1960s

Synopsis
One of Satyajit Ray’s greatest early films, full of sensuality and ironic undertones, Devi is sufficiently critical of Hindu superstition that it was banned from foreign distribution until Nehru interceded. The plot concerns a wealthy and devout landowner in the 19th century who believes his daughter-in-law (Sharmila Tagore) is the reincarnation of the goddess Kali and convinces her that he’s right. With Soumitra Chatterji and Chhabi Biswas.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago ReaderRead More »

Quote:
During the most brutal days of World War I, Apostol Bologa (the extraordinary Victor Rebengiuc), a Romanian serving as a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army, is part of the Court Martial that punishes deserters and other problem soldiers. Gradually the horror of his routine builds up inside of him, forcing a choice between his military duty and greater feelings of humanity. Ciulei’s most ambitious and masterfully realized film, particularly striking in its impressionistic landscape photography, the Forest of the Hanged earned Ciulei the Best Director prize at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival and became the first Romanian feature to attract widespread international attention. It remains one of the cinema’s greatest studies of the dehumanizing effects of war. Screening introduced by critic Magda Mihailescu.Read More »

The Intrepid Shadows
This is one of the most complex films made by the Navajo. It is the one least understood by the Navajo and most appreciated by “avant-garde” filmmakers in our society. The film opens with a long series of shots showing the varieties of landscape around our schoolhouse. We see rocks, earth, trees, sky, in a variety of shapes but mostly in still or static shots. ’The shadows are very small or short. When we have familiarized ourselves with the things that comprise the “world” we see a young Navajo come walking into the landscape. He picks up a stick, kneels down, and begins to poke at a huge spider web.Read More »

Navajo Silversmith
This film is structured in almost the same fashion as the weaving film. The film starts with a series of shots showing the Navajo silversmith completing the filing on some little Yeibechai figures which have already been cast and are on his work bench. We then cut away from this (as in A Navajo Weaver) to what is apparently the beginning of the story. We see the silversmith walking and wandering across the Navajo landscape and finally arriving at what appears to be a silver mine.Read More »

A Navajo Weaver
Susie chose to depict her mother as she wove a rug. The film starts with a series of short shots showing a Navajo woman weaving at her loom. It then turns to the job of raising the sheep, shearing the wool, digging yucca roots for soap with which to wash the wool, carding and spinning, walking, digging and searching for roots with which to make dye, dying the wool, and putting the warp on the loom. Interspersed with these activities are large sections showing the mother walking and searching for the various materials necessary to make and to complete all these stages in the process of weaving. When towards the end of the film, after 15 minutes have gone by, the mother actually begins to weave the rug, we see interspersed shots of Susie’s little brother mounting his horse and taking care of the sheep, the sheep grazing, and various other activities around the hogan.Read More »

This weird and chilling tale of vampires and the undead seeking to bring their kind back to life features the evil Marco (Ronald Remy), an updated version of the vampiric Count Dracula replete with cape, fangs, and clean-shaven head! Marco seeks to reanimate his long lost love and infuse her with the blood of his victims as he casts his evil spell over the inhabitants of a lonely village. Sharp fangs gleam in the night as bloodsuckers and bats seek fresh blood from the veins of their victims in this eerie drive-in favorite, also known as “The Vampire People” and featuring unusual color photography and tinting effects.Read More »

Lively comedy sending up British stiff-upper-lip prisoner-of-war dramas, starring James Robertson Justice as Sir Ernest Pease, a bombastic scientist who ends up in a German PoW camp during World War II. The inmates, led by Jimmy Cooper and Jock Everett, are forced to help him escape.Read More »

Plot Synopsis by Sandra Brennan
In this remake of the British thriller, a young TV journalist assists Scotland yard with the strange murder of a reclusive millionaire whose corpse was found locked in a vault. The key to the vault was on the table beside the corpse.Read More »

Visconti’s retelling of the Electra story starts with Sandra/Electra (Cardinale) returning to her ancestral home in Italy – and reviving an intimate involvement with her brother (Sorel) which troubles her naive American husband (Craig) – on the eve of an official ceremony commemorating the death of her Jewish father in a Nazi concentration camp. As ever with Visconti, he is ambivalently drawn to the decadent society he is ostensibly criticising; and Armando Nannuzzi’s camera lovingly caresses the creaking old mansion, set in a landscape of crumbling ruins, where the incestuous siblings determine to wreak revenge on the mother (Bell) and stepfather (Ricci) who supposedly denounced their father. Something like a Verdi opera without the music, the result may not quite achieve tragedy, but it looks marvellous. The title, culled from a poem by Leopardi, has been better rendered as ‘Twinkling Stars of the Bear’.Read More »