1970s

In 1968, Peace Corps veteran David Schickele enlisted his friend Paul Eyam Nzie Okpokam to star in a light-hearted comedy about the adventures of a young Nigerian intellectual in San Francisco. Using a docu-fictional style reminiscent of Cassavetes’ Shadows, the film observes the foibles of late 1960s African-American culture with an outsider’s incisive eye. The result is a vibrant snapshot of the nation’s racial politics, from interracial romance to cross-cultural misunderstandings and countercultural joy. The film morphs into a documentary when the director’s voice abruptly intrudes to narrate its star’s enraging fate: Okpokam was accused of a crime he did not commit and was thrown in prison before being expelled from the country.Read More »

Another beautiful comedy with Cleo Kretschmer & Wolfgang Fierek!

Inge, Drogistin in einer bayerischen Kleinstadt, hat ihr Herz an den Kraftfahrzeugmechaniker Hub verloren, ohne dass dieser auch nur im Entferntesten davon etwas ahnt. Inge will fürs erste auch gar nicht, dass Hub erfährt, wie es um sie steht. Nichts soll ihn ablenken von dem großen Ziel, dass er und ihr Bruder Wolfgang – Kraftfahrzeugmechaniker wie Hub – mit Verbissenheit und Energie verfolgen: den Bau einer Rennmaschine, um an einem Moto-Cross-Rennen teilnehmen zu können. Inge möchte einen Helden lieben, und so tut sie alles dafür, dass der Traum der Jungen in Erfüllung geht. Freilich kränkt es sie, dass der motorradbesessene Hub überhaupt keine Notiz von ihr nimmt. Read More »

Susumu Hani’s six-year-old daughter Mio plays an orphaned Japanese girl who, for some reason, ends up in Sardinia. She starts going to school, quickly learns Italian, and befriends a boy named Raphael. One of Hani’s stranger concepts for a film, made enjoyable by the great naturalistic acting that’s found in most of his work.Read More »

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King Hu while revered for a number of unique films in the 1960’s was outside the HK studio system by the 1970’s and only produced three films in that decade. In 1979 his made two “Mountain” films concurrently. This one being a ghost story in the tradition of Japanese ghosts films like Ugetsu or Black Cat from the Grove.Read More »

Synopsis:
Gorgeous young French tourist Martine gets arrested while on vacation in Italy. After being found guilty of a trumped-up drug possession charge, Martine finds herself incarcerated at a hellish women’s penitentiary where the inmates are subjected to mental and physical torture by the staff and fellow felons alike. Things are compounded in severity when a riot breaks out in the prison.Read More »

In precolonial Senegal, members of the Ceddo (or “outsiders”) kidnap Princess Dior Yacine (Tabata Ndiaye) after her father, the king, pledges loyalty to an ascendant Islamic faction that plans to convert the entire clan to its faith. Attempts to recapture her fail, provoking further division and eventual war between the animistic Ceddo and the fundamentalist Muslims, with Christian missionaries and slave traders from Europe also playing a role in the conflict. Banned in Senegal upon its release, Ceddo is an ambitious, multilayered epic that explores the combustible tensions among ancient tradition, religious colonization, political expediency, and individual freedom.Read More »

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From Venice to Illiers, a journey into the memory of Proust.

Made for French television on the occasion of Marcel Proust’s centenary.

Guy Gilles’ film freely intersperses documentary language with fiction, embodied in the figure of a visitor in search of the places and faces that Proust loved, from the Illiers-Combray of his childhood to the longed-for Venice that he never got to know.

With the participation of Patrick Jouané, Céleste Albaret, Pierre Larcher
and the voice of Emmanuelle Riva

Collaboration: Jean-Pierre Desfosse, Philippe Rousselot, Gérard Alary, Denise Baby, Prosper Seban.

ORTF production
, Roger Stéphane (broadcast June 17, 1971)Read More »

Fighting for liberty, love, and your secret teenage lover are the themes of Confessions of a Congressman and our protagonist Roberto Orbea is a leader and follower of the ideals of his radical leftist opposition party, but he’s hiding a secret from the party and his wife Carmen: he can’t resist the cheap beautiful street teenagers that bad-boy Nes throws his way for various pleasures. Eventually the fascists find out about his proclivities and hire the blonde and angelic-looking Juanito to infiltrate Roberto’s life. But after a while Juanito starts to find his place with Roberto, with politics, and even with Carmen. With the elections fast approaching all three members of this strange throuple will have to decide how much they’re willing to lose to avoid revealing the truth.Read More »

Synopsis:
Berthold Maschkara, 36, has lost the job he would have liked to keep. Even a severance package of 30,000 marks doesn’t make him happy. When he looks for a new job, he meets Thomas, who lives in the apartment hotel next door. Thomas is ten years younger and spent seven years as an air traffic controller in the German army. During his civilian service, he needs his high school diploma, which he now wants to catch up on. He, too, has 30,000 marks at his disposal, which is his replacement for his service with the federal government. Both are in the same situation. They have to start all over again. A little start-up capital could make their future easier. But they go different ways, which cross from time to time… The film tells what they experience in the next two weeks, how they lose their money and still keep going, two outsiders who have to realize that they can’t live outside society either.Read More »