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Made at the height of Anna May Wong’s fame in Europe, Pavement Butterfly was a coproduction between Germany and Britain and filmed on location in Nice, France. In this silent film, Wong plays a dancer in the French Riviera who, after her act takes a deadly turn, finds refuge in the arms of a young painter.Read More »
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Vicky lives with her mother Joanne and father Jimmie, a man struggling to find his place. When Vicky’s aunt Julia arrives after being released from prison, her presence brings back the past in a violent, magical way.Read More »
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A famous Polish journalist presents a problem for the powers-that-be when he displays his full political skill and knowledge on a television show featuring questions and answers on a world conference by a panel of journalists. His enemies take away his privileges when he is away. The shock of being “unwanted” parallels a deeper disappointment in his private life: his wife has an affair with a jealous young rival, and after 15 years of marriage and two daughters wants a divorce. She offers no explanations as he tries to untie these problems himself. All the moves he makes are the wrong ones. He takes on drinking heavily with students eager to attend his seminar after discovering the class has been canceled. The journalist, once suave and commanding is reduced to silence.Read More »
During 1942, Nadia Burhan lives with her mother in Alexandria, Fawzia lives with her husband Shaker, whom she married against her family’s will. Nadia meets Salah and agree to get married. Fawzia dies from a German bombardment of the city, and Nadia has amnesia and Fawzia’s husband tries to delude Nadia that she’s Fawzia.Read More »
A series of snapshots from the life of a fictional actress named Shirley serves to weave together thirteen paintings by Edward Hopper (e.g. “Office at Night”, “Western Motel”, “Usherette”, “A Woman in the Sun”) into a fascinating synthesis of painting and film, personal and political history. Each station in Shirley’s professional and private life from the 1930s to 1960s is precisely dated: It is always August 28/29 of the year in question, as the locations vary from Paris to New York to Cape Cod.Read More »
Kartal Tibet is… Tarkan! A mighty barbarian warrior guy who runs around with his dog, Kurt, saving pretty women from danger. He’s currently in the employ of the daughter of an important political person who runs afoul of some bloodthirsty Turkish Vikings who worship a bizarre Lovecraftian man-eating octopus. Why do they want the girl? Why, to sacrifice her to their god, of course! The Vikings, lead by a guy with the most amazing moustache ever, land their Viking ship outside of the castle where she lives, and soon have killed off all of her men, with only Tarkan left breathing, laying unconscious and presumed dead on the floor of the courtyard after a bloody battle ensues. Tarkan isn’t going out like that, however and once he gets his strength back, he and Kurt track down the Turkish Vikings and set out to save the pretty damsel and save her from certain doom at the hands of the half inflated eight-legged demigod.Read More »
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For a small film, Suddenly has a lot of baggage. Even after many years, it remains tainted by its eerie foreshadowing of President Kennedy’s assassination nine years following the film’s release—an association made all the more sinister by the oft-repeated (and now disputed) assertion that Lee Harvey Oswald watched the film shortly before the President was gunned down in Dallas. Then there’s the claim that star Frank Sinatra ordered the film withdrawn from circulation after Kennedy was killed, an order Sinatra had no power to give, although he did protest when a TV station aired the film shortly after the 35th President’s death. In the Nineties, the film was the victim of a botched colorization effort that turned Sinatra into Old Brown Eyes, and the failure to renew the film’s copyright caused it to become available through multiple public domain distributors in inferior versions that were painful to watch.Read More »
An exploration into the mysterious life of the late jazz vocalist Jackie Paris, which examines the question of how much we need to know about an artist’s life to appreciate their art.Read More »
In 1880’s Italy, young Paulina must join a monastery to escape a doomed relationship with a married count. However, neither she, nor the count can just move.Read More »