1970s

  • Eduardo de Gregorio – La mémoire courte AKA Short Memory (1979)

    1971-1980Eduardo de GregorioFrancePoliticsThriller

    In this thriller, a UNESCO translator stumbles across a group which is hiding and supporting Nazis and facilitating their travel around the world. She had been given an assignment to study the work of a writer who recently had died, and the conspiracy is revealed in materials he left behind. She comes upon a young man who is going through the writer’s papers, and she immediately assumes he must be one of the conspirators. However, he soon convinces her of his innocence in that regard, and the two together begin a search for the ringleader.Read More »

  • Rainer Erler – Operation Ganymed (1977)

    1971-1980DramaGermanyRainer ErlerSci-Fi

    In the year 1991 five astronauts (three Americans, one European, one Russian) return to Earth from a presumably failed space expedition to the Jupiter moon Ganymed. Nobody expects their arrival any more and their radio signals remain unheard. They are landing far off civilization, in a vast desert. On their way through the rough landscape they don’t encounter any signs of life, just abandoned buildings and a plane wreck. Suspicious among them grows. Is mankind extinct after a nuclear war? Tension increases. When one of the Americans kills the Russian (because only Russians could have started a World War), the group slowly begins to fall apart.Read More »

  • João César Monteiro – Que Farei com Esta Espada? AKA What Will I Do with This Sword? (1975)

    Documentary1971-1980João César MonteiroPortugal

    Part of the Portuguese militant cinema made on the 70s. The title of this documentary (What Will I Do with This Sword?) is a call to anti-imperialist struggle and to the union of the working class.Read More »

  • Daniel Schmid – La Paloma (1974)

    1971-1980ArthouseDaniel SchmidDramaSwitzerland

    Quote:
    When you play with clichés, you have to be very careful that they don’t backfire; the little things have a way of maiming almost everything around them.

    Daniel Schmid’s “La Paloma” — which was shown last night and to be repeated tonight at the New York Film Festival — is intentionally crammed with cultural chestnuts, and also makes a heavy pass at the plots of “Camille” and “La Traviata.” Kitsch and camp collide in this storm of pity and terror and wonder, which seethes with boundless love, burning glances, and unfathomable revenge.Read More »

  • João César Monteiro – Fragmentos de um Filme-Esmola: A Sagrada Família AKA Fragments of an Alms-Film (1972)

    1971-1980ArthouseCultJoão César MonteiroPortugal

    Quote:
    On his first feature, Monteiro analyzes a family: the relationships between father and daughter, husband and wife, and also the relationship between the head of the family and his wife’s parents. The pressure to build a standard family, results in an ominosity transmitted through texts by, among others, James Joyce and André Breton.Read More »

  • Jean Rollin – Les raisins de la mort AKA The Grapes of Death (1978)

    1971-1980CultFranceHorrorJean Rollin

    The misadventures of young Elizabeth journeying through the French countryside by train. Her companion falls prey to a bloodthirsty zombie, while she barely escapes with her life and dodges an undead shambler with a penchant for bashing his head against car windshields. She finds shelter in a nearby farmhouse inhabited by a man and wife, but alas her safety is short-lived when the farmer takes a pitchfork to his spouse on the kitchen table. Apparently their consumption of wine for the local vineyards is to blame, and soon the countryside is filled with the anguished, half-conscious victims of the grapes contaminated by chemical exposure. With the aid of two die hard beer drinkers, Elizabeth fights back against the growing zombie population during a long night of unrelenting terror.Read More »

  • Anthony Simmons – Black Joy (1977)

    1971-1980Anthony SimmonsComedyUnited Kingdom

    Based on Jamal Ali’s acclaimed stage play Dark Days and Light Nights, Black Joy tells the story of a naïve Guyanese immigrant who learns the hard way about life on the streets of Brixton. Presenting vivid characters, terrific action, and a superb soundtrack of soul, funk, dub and reggae, Anthony Simmons’ gritty film is an honest and insightful comic drama, exposing the lives of unemployed black Britons and immigrants in a ghettoised London.Read More »

  • Roberto Rossellini – Beaubourg, centre d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou (1977)

    1971-1980DocumentaryFranceRoberto Rossellini

    Rossellini 77
    Last images from Roberto Rossellini filming the Centre Georges Pompidou,
    February-March-April-May 1977.

    Following the steps of Roberto Rossellini on day to day basis, making the film “LE CENTRE GEORGE POMPIDOU” we could not know the issue of his last encounter with the cinéma.

    10 Hours of 16 mm coulour film, 30 hours of sound recordings… More than 2500 slides were produced as he wished :
    “to represent things as they are and stay on the field of the honesty”.
    Unique experience… 30 years after…
    From this story, as promised… a film is being born.Read More »

  • Suzan Pitt – Asparagus (1979)

    USA1971-1980AnimationExperimentalSuzan Pitt

    An an animated candy colored nightmare from indie artist Suzan Pitt.Read More »

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