1980s

A fictionalized account in four chapters of the life of the celebrated Japanese writer Yukio Mishima.Read More »

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A story of the society that dominated 19th-century Cuba, a society divided between whites, blacks, and those who were mixed, the mulattos. (Since the Spanish conquistadors killed off the Indian population in Cuba not long after they took over the island, there are no mestizos, or those of mixed-Indian blood in Cuba as in other Caribbean nations.) At any rate, the drama about the life and loves of Cecilia, a Cuban girl of mixed race takes place against the backdrop of graphically violent mistreatment of slaves and the rumors of a slave rebellion after the Cubans hear of slaves turning against their captors in Haiti. Raised by her mother and grandmother as a courtesan within the ruling white establishment, pale-skinned Cecilia soon catches the eye of estate owner’s son Leonardo.Read More »

Filmed in his studio in 1988, in front of Benoît Jacquot’s camera, the painter Robert Motherwell, then aged 73, retraces the main creative stages of his work and describes very precisely his way of working: the importance of the choice of brush , of the support, of the paint used, the accidents which occur and which determine the work… He engages in a discourse on art in the serene atmosphere of his studio in Greenwich. He describes the principles of psychic automatism and comments on the different periods of his work to which dozens of retrospectives, including one in Paris in 1977, have been devoted throughout the world. A rigorous portrait that reveals the painter with his doubts and convictions.Read More »

“Umi no uta” takes place in a rural Japanese fishing village, where the inhabitants perform ancient ceremonies by which they prey for the spirits of old boats set to burn.Read More »

letterboxd:
The psychosexual drama Yoji, What’s Wrong With You? examines the identity of women as mothers in Japanese culture, through an Oedipal narrative of a skewed “family romance.” When Yoji announces to his mother that he wants her to meet a new girlfriend, the mother’s jealousy destroys the relationship. Idemitsu’s signature device of using a television monitor within the domestic space works as a powerful metaphor for the ubiquity of the mother in Yoji’s psychological life. Idemitsu’s melodramas always articulate a double-edged irony: With no identity outside of her maternal role, Yoji’s mother fastens onto her son, ultimately destroying him. Yoji himself is seen as emotionally stunted, unable to leave his mother or experience love for any other womanRead More »

letterboxd:
HIDEO, It’s Me, Mama is a psychological melodrama that introduces narrative and structural devices that are integral to Idemitsu’s work. Exploring the flawed universe of the contemporary Japanese family, she focuses on a woman’s identity as mother through mother-child and husband-wife relationships. Hideo, a young man living away from his parents, is kept under constant surveillance by his doting mother via an omnipresent television monitor. In a cogent metaphor for familial relations in the media-saturated culture of contemporary Japan, Mama can only communicate with her beloved, absent son through the video screen. Idemitsu’s poignant irony is embodied in the scene in which Mama, blind to her husband’s needs, caresses Hideo’s video image. (Electronic Arts Intermix) Read More »

Synopsis:
When an entire generation embraces the concepts and sentiments a writer expresses
in a novel, that’s the clear sign of a masterpiece. Jo Se Hee’s 1976 short novel
A Ball Shot by a Midget was born in a period when the government actively censored
popular culture. The themes presented in the novel, such as the conditions of labor
workers and their movement in the 70s, made such an impression at the time that the
student movement of the 80s used this text as a sort of manifesto.Read More »

A team of astronauts land on an inhabitable planet and form a society. Many years later, a single astronaut is sent to the planet and becomes a messiah.Read More »

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Juliana is a thirteen-year-old girl who runs away from home to get away from her stepfather’s abuse. On the streets, she must face the struggle to survive. She soon discovers the marginalization girls face when trying to get street work and decides to cut her hair and disguise herself as a boy. She joins a group of boys who sing in Lima’s microbuses, protected and exploited at the same time by a crook. Juliana’s rebellious nature and her feminine strength lead her to head a child revolution.Read More »