1960s

A young Russian woman asks a Red Army soldier to spend the night with her in the wake of the Nazi invasion. Fearing she may soon perish, the woman hopes for one night of romance before what could be a horrible demise. Black-and-white photography is mixed with color as moods change in the film. Women are captured and sent off to concentration camps or to work in brothels for the pleasure of the sadistic Germans. A Russian woman places a noose around her own neck rather than let a Nazi touch her. Some of the victims manage to escape and they try to return to their war-torn home in the Ukraine to join the defense.Read More »

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A horrifying series of murders, committed by a teenaged killer in 1968, prompted a group of filmmakers to chart his path, capturing the things he might have seen before committing his crimes. Their result is this provocative, rarely-screened meditation on geography and society.Read More »

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Mikko Niskanen’s famous new wave film about the ’60s urban intellectuals who get faced in the Finnish countryside with loads of beer.Read More »

Mania is the venerable Burke and Hare story, previously cinematized by producer Val Lewton as The Body Snatcher. Peter Cushing plays a respectable 19th-century Edinburgh doctor who needs fresh cadavers in order to continue his crucial research. Since the exhuming of bodies for medical purposes is illegal, Lee must rely upon grave-robbers George Rose and Donald Pleasance for his corpse supply. What Lee doesn’t know is that Rose and Pleasance frequently cut out the middleman by “creating” their own corpses. The good doctor catches on when the latest cadaver turns out to be his own fiancee. Its excessively violent climax has prevented Mania from being shown completely intact on commercial television.Read More »

This classic motion picture from Argentina is a 1963 art-house adaptation of a short story by the renowned Argentine writer, Julio Cortázar. The short story of the same name appears in his 1951 collection, Bestiario.
In Greek mythology and the Odyssey, Circe is a beautiful and powerful enchantress who uses her gifts to lure men into her lair to then turn them into animals. The “Circe” of this feature film is Delia, a beautiful but mysterious woman whose two previous suitors died unexpectedly while courting her, one of a heart condition and the other of suicide. Despite neighborhood rumors that implicate Delia as the cause of these tragedies, Mario finds himself inexplicably drawn to her.Read More »

While extracting and polishing their blocks of stone, stonecutters used to say the stone is coming to life. This paradox provided Matsumoto with the best metaphor for what making a film is all about. In his opinion, filmmakers work images in the same way that stonecutters work stones.Read More »

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WWII Burma…Six paratroopers undertake an extremely dangerous mission against the Japanese. It will ultimately cost them their lives, except for one “lucky” survivor.Read More »

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8 1/2 weaves fluidly through the visually intoxicating landscape of Federico Fellini’s subconscious, seemingly to seek inspiration and validation for his life and work. In an opening scene that symbolizes much of Fellini’s films, a suffocating man, trapped inside his car, inexplicably begins to float into the skies, only to be abruptly tugged back to the ground. But it is also an indelible image that shatters any preconceived illusion of “typical” elements in a Fellini film. The film, 8 1/2, literally marks Fellini’s work on 8 1/2 feature films (the “1/2” derived from collaborative direction films), and proves to be a transitional film in his artistic career.Read More »

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Leslie Caron gets top billing and the lion share of screen time in “Fanny” but Maurice Chevalier steals the show from the first frame. Making its DVD debut, this 1961 film is based on the Tony-Award musical of the same name. Despite getting its start way back in 1954, the story is surprisingly risqué and contemporary, dealing with issues such as illegitimate children, premarital sex, cleavage and adultery. Because of Chevalier and the cast, those issues are presented in a jovial, comedic way until the third act, when the humor and levity the production is built on is jettisoned in favor of mediocre melodrama.Read More »