Quote:
The early short films of István Szabó are fascinating etudes that foreshadow the topics and milieu of his later, globally successful feature films. Variations Upon a Theme is nothing less than an attempt to summon up HISTORY – in block capitals – using constructivist imagery. Sequences cut from archive footage shot in museums and cafés, compiled “objectively”, “in astonishment”, “as a scream”, are a warning that, just like the films of the great Central Europe trilogy, by the time a person realizes where they live, historical processes are already irreversible.Read More »
Trápení
Lenka (Jorga Kotrbová) is a strong-willed girl on the brink of puberty who builds a bond with a tameless blackhorse Prim, ill-treated by a mean collective farm worker, in this lyrical film for children set in Southern Bohemia.Read More »
A girl broods over a failed love affair while the camera roves over her.
Featuring Joan Adler (who also appears in Chinese Checkers), Soliloquy is one of the four early Stephen Dwoskin films that were awarded the Solvey prize at the EXPRMNTL festival in Knokke, Belgium in 1967. “In Soliloquy a girl broods uncertainly over a failed love affair, while the camera roves over her fingers, her cigarette, her knuckles, her lips and the hand mirror in which she peers. In its dark reflection one isolated eye seems a dead thing, twitching; the split between her body and her spoken thoughts becomes a strange bilocation of consciousness; towards the end, an aeroplane drones overhead” (Raymond Durgnat)Read More »
A unique concert given to the long term inmates of the famous jail. Johnny and June sing ‘Wanted Man’ (written especially for the concert by Bob Dylan) and ‘San Quentin’ (written by Cash just in time for the concert). Also features the songs ‘I Walk the Line’, ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, ‘Orange Blossom Special’, ‘Jackson’, ‘Darling Companion’, ‘Daddy Snag Bass’, ‘A Boy Named Sue’, ‘Peace in the Valley’, ‘He Turned Water into Wine’. The audience are very appreciative.Read More »
Quote:
The film adaptation of the bestseller of the same name by Tsutomu Mizukami. A hard-boiled noir thriller where two dogged newspaper reporters’ investigation of the mysterious death of an innocent elementary school teacher in an extremely remote area of Japan leads them through a web of corporate fraud, an inbred village, bundles of toilet paper, and flatfoots with something to hide as the bodies pile up.Read More »
Quote:
The 1962 documentary Lonely Boy, directed by Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor, is a film about the manufacture of a pop idol. Paul Anka, the subject of the documentary, is a popular performer at the peak of his career, but the directors use a variety of strategies to express their view of him as an isolated figure who is seen by his handlers as a piece of merchandise and whose success is questionable. They do this through interviews which focus on the process of Anka’s rise, frequent references to the merchandising operation he is at the center of, editing that highlights the freakishness and hysteria of his fans, and frequent shots that emphasize his isolation. Several other films made in the 1960s dealt with the phenomenon of celebrity in the same cinema vérité style, and examining how the editing choices made by Koenig and Kroitor differ from films such as Primary (Robert Drew, 1960), What’s Happening! The Beatles In the U.S.A. (Albert and David Maysles, 1964) and Don’t Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967) is useful in illustrating the directors’ skeptical view of the celebrity machine and the idea that despite Anka’s success, Lonely Boy can be seen as yet another Canadian film about failure.Read More »
A stuffy middle-aged foreigner, a businessman named Fabricius (Miloš Kopecký), lonely and looking for a night’s diversion, finds it in the form of a mysterious blonde, Zuzana (Milena Dvorská). In an abandoned cemetery, she tells him three tales involving black magic and erotic obsession. In director Jiří Brdečka’s stunning “The Last Golem,” a young rabbi (Jan Klusák) struggles to fashion a massive, silent giant out of living clay – until he’s distracted by a mute servant girl (Lucie Novotná). Utterly hypnotic and dreamlike, set to a haunting chorus of ghostly voices, “The Last Golem” ranks with Fellini’s “Toby Dammit” in SPIRITS OF THE DEAD as one of the finest supernatural short tales of the decade. In the second episode, “Bread Slippers,” an 18th-century countess (Teresa Tuszyńska) indulges her passion for sweet cakes, adulterous affairs, and secret kisses with pretty maids – until a mysterious visitor (Josef Somr) whisks her away to an abandoned mansion, where Fate has a different kind of dance in store for her.Read More »
A loony farmer finds a prehistoric monster hiding in a cavern on his land. To feed his newest critter, the farmer kidnaps three people. The three desperately try to escape and finally, one of them succeeds.Read More »
