Merlin, Arrieta’s one feature shot on 35mm, is an adaptation of Cocteau’s play “Knights of the Round Table.”Read More »

From the cover:
In this small film, shot in Estepona in the south of Spain, Jørgen Leth and Ole John pursue the principle of asynchronisation and the juxtaposition of disparate elements. The images are footage from a barbershop, a talking man’s face and black film. The sound likewise embraces three elements: a story of how cement is made, which has neither head nor tail; a recording of a shave; and Louis Hjulmand’s score. The tight framing lends the mundane act of a shave a beauty of its own. Meanwhile, in the juxtaposition of near-rambling monologue and music, something else emerges, something more. As a viewer, you try to connect the two, but because no such connection exists, you have to surrender to the pure “experience” of images and sound. The title, a Danish Social-Democratic election slogan, is meaningless in this context. However, if you play around with the juxtaposition of the world “security” and the shots of the man’s soft skin and exposed neck under the barber’s sharply honed razor, the mock meaning rubs up against an altogether different one.Read More »

Biograph Films advertisement, 1911 wrote:
A Story of the Fourteenth Century — This story takes place at a time when there existed among the nobility of Europe feuds between the great houses, and in this case the daughter of one house has given her heart to the son of the master of the rival domain. He braves everything to see his sweetheart…Read More »

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Flushed with the success of his Elvira Madigan, Swedish director Bo Widerberg concocted another story of teenaged love juxtaposed with social upheaval in Adalen 31. The title refers to the 1931 worker’s strike against the Adalen paper mill in Northern Sweden. As the strikers debate whether or not to use violence in pressing their complaint, the daughter of the factory owner (Marie De Geer) is impregnated by the son of a worker (Peter Schildt). The strike is “resolved” in a bloody confrontation between the laborers and government troops, resulting in the death of the boy–and, on a greater scale, the collapse of Sweden’s Conservative Government. The girl ultimately opts for an abortion, which partially explains why Adalen 31 was originally given an “X” rating by the then-conservative Motion Picture Association of America.Read More »

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This is a quite a rare example of a political sci-fi filmed without means. An excessive and schizophrenic creature, DINNI E LA NORMALINA allows Grifi’s more playful soul to see the light, while not dispersing the dark reflection on the exploitation by media institutions. Although the film is completely finished, in 2004 Grifi filmed new material to be integrated into the editing process: a homeless man who wanders among carcasses of burned scooters, queues of employees who show their feces to the health inspectors. Unfortunately this material remains unpublished.Read More »

Two housewives feel strongly inclined to solve sexual problems of others. This comedy is a takeoff on the then-popular TV series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.

Starring: Laurien Dominique, Candida Royalle, Ken Scudder, Jon Martin, John Holmes, Joan Devlon, Blair Harris, Paul Thomas, Peter Johns, Carl Regal & Joey Silvera.Read More »

In Dalton, Georgia, the “Carpet Capital of the World,” we meet the unsung creators behind the psychedelic carpets lining casinos, offices, and hotel hallways. Chief among these textile honchos is Roderick James, a Scottish expat with a self-styled outlaw-country manner—and countless schemes to grab himself a larger share of the American dream. Brimming with stranger-than-fiction characters, Carpet Cowboys delivers rich documentary portraiture and bursts of outrageous humor in the tradition of American Movie, Hands on a Hardbody, and Winnebago Man. Executive produced by John Wilson (HBO’s How To with John Wilson) and produced by MEMORY, the team behind Rat Film, Crestone, and All Light, Everywhere.Read More »

Afire (German: Roter Himmel) is a 2023 German drama film directed by Christian Petzold, starring Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel and Enno Trebs. The relationship drama focuses on four people who are trapped in their holiday home on the Baltic Sea by uncontrolled forest fires.

The film won the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize at the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival. In August 2023, it was shortlisted as the German submissions for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film for the 96th Academy Awards.Read More »

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The novels “Dziewczęta z Nowolipek” and “Rajska jabłoń” by Pola Gojawiczyńska were published in the middle of the 1930s. The author, using her own experience and memories, described the childhood and youth of several friends, residents of the Warsaw district of Nowolipki. The novel “Dziewczęta z Nowolipek” was first filmed in 1937 by Józef Lejtes. This film adaptation was highly acclaimed. There were even voices that the film was artistically superior to Gojawiczyńska’s prose. The novel was adapted for the film for the second time at the beginning of the 1970s. This television adaptation also included “Rajska jabłoń” (“Paradise Apple”). The director Stanisław Wohl cast Emilia Krakowska, Elżbieta Kępińska, Zofia Kucówna and Ewa Wisniewska in the leading roles. Barbara Sass’ film is the third adaptation of Gojawiczyńska’s novel.Read More »