1980s

Synopsis
1859-60 in the Savoy Alps. Joseph (Richard Berry) is a young Savoyard peasant who has been established in a village with his wife and two children for some time, and like others before him, makes a living by crossing the Alps into Italy in the winter months and selling his wares to the villagers. This story traces a winter’s itinerary as the man encounters various adventures in his always-dangerous journey, but he seems oblivious to all the nuances and reverberations of social change going on around him. When he finally returns to his family after many months away, he discovers to his surprise that his village is now a part of France and it looks like a Savoyard would soon be sitting on the throne of a unified Italy…Read More »

Julie, a young coloured women from Rose Hill on the Island of Mauritius, arrives in Switzerland to marry Marcel whom she has only seen on a photograph. But the marriage is a failure. Julie who feels totally lost is looked after by Jean who has fallen in love with her. From now on she lives in the home of Jean’s grand-mother, who is called Jeanne. She is an old, handicapped lady and Julie waits on her. Julie becomes pregnant…Read More »

Documentary on post-Nouvelle Vague directors with Benoît Jacquot, André Téchiné, Jacques Doillon, Chantal Akerman, Werner Schroeter, Juliette Berto, Leos Carax and footage of Jean Eustache.
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Quote:
David (David Schachter), a naive graduate student, has volunteered to work as a ‘buddy’ for people dying of AIDS. Assigned to the intensely political Robert (Geoff Edholm), a lifelong activist whose friends and family have abandoned him following his diagnosis, the two men, each with notably different world views, soon discover common bonds, as David’s inner activist awakens and Robert’s need for emotional release is fulfilled.Read More »

Quote:
Those looking for examples of the importance of Sogo Ishii in the development of Japanese cinema, and his abilities as a filmmaker, need to look no further than Burst City. At first sight a rather eclectic mix of Mad Max-style imagery with yakuza elements, filtered though a punk sensibility, on closer inspection Burst City reveals the seeds of many of the developments in contemporary Japanese cinema and beyond. It foreshadows everything from the works of Shinya Tsukamoto and Takashi Miike to two decades’ worth of MTV music videos. And quite a few things in between.Read More »

In “Mixwix”, a department store owner high above the rooftops of Munich reflects on the extent to which his current life, which mainly revolves around underpants and socks, makes sense.

He has long been the king of underpants and socks. He even has the largest selection of underpants ever. Mr. Mixwix is a department store owner and so successful with his underpants and socks that something new has to come, something that stimulates him again, lets him continue. Tennis clothing, for example! Or maybe not? While Mr. Mixwix, quiet as Buddha, sits high above the rooftops of Munich and waits for the building permit for the extension of his department store for tennis clothing, he ponders whether he is on the right track with tennis clothing, or whether he is on the right track at all, and what the right track is in the first place. This immersion in Far Eastern life wisdom, the questioning of his own existence as a big capitalist and of capitalism itself, lead Mr. Mixwix to all sorts of philosophical and peculiar games of thought, but also to statements such as: “How can one be as inspirited by one’s own stupidity as the Bavarian people”.Read More »

Young man is sucked into an unnamed religious cult by beautiful girl and gets increasingly under the mind control of the cult leader. After his parents fail in their efforts to talk him out of it, they hire a guy who kidnaps and then de-programsRead More »

Quote:
One of the highlights of this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, it’s already apparent, is a retrospective of the work of Dominik Graf, a genre specialist mostly unknown outside his natve Germany, who has worked in both film and TV, specialising mainly in crime dramas. The program also includes other German crime TV shows selected by Graf to contextualise his work (including Sam Fuller’s Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street and uber-rare work by Czech emigre Zbynek Brynych, best known otherwise for The Fifth Horseman is Fear).Read More »

PLOT:
Vivian Stanshall’s priceless film of exquisite lunacy is is a work of absurd genius. The labyrinthine plot sees Sir Henry, a mad aristocratic war veteran, attempt to exorcise the trouserless ghost of his dead brother, Humbert, whom he accidentally killed in a drunken duck-shooting accident. This is aided, or hindered, by his mad family and servants including the tapeworm-obsessed Mrs. E; Old Scrotum; the eternally knitting Aunt Florrie; the Lady Philippa of Stains, a turkey-legged old soak. With German POW’s in the garden, a mechanical bulldog, a horse in the billiards room and a marriage bed furnished with a barbed-wire divide, the mayhem of Rawlinson End is endless…
-Vivian StanshallRead More »