1970s

A group of Russian teenagers spend their summer at a summer camp. Mitia falls in love and gets so occupied with his own problems that he forgets the others.

—

L’action se situe dans un camp de pionnier appartenant visiblement à quelque administration ou organisation de bon niveau social. L’un des éducateurs est un sculpteur fort en littérature classique, grand amateur de Lermontov. Le héros principal Mitia Lopoukhine, surnommé Lopoukh, va subir l’influence du sculpteur qui lui fait découvrir la valeur et le sens de l’art. Il devient amoureux d’une jeune fille, Droubitch, qui lit des livres en trois langues… La mise en scène de la pièce de théâtre Mascarade de Lermontov doit permettre aux adolescents de mieux comprendre sentiments, passions et valeurs morales.
Read More »

Straub/Huillet’s From the Cloud to the Resistance (1978) has been summarized by Straub as follows: ‘From the cloud, that is from the invention of the gods by man, to the resistance of the latter against the former as much as to the resistance against Fascism.

‘Dalla nube alla resistenza (From the Cloud to the Resistance ) (1978), based on two works by Cesare Pavese, falls into the category of History Lessons and Too Early, Too Late as well. It, too, has two parts—a twentieth-century text and a text regarding the myths of antiquity, each set in the appropriate landscape. Pavese’s The Moon and the Bonfires looks back on the violent deaths of Italian anti-Fascist resistance fighters; Dialogues with Leucò is a series of dialogues between heroes and gods, connecting myth and history and returning to an ambiguous stage in the creation of distinctions, such as that between animal and human, which are fundamental to grammar and language itself. Such a juxtaposition of political engagement with profoundly contemplative issues such as myth, nature, and meaning points to the characters of Empedocles and Antigone in the Hölderlin films.’

(Library Synopsis): Six dialogues between figures from Greek antiquity, taken from Cesare Pavese’s ‘Dialoghi con Leucò’, are followed by an episode set in modern times, taken from the same author’s novel ‘La Luna e i falò’.Read More »

Black comedy about solitude and dishumanization of the modern world, through the adventures of three men. First introduced is Alphonse Tram, an unemployed young man. His only neighbour is the police chief-inspector Morvandieu. Then a third man appears : he is Alphonse’s wife’s murderer… Bizarre and unreal.Read More »

Quote:
The film is an omnibus consisting of three stories – “Usvojenje”, “Ferije” and “Probni rok”. We follow fragments of the lives of young girls from a social institution for children and young adults without parents. In the first story, a wealthy young couple wants to adopt a five-year-old girl, Zeljka. The emotionally undeveloped child has a hard time adapting to her new environment. In Ferije, fifteen-year-old Visnja spends her winter holidays in a gloomy home for young delinquents, where she experiences her first romance. The heroine of the third story is nineteen-year-old Branka who, after her graduation, tries to find a job and become independent from the social institutions she has lived in her entire life. Written by nixonaRead More »

Quote:
A paranoid police procedural, a perverse parable about the corrupting elements of power, and a candidate for the greatest predated Patriot Act movie ever, Elio Petri’s stunning thriller makes no attempt to hide the culprit behind the film’s grisly murder: It wants you to know that Gian Maria Volonté’s dapper killer is responsible for the beautiful corpse splayed out on those black silk bedsheets. The shocks here are (a) that the spaghetti-Western stalwart isn’t wearing a cowboy hat for once, and (b) that Volonté is not just the criminal, he’s also the homicide detective heading up the investigation. Deliberately hiding some clues while planting others in plain sight—bloody footprints, a strand of his tie purposefully inserted under her fingernails—the rising-up-the-precinct-ladder cop plays a game of cat-versus-other-dumber-cats, all while ordering copious wiretaps and amassing blackmail fodder against radical agitators. Is he toying with his fellow officers to demonstrate his sociopathic superiority? Or is he trying to take down a rotten system from the inside, debunking the notion that any citizen is above suspicion?Read More »

Quote:
A sympathetic, emotionally persuasive drama describing the friendship of four World War II veterans, their sudden reunion after 25 years and the subsequent effect of this occasion upon their thoughts and evaluations of the past and present. In a way, The Byelorussian Station is reminiscent of the poignant, realistic look at the returned soldier remembered in Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives. In this film, however, the sentiments are leavened by reminiscence and a touch of remorse, and the spectator must be prepared for a deeply moving cinematic adventure. Read More »

A collaboration from popular Israeli composers and rockers Arik Einstein and Shalom Hanoch, this film is a campy, offbeat romp along the lines of the Beatles’ films. Part musical, part mockumentary, the film centers on the making of a great rock album titled “Shablool.” Einstein and Hanoch star in multiple roles in their cinematic creation, which reflects the energy of Israel’s popular music scene in the 1960s. The great Uri Zohar also appears in the film’s highlight as a yiddish speaking nutcase vagabond/karate teacher.Read More »

Quote:
Moonbeam Swyner, the pig keeper’s curvaceous daughter, is patiently waiting for her Prince Charming. But, in the meantime, the uninhibited redhead is bent on putting her charms to good use, driving the local boys crazy. However, everything is about to change, when Moonbeam has a chance encounter with a travelling perfume and lingerie salesman, who takes a fancy to the unwed country girl, of course, behind the backs of Mr and Mrs Swyner. Could he be the One?Read More »

A short story about an encounter at a hotel restaurant.Read More »