1960s

Quote:
A jealous piano teacher Orville Spooner sends his beautiful wife, Zelda, away for the night while he tries to sell a song to a famous nightclub singer Dino, who is stranded in town.Read More »

A middle-aged political activist tries to dissuade his young followers from taking radical action.Read More »

Quote:
Vera Chytilova’s fascinating 1962 film-school thesis is a protofeminist meditation on the fashion industry that draws on Chytilova’s experience as a model. The storytelling is a bit clumsy, arbitrarily juxtaposing scenes of the protagonist posing at a photo shoot and awkwardly interacting with some young men in a cafe. But many of the images ring emotionally true, even those that have since become cliches—like the sequence in which she wanders the street at night staring at shop window mannequins. The film’s best scene—of the model standing on the runway while the audience whirls vertiginously about—evokes the vacuous instability of a self that exists only in the gaze of others.Read More »

‘The Painted Smile’ (1962) sees young student Mark (Peter Reynolds) wrongly accused of murder. He is
lured back to an apartment by con-artist Jo (Liz Fraser), only to find her boyfriend brutally murdered on
the floor. Jo convinces Mark to help her dispose of the body which leads to him being arrested for the
man’s murder.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Tom Ripley and Philippe Greenleaf are lately inseparable friends. They’re both idling in Europe, but on papa Greenleaf’s dime. Philippe’s fiancee Marge feels sorry for Tom but resents his presence, while Philippe’s other friend, Freddie, considers Tom Ripley a worthless moocher. But there’s more to Tom Ripley, the mimic, the forger, the talented criminal improviser, than anyone, even Tom Ripley himself, can guess.’
– J. Spurlin (IMDb)Read More »

LES PAYS LOIN was Jean Rollin’s second short film. It was never screened in the cinema-or even film festivals- until years after it was made and, even then, on extremely rare occasions. This Encore release is the first opportunity that almost anyone has had to see this early work. The film is a science fiction piece in which a man and a woman are lost in a maze of streets and can’t remember how they got there. When they do make it out onto the busy, populated streets, things are no better. The landmarks are unfamiliar and the people speak a strange language. Even at this very early stage, one can already see the themes of loneliness and melancholy, and a yearning for release that are trademarks of Rollin characters throughout his entire body of work.Read More »

Simon of the Desert is Luis Buñuel’s wicked and wild take on the life of devoted ascetic Saint Simeon Stylites, who waited atop a pillar surrounded by a barren landscape for six years, six months, and six days, in order to prove his devotion to God. Yet the devil, in the figure of the beautiful Silvia Pinal, huddles below, trying to tempt him down. A skeptic’s vision of human conviction, Buñuel’s short and sweet satire is one of the master filmmaker’s most renowned works of surrealism.Read More »

Koreyoshi Kurahara’s ingeniously plotted, pocket-sized noir concerns the intertwining fates of a desperate bank manager, blackmailed for book-cooking, and his resentful but timid underling, passed over for a promotion. Elegantly stripped-down and carefully paced, Intimidation (Aru kyouhaku) is a moody early film from one of the Japanese New Wave’s preeminent stylists.Read More »

Description: Welcome in the underworld, on your left there’s some gangsters, on your right be careful there’s shootings, murders, betrayals… Enjoy the jazzy mood !
Three killers stole money and drugs from a gangsters meeting. They left with a hostage and a lot of dead bodies behind. Well, that’s not a big deal for them, they stay relax, and don’t rush to sell the drugs. After the massacre, they just go back to their flat and spend a good time. Except one of them, who decides otherwise. He’s tired of staying there doing nothing, and so leave with the hostage. Does he want to start his life again or he’s just too ambitious ?
Wakamatsu has already shown the underworld, but until now, it was just a bunch of men living out of the system whose function, was to disturb the story of the prime characters.Read More »