1960s

Ignác Šavlíř, called Lucin, will try to steal another worker’s pocket from the pocket of a large gravel pit. He is caught, beaten up and thrown into the autumn mud. He is picked up by a randomly passing worker Magdalena and takes him to his house high on the land. Two losers start living together. Lucin was once a site master and driver, but immense drinking made him an assistant worker, a permanent debtor, and an occasional thief. Magdalena’s arms often served as a refuge for many workers for one night. But it wasn’t about money, she was more afraid of loneliness and longed for constant feeling and security. She is very clean and has a good influence on Lucin.Read More »

Greece 1942. In an island across the coast of Asia Minor, a woman finds an injured partisan who wants to leave for Turkey. She helps him with a boat to cross over but they will be caught by the Turks and kept in a camp.Read More »

PLOT: A young man struggles to come to terms with his true identity in a remote caste-based village in early 20th century Japan.Read More »

This is a lovely colorful adaptation of a novel by Anton Chekhov about the adventures of Jegoruska, an eight-year-old Russian boy, in a journey across the “steppe” or open plains of Russia on the en route from his home village to a market city where he is to go to school. It is in a way an allegorical trip which exposes him to some of the grimmest realities of life and some of its better ones. We get a social message as well, for example, the harsh conditions of the peasantry of 19th Century Russia. The director Alberto Lattuada often adapted Russian works or made films with Russian settings as in CUORE DI CANE, THE TEMPEST, and THE OVERCOAT. Most of the location scenes here were shot in Yugoslavia. The cast, which includes Charles Vanel as a priest and Marina Vlady as a countess, are uniformly good. Handsome young Daniele Spallone as the boy is marvelous.Read More »

Quote:
Inspired by Thorndike’s similar East German films,
this is a carefully researched, professionally executed
indictment of the West German government bureaucracy,
proving that many of its members — individually shown
and identified — had served in the same capacity under
the Nazis. A barrage of official documents, incriminating
photographs and Nazi newsreels substantiate the argument.Read More »

ძველი ქართული სიმღერა
PLOT: Under the premise of documenting for the sake of preservation the various forms of Georgian religious chanting, a distinct kind of sonorous psalmody passed over from generation to generation, what Otar Iosseliani captures in reality is the snapshot of a not-so-distant past that coexists with the world we might know yet transports us to what used to be.Read More »

Introduced by KQED’s General Manager James Day, The Rejected was the first ever U.S. televised documentary about homosexuality, broadcast on September 11th 1961. Originally titled ‘The Gay Ones’, The Rejected had a budget of $100 and was filmed mostly in the KQED studio. Several sources – including co-producer Irving Saraf – refer to at least one scene being shot on location at the Black Cat Bar in San Francisco (710 Montgomery Street). However, this edit of the film does not appear to feature images of the bar. In his ‘Chronological History of KQED: 40th Anniversary Edition’, Jay Yamada quotes a ‘Focus’ article from Oct. 1979: “Jim Day reported to the board that KQED had completed videotape production of a 90 minute documentary on homosexuality in San Francisco, a program entitled ‘The Rejected’.” The video edit preserved by the Library of Congress is only 60 minutes long.Read More »

A story of a farmer and his calf, the only survivors of the German WW2 punitive expeditions that passed through their village. While evading before the dangers of war, the farmer develops a deep attachment to his calf and tries to save it at all costs, but it wouldn’t be much easier for them even after the liberation day.Read More »

Story follows a weekend in a village where young adults after a hard working week let there steam off in taverns eating, drinking, singing, breaking glasses and occasionally other things every Sunday.Read More »