1960s

London-based Millionairess Epifania (Sophia Loren) is attracted to Dr. Kabir (MD from Delhi and PhD from Calcutta), who is more intent on treating patients. When she persists, he confides in her that he had made a commitment to his late widowed seamstress mother that he will wed any woman who will manage to survive on just Rs.500/-, for 90 days. She finds out that this sum is equivalent to just 35 shillings but readily accepts this challenge. She also informs him that her late father had also imposed a condition that she must wed a male who will turn £500 into £15000 within the same period. Epifania then finds employment with an Italian firm, ends up re-organizing, and turning up the firm’s profits. At the end of 90 days, she goes to meet Kabir and discovers that he has not only given all the money away but also has no interest whatsoever in marrying her.Read More »

Quote:
Though he was very much a member of the community of filmmakers who graduated from FAMU and went on to shake things up during the sixties, Evald Schorm also stood apart from the rest. Like his fellow directors, he was using the medium to get at the absurdity of life in Communist Czechoslovakia, but Schorm was dedicated to a more direct, realistic type of filmmaking than his friends Věra Chytilová, Jan Němec, and Jiří Menzel, who readily turned to whimsy, fantasy, and comedy. Referred to as both the philosopher and the conscience of the New Wave, Schorm, whose relatively sober style has been called documentary-like (his focus at FAMU was nonfiction filmmaking) and received comparisons to that of Antonioni, explored themes of morality and the malaise of the socialist middle class (such income-based social strata did exist in Czechoslovakia), and preferred psychological portraiture.Read More »

Veteran gangster Gustave (Lino Ventura) escapes from prison to find his sister is being blackmailed by some petty thugs in this crime thriller. He plans one last caper to steal enough money in hopes of retiring to a tropical paradise. He and his gang are sought by a detective (Paul Meurisse), the cop who plays by the book and avoids the sadistic torture practiced by his less-honorable cohorts. Soon Gustave is caught between the police and the double-crossing gangsters and discovers too late that there is no honor among thieves.Read More »

Quote:
One of the defining works of the Czech New Wave was the portmanteau film Pearls from the Deep (Perlicky na dne, 1965). Not only did it bring five key directors of the Wave (Chytilova, Jires, Menzel, Nemec and Schorm) together in one film, making it the Wave’s official “coming out” as a group, but it tied them to a writer, Bohumil Hrabal, whose ability to capture the rhythms and refrains of everyday spoken Czech was highly influential on the Wave’s directionRead More »

Quote:
BLOOD END is one of the great unknown films from Japan’s golden era of the late 1960’s. Starring NAKADAI Tatsuya in one of his best roles, this is the story of the Mito Tengu Group who attempted to overthrow the Shogunate at the beginning of the Bakumatsu Period. Their political aspirations led to countless assassinations, as well as senseless killing of innocent people who got in their way. Sentaro (NAKADAI), a farmer who’s been severely beaten for his outspoken defiance of the government and the high taxes during a time of famine is befriended by one of the group’s leaders, KADA Gentaro (KATO Go) and joins up.Read More »

Synopsis:
This castle has its own ghost – a mysterious White lady. She emerges from the painting on the wall when someone speaks out magic formula. White lady is a good ghost, she can make someone’s wishes true. Even if it is a new duct. But a miracle is not the thing that Communist leaders want in the town.Read More »

With Berlin falling, Nazi doctors ship the beating heart of the Frankenstein monster to Tokyo by U-boat. A Japanese military scientistin Hiroshima intends to use the heart, which cannot die, to create an army of invincible soldiers. Unfortunately, the heart is barely unpacked when the U.S. Air Force A-bombs the city. Nothing more is heard of the matter until a feral boy with a strange brow shows up fifteen years later…Read More »

Yugoslavian resistance fighters send out eight men on a suicide mission to bomb the airport in this World War II action drama. The locals have successfully kept the Nazis at bay on the ground, but the German Luftwaffe looms as a bigger and more dangerous threat. The film was popular at the box office in Yugoslavia and was well received by the audience at the 1967 Pula Film Festival.Read More »

From Senses of Cinema:
Istoriya Asi Klyachinoy, kotoraya lyubila, da ne vyshla zamuzh (Asya’s Happiness) is a seminal film, a film that suffered numerous title changes and edits by edict. It is a rediscovered classic that was shelved for 20 years and now stands as a testament to the paranoid absurdity of Soviet censorship. It is a film that provided a powerful start for some careers and stunted others. With its natural lightness and exploration of femininity it broke the genre of the collective farm-worker movie and introduced a deeply Russian neo-realism that celebrated the rural, spiritual environment through stunning black-and-white cinematography and breathtakingly authentic performances by non-professional actors that captured the sounds, stories and pace of life in the village of Bezvodnoye. Read More »