1980s

Quote:
Four days spent in a studio working on a centerfold photo for Playboy magazine provided the subject matter for my film. The magazine itself deals with culture, cars, a certain lifestyle. Maybe all those trappings are only there to cover up the naked woman. Maybe it’s like with a paper-doll. The naked woman in the middle is a sun around which a system revolves: of culture, of business, of living! (It’s impossible to either look or film into the sun.) One can well imagine that the people creating such a picture, the gravity of which is supposed to hold all that, perform their task with as much care, seriousness, a responsibility as if they were splitting uranium.Read More »

Synopsis :
Australia is about Edouard Pierson, a Belgian-born wool dealer who emigrated to Australia after World War Two. The movie actual takes place in Belgium as he returns to his homeland to assist his family with their wool business. Edouard was left a single father after his girlfriend died and when he goes to Belgium he leaves behind this young girl, whom his family don’t know about. He meets a beautiful woman, Jeanne, another single parent, and an intense relationship develops. Edouard’s relationship with his family has its ups and downs and many secrets are revealed before the movie’s conclusion ties everything together.Read More »

Intergirl is a film adaptation of the eponymous book by Vladimir Kunin, set in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in the time of “perestroika” during the 1980s. Tatyana is a beautiful Russian nurse who is underpaid at her hospital job, so she turns a prostitute catering to international tourists. She becomes well paid in dollars, and helps her ailing mother to survive. Tatyana’s international clients enlighten her about the life in other countries, so she accepts a marriage in order to escape from the grim Soviet reality. But even being married to a decent man abroad, she still suffers from being labeled as an ex-Soviet prostitute, and her new life is full of new troubles.Read More »

Synopsis:
A young woman is forced to marry an older man who runs a roadhouse saloon. She is constantly being raped by her husband, a drunken loutish brute. She harbors a young man wanted by the police in a murder case, and soon the fugitive and the young wife have a torrid affair as she continues to hide him from the authorities.Read More »

Quote:
A very unusual, quietly intense experience, the film’s beating heart is Myriam Mézières, who co-wrote the script and is in every scene. Never afraid to appear ridiculous, she gives her all to the role, whilst Tanner (with whom she had a relationship) coolly observes from a distance through the soft, hazy grain of 16mm. The film unfolds in a dreamlike manner as the protagonist Mercedes slides from passionate, sensitive actress towards an increasingly fragile and needy state, suffering from a hunger that can only be satiated by pure, ceaseless love.Read More »

Quote:
An ageing writer Paul is determined to make a film but he cannot decide on the subject or location. Instead, he chooses to concentrate his efforts on finding the actress who will star in the film, believing that she will define the lead character and content of the film. He recruits a young man, Jean, to try to find an Italian actress, Dara, whom he has lost sight of. Jean finds Dara in a small Italian town, serving in a modest restaurant, but she refuses to return to acting…Read More »

Quote:
In a small town, Roy Seeley and his girlfriend Mandy Pullman are camping by the lake. Out of the blue, they are attacked and Roy is murdered while Mandy is violently raped. Dr. Sam Cordell is impressed with the violence and realizes that Mandy has had the uterus ruptured. Then the librarian Carolyn Davies is also violently raped and murdered. Lieutenant Drivas believes that the women have been raped by a gang while Sam and Sheriff Hank Walden believe that only one man did. The snoopy reporter Laura Kincaid is always interfering with the investigation and Sam has a love affair with her. Meanwhile the young Tim Galen, who dates Sam’s daughter Jenny Cordell, discloses that he has premonitory visions of the deaths, but his grandmother Agatha Galen tries to convince him that he has nothing to do with the murders. But when Jenny learns about his dreams, she summons her father, Laura and they discover a supernatural secret about the Galen’s family.Read More »

Review from Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide by Ronald Bergan and Robyn Karney:
Three generations of a family – grandfather, father, grandson – are obsessed with swimming. This passion destroys the first two, while the middle-aged surviving member tries to keep it at bay.
Made in Georgia, this is an original piece of work, constructed as a film within a film, and shot asdistinct segments intercut with the activities of the crew which is supposed to be making it. Grandfather’s tale is photographed in sepia, intriguingly beautiful and lyrical; son’s episode is black and white, and redolent with the atmosphere of the postwar Stalinist period; grandson’s story takes place on the contemporary film set and is in colour. There is little dialogue, voice-over commentary being largely used, and it is difficult to appreciate why the film’s release was withheld for a few years. An interesting, often absorbing curiosity, that falls apart in the third segment.Read More »

Al and Elsa have been a couple for some time, but the chances that their relationship will be long-lived are few. For one thing, Al is appallingly dependent on Elsa for his every emotional need. For another, Elsa is an incredibly elusive person, extremely difficult to pin down about anything – especially whatever is bothering her. How they have managed to survive this long is a cause for wonder. When Al gets an opportunity to be cast in a movie role, complete with no-cost occupancy in the casting agent’s ugly but fashionable apartment, he jumps at the chance to provide a little material satisfaction for his beloved Elsa. But what exactly does she want?Read More »