the home of the Mortara family. By order of the cardinal, they have come to take Edgardo, their seven-year-old son. The child had been secretly baptized by his nurse as a baby and the papal law is unquestionable: he must receive a Catholic education. Edgardo’s parents, distraught, will do anything to get their son back. Supported by public opinion and the international Jewish community, the Mortaras’ struggle quickly take a political dimension. But the Church and the Pope will not agree to return the child, to consolidate an increasingly wavering power…Read More »
An elderly man reads to a woman with dementia the story of two young lovers whose romance is threatened by the difference in their respective social classes.Read More »
Bright, intelligent, passionate and free, Eleanor is Karl Marx’s youngest daughter. Among the first women to link the themes of feminism and socialism, she takes part in the workers’ battles and fights for women’s rights and the abolition of child labor. In 1883 she meets Edward Aveling and her life is crushed by a passionate but tragic love story.Read More »
This movie focuses on a dozen of the five hundred characters depicted in Bruegel’s painting. The theme of Christ’s suffering is set against religious persecution in Flanders in 1564.Read More »
Another in the series The Director’s Place.
Filmmaker John Boorman pulls an “8 1/2”-and a good one-in I Dreamt I Woke Up. In this rambling reflection on Boorman’s life and career, the director appears as himself, while John Hurt shows up as his alter ego. Boorman’s son Charley plays “The Green Man,” a far-from-veiled reference to his starring appearance in his dad’s The Emerald Forest. And Janet McTeer rounds out the cast as an “everywoman”, essaying all sorts of hallucinatory roles. Short (1944) and bittersweet, I Dreamt I Woke Up was filmed in County Wicklow, Ireland; it was first shown in the US at the Telluride Film Festival ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »