1970s

Synopsis:

Starting out as a fantasy mythological with the gods, entrenched in their fortress, deciding to create 100 jobs, the film becomes an exemplary fairy tale when 30,000 applicants start queuing up for work. The fairy tale then becomes a didactic tragedy with realist sequences (media men interviewing individuals in the crowd of applicants) when the people realise the job scheme is grossly inadequate and popular discontent grows into a desire to storm the citadel. Freely mixing different styles and modes of storytelling including direct address to the camera, with the chorus both as narrator and as political agitator (R. Ghosh, who also plays god and the sutradhara), Sen continues exploring the possibilities of a cinematic narrative that would be both enlightening and emotionally involving without descending into authoritarian sloganising. Having gone as far in this direction as he could, Sen deploys the lessons of his experiments with complex and stylistically diverse cinematic idioms in his next feature, Mrigaya (1976).Read More »

Synopsis (possible spoilers):
‘Adapted from Herman Melville’s short story, Bartleby features John McEnery in the title role. A secretive, solitary lad, Bartleby works as a clerk in the accounting office of Paul Scofield. Unable to deal with Bartleby’s eccentricities, Scofield fires the clerk. But Bartleby refuses to leave, and shows up each day for work at the proper time. Only when the young man is carted away to hospital does Scofield find any peace of mind-but even then, the spectre of Bartleby looms large over the proceedings. Some find this British adaptation of the Melville original exasperatingly slow and mannered, but given the curious nature of the protagonist, how could the story have been told otherwise?’
– Hal Erickson (allmovie)Read More »

Five Western girls are kidnapped by Chinese pirates and sold to a brothel. While they are being trained to become prostitutes, a couple of local citizens take mercy on them and plots their escape by teaching them kung-fu. The five scantily-clad girls, using their newfound martial arts skills then fight their way to freedom.Read More »

Quote:
In 1961, Noël is a French soldier in the Algerian war. His comrades, formerly opposed to the war, now oppress civilians, kill and torture. To stay faithful to his pacifist values, he will do something radical.Read More »

Leader of a traveling gypsy band from the steppes of Bessarabia (now Moldova), Toma Alistar is a skilled violinist whose fame takes him on tours around European capitals and royal courts. He remains obsessed with his first love, beautiful Leanca who was married elsewhere while Toma was traveling, and spends his life and fortune trying to find her. Written by Markku KuoppamäkiRead More »

The young actress Galai is hired by his friend and director Hamdias to interpret a film denouncing the torture of suspected terrorists during the war of Algeria. The woman, using audio recordings made during the torture, practices the worst violence on herself to make her own interpretation as realistic as possible, to confuse reality with fiction. Galai, as the character she plays, is a part, along with her lover, a subversive movement. In an attempt to rejoin Hamdias is forced to flee an exhausting marked by humiliation and betrayal that ends in an unpredictable finish.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Necchi (a bar owner), Perozzi (a journalist), Melandri (an architect) and Mascetti (a broken nobleman) live in Florence. They have been friends since their youngest years and spend every free moment together organizing complex and terrible jokes to all the people they meet, or just wandering around Tuscany. One of these crazy trips ends up in the hospital run by military-like Professor Sassaroli. Melandri falls in love with his wife, and steals her from the husband, much to the delight of Sassaroli himself. The relationship won’t last but the Professor becomes the fifth member of the team of friends, and jokes get even more complicated and powerful.’
– Alessio F. Bragadini
Read More »

“Screening Room was developed and hosted by filmmaker Robert Gardner, who at the time, was Director of Harvard’s Visual Arts Center and Chairman of its Visual and Environmental Studies Department. His own films include Dead Birds (1964), and Forest of Bliss (1986).

A major figure in the American experimental film movement of the 1960s and ‘70s and a widely published theorist, Hollis Frampton made such acclaimed and influential films as Zorns Lemma, the Hapax Legomena series, and the unfinished Magellan. Retrospectives of his work have been shown at the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Modern Art, and elsewhere.The journal October twice devoted whole issues to Frampton, and the entire body of his work is preserved in the Royal Film Archive of Belgium. Frampton taught at Cooper Union, Hunter College, and the State University of New York at Buffalo. In January 1977, Hollis Frampton appeared on Screening Room to discuss his work and screen Lemon, Pas De Trois, excerpts from Maxwell’s Demon, Surface Tension and Critical Mass, and footage from what ultimately became Magellan.” – DER websiteRead More »

SYNOPSIS
A fetishistic killer is on the loose, a madman in a balaclava who enjoys murdering young women (and occasionally men, if they happen to get in the way). When two university students drop dead, Jane (Suzy Kendall) and her three friends, Daniela (Tina Aumont), Katia (Angela Covello) and Ursula (Carla Brait), decide to high-tail it to a villa in the countryside until the whole thing blows over. Unbeknownst to them, however, the killer has decided to tag along and proceeds to stalk them before launching into a blood-thirsty orgy of death. It feels great to be a student!Read More »