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Harry Baer plays a newly released ex-convict who slowly but surely finds his way back into the Munich criminal underworld. Meanwhile, his attentions are torn between two women (Hanna Schygulla and Margarethe von Trotta) and the friend (Günther Kaufmann) who shot his brother. This sensual, artfully composed film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder is a study of romantic and professional futility.Read More »
This is a two-part video portrait of the outstanding Russian writer, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, author of famous novels about the Russian revolution and the acclaimed study of the Soviet concentration camps, “The Gulag Archipelago”. Solzhenitsyn is of more interest to the filmmaker for his attitudes, thoughts and present life, than for his legendary past. Rather than interviewing some important person, Sokurov creates a monumental image before our eyes.Read More »
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In an impressive follow up to his debut film Forest, Benedek Fliegauf tells the uncompromising story of a day in the life of a drug dealer. His clients include the leader of a religious sect, a friend who needs a final fix, a former lover who has had his child, a student, and a black marketeer. Fliegauf’s film recreates life in a city that resembles a ghost town, an alienated world with its own priorities and realities. It is, he says ‘. an imaginary city with a strongly spiritualist atmosphere. This necropolis is the film’s real protagonist’. His subject is depression (‘a state of consciousness that saturates the life of .too many of us’) and the film provides a deeply felt testament to the realities of a painful and still little understood world. An admirer of Béla Tarr, Fliegauf similarly allows his characters to exist in extended (or real) time, with a minimalist style in which every sound or line of dialogue becomes privileged. The framing, camera movement, and sound design combine to create hypnotic film-making of a high order. It is a demanding and essential film and no mere exercise in miserabilism.Read More »
Vietnamese-born Trinh T. Minh-ha’s profoundly personal documentary explores the role of Vietnamese women historically and in contemporary society. Using dance, printed texts, folk poetry and the words and experiences of Vietnamese women in Vietnam—from both North and South—and the United States, Trinh’s film challenges official culture with the voices of women. A theoretically and formally complex work, Surname Viet Given Name Nam explores the difficulty of translation, and themes of dislocation and exile, critiquing both traditional society and life since the war.Read More »
Xu Xin’s film “Dao Lu” (China 2012) offers an exclusive “in camera” encounter with Zheng Yan, an 83 year-old veteran of the Chinese Red Army, who calmly relates how he has navigated his country’s turbulent history over three-quarters of a century.Born to a wealthy family in a foreign concession, Yan joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1941 because he sincerely believed in the socialist project, and in its immediate capacity to free China from the Japanese yoke and eradicate deep-rooted corruption.Read More »
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A sensitive portrait of Sabine Bonnaire, the autistic sister of the french actress Sandrine Bonnaire.Read More »
May 1960. Mount Everest, the second step under the cliff. The four members of the China Everest Climbing Commando are attacking the most difficult and most difficult “second step”. This is their fifth assault. The first four failures have cost them too much physical strength – …finally, the wind and snow stop the gap.Read More »
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João and Jaime are joyful taxi drivers. The two fall in love with various women. Meanwhile the company they work for is managed by the widow Alexandrina. Her son, Raul, steals the business safe to pay a game debt. When the disappearance of the money is noticed, Raul puts the blame on João. Jaime does all he can to save his friend’s honor, forcing Raul to admit his fault.Read More »
A rare blaxploitation classic starring Vonette McGee & Max Julien, Thomasine & Bushrod was intended as a counterpart to Bonnie and Clyde. This pair of thieves, who operate in the American south between 1911 and 1915, pattern themselves after Robin Hood and hold the White Establishment as (a ‘modern-day’) Sheriff of Nottingham. Thomasine and Bushrod steal from rich, white capitalists, then give to Mexicans, Native Americans and poor whites.Read More »