1960s

This classic 1968 documentary highlights the activities of the headquarters of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California as its members fight for the freedom of its imprisoned co-founder Huey P. Newton.Read More »

Plot:
The film is about the well-known “Polk case”, involving the murder of the American journalist George Polk, who had come to Greece to interview Markos Vafeiadis and was found dead under mysterious circumstances. In the film, a left-wing journalist, Aimos Vagenas, is arrested and accused of being inlvolved in the murder of the American journalist. His guilt cannot be proven, and so he is set free temporarily. As a journalist, he starts investigating the murder of which he was accused, while the police pin the crime on someone else, the Jewish university student Zadik, who then commits suicide in jail.Read More »

Quote:
The coming of age of Olof Persson is presented. This phase of his story begins in northern Sweden in 1914 when he is fourteen years old. He is just leaving the home of his foster parents, where he was first sent because of his own father’s illness. Olof is now striking out on his own moving from one manual labor job to another. He is often put through rites of passage because of his age, or is exposed to adult issues solely because he is seen as just another one of the men. It isn’t until he moves to the city at age sixteen and gets a job in the movie showing business – first at a cinema and then a traveling movie show – that he begins to deal with more adult issues and emotions of his own, such as acting on his desire for the opposite sex, the associated feeling of jealousy, and how he may want to direct his energies as an adult in his passions for philosophy and political activism of the socialist variety.Read More »

Synopsis:
Transport from Paradise is set in an unusual World War II concentration camp. The lax Nazi guards permit their Jewish prisoners to roam freely about the camp and conduct their own business and social affairs, without the threat of instant extermination looming over their heads. The prisoners’ main fear is that they may at any moment be shipped off to one of the death camps. In the film’s incredibly heartbreaking climax, a group of prisoners willingly board a train to Auschwitz, laboring under the delusion that they are being sent to another “paradise” camp at the behest of the Council of Jewish Elders. Though it stretches credibility at times, Transport from Paradise is purportedly based on a true story.Read More »

A barrage balloon appears unexpectedly over a Bulgarian village. The startled villagers decide to knock it down with a fusillade. But the balloon flies off to the mountains. The villagers, armed to their teeth, set off after it. But they are not alone in this undertaking. There is another armed group that chases the wonder. An argument whose property the balloon is breaks out between the two groups. It turns out that the balloon flew from Romania over the Danube River. In the turmoil following the argument, the balloon is destroyed. The police arrive and punish the villagers for meddling in other peoples affairs.Read More »

Helena (Rosa M. Penna) is the adolescent girl who is driven to suicide over her fear of growing older and assuming responsibility for her life. A couple reads her diary and watches home movies of the girl to try and understand her personality and motivation for taking her own life. Adriana Prieto, Arduino Colasanti and Joel Barcelos also star in this tragic tale of a young girl’s inability to cope with life. -allmovie.comRead More »

Autour de Jacques Baratier & Sweet and Sour
By Elliott Stein – Tuesday, April 14th 2009 – Village Voice

(Jacques Baratier, 1963). This fascinating nearly plot-less feature from eccentric Baratier, a director hardly known in America, is a quirky riff on cinema verite, with guest appearances from a dazzling array of European luminaries from the 60s including Simone Signoret, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Monica Vitti, and Roger Vadim. It was shot by the great Henri Decae, cinematographer of The Four Hundred Blows, Plein Soleil and La Ronde.Read More »

Synopsis:
This crime thriller contains enough comedy and blood to interest almost any movie fan. Shady underworld thugs gather in a seedy Soho hotel in Room 13 to plan a train robbery. They plan to rendezvous in the mansion of a member of Parliament who is being blackmailed for his ties to the gang 20 years earlier. Simultaneously, a mysterious slasher is murdering women with a straight razor. Jonny Gray (Joachim Fuschberger) is the detective who is called on to solve the robbery and the murders.Read More »

Synopsis:
Lizzie (Felicity Kendal) is an actress in a Shakespearean theater troupe that has seen better days. The troupe tours India to dwindling crowds who are less interested in all things British in the wake of Indian independence. When she has an affair with the Indian playboy Sanju (Shashi Kapoor), Lizzie feels the wrath of her disapproving father Tony (Geoffrey Kendal) and her mother Carla (Laura Liddell). Madhur Jaffrey plays the role of the Indian actress Manjula in this romantic drama with musical score from Satyajit RayRead More »