1980s

Quote:
The final film of “Elective Affinities”. A central element is a documentary film about paranoid conditions. Another is a flow of images of an apple tree in my back yard filmed impulsively, without forethought, the opposite of the static camera of FOG LINE. The radical breaking with the previous passivity of the camera has deep psychological dimensions. That was the first thing that led me to bring the paranoid material into the zone of the tree footage. The elements of sound and image are closely matched to each other, frame by frame. Inserted in them at the heart of the film are images of children, Kenneth and Louise, from an instructional documentary about the seasons. Cries of cattle being auctioned and sent to the stockyards are also inserted. Read More »

Abolfazl Jalili’s docudrama La Gale (Scabies) is about the painful lives of young offenders who are serving time in the reformatories of post-revolution Iran. Young Hamed, arrested for handing out political tracts banned by the Islamic Republic, finds himself in a place of great suffering, in which illiterate and penniless orphans wash floors and sell their own blood. When a disease breaks out in the prison, his life within this harsh environment becomes progressively worse, a near-daily fight for survival. The film is a searing indictment against a government that failed to deliver the on the promises with which it came to power: to deliver social justice to the oppressed and downtrodden. Initially released in the mid 1980s, at a time when Iran was at war with neighbouring Iraq, the film was an unwelcome edition to the Fajr Film Festival, as its theme of prison life was deemed critical of the Islamic Republic. In a re-edited version, the film was released in 1989 to critical acclaim.Read More »

Thugs sneak into Hong Kong to rob a jewellery store, killing a cop during their getaway. They plan another heist while hiding from the police hunting them down to avenge their slain comrade.Read More »

Quote:
A harrowing and even ironic story of the first large, well-educated generation that was born after the war. The film tells the story of psychiatrist and Assistant Chief Athletic, and his good friend, theater director Eigil. Both are now past their youth, when they were politically active on the left. Now both are well established in powerful positions in the community. Both Athletic and Eigil have broken marriages behind them. Both have children who do not live with them. Both are struggling to keep up a facade that constantly threatens to fracture.Read More »

Grenouilles (Frogs) is perhaps his strangest film. Anne Wiazemsky plays a beautiful Russian spy, Nora, who arrives on an island in the middle of the ocean, to avenge the betrayal of her lover, the artist Tibor. Other characters include a spy from UNESCO, a mysterious stranger who is plotting the end of the world, and a gang of thieves disguised as frogmen….Read More »

In the wake of China’s first democratic revolution, three beautiful, high-spirited young women from very different backgrounds cross paths in a common quest for liberation. Fateful circumstances find the three joining forces as they muster the courage and fortitude to become female warriors.Read More »

Synopsis
A father’s ex-girlfriend resurfaces after a 10-year absence wanting to take her son away from him. With his world shattered, he must decide between what is best for his son and his own future happiness.Read More »

Exerpts from the NY Times review December 11, 1981

To get quickly to the point, Four Friends is the best film yet made about the sixties, that harrowed time of war, prosperity, and broken promises, of turning on and dropping out to colors described as psychedelic, when establishment came to be written with a capital “E.”
Four Friends, directed by Arthur Penn and written by Steven Tesich, initially suggests a sort of big-budget The Return of the Secaucus Seven. It’s a film that embraces the looks, sounds, speech, and public events of the sixties, but not in the way of a documentary. It has the quality of legend, a fable remembered. Because Mr. Penn and Mr. Tesich see everything in terms of legend, even a tumultuously funny barroom brawl near the film’s end becomes not only a brawl but also a revivifying re-creation of all barroom brawls in all of the Western films the four friends grew up with.Read More »

In order to buy a horse, a man wanders in the bazaars of Thessaly. His journey will take him further than he imagines, as old prophets, forgotten witches and vampire princes will find himself on his way.Read More »