In “The Soviet Elegy” the long train of photos of the Soviet leaders, dead or alive, stops at the portrait of Yeltsin. At the time of shooting Yeltsin had fallen down from the assembly of the Communist Party deities, and participated in the earthly life through connections of different kinds.Read More »
Tallinn, Estonia, days before the outbreak of World War II. A hotel detective and a Polish writer team up to find Tear of the Prince of Darkness, a legendary ring which can bring Satan’s rule over the world.Read More »
In 1960s China, French diplomat Rene Gallimard falls in love with an opera singer, Song Liling – but Song is not at all who Gallimard thinks.
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René Gallimard, an accountant at the French Embassy in China circa 1967, is invited to a party at the Swedish Embassy where he sees a performance of highlights from Puccini’s opera, Madama Butterfly, performed by a Chinese ensemble led by the stunning star of the Beijing opera, Song Liling. René tells the beautiful chanteuse that he was captivated by her performance as the Japanese woman who kills herself when she is abandoned by her lover, a United States Naval officer. Song counters that it comes as no surprise that he likes it since the submissive Oriental woman is a typical Western male fantasy. Read More »
Does India have a national cinema? Does it, indeed, require one? Mrinal Sen is not quite sure. Yet, his latest celluloid essay, And the Show Goes On, a British Film Institute-funded tribute to the world’s largest movie industry in cinema’s centenary year, is quite polemically categorical about what India’s filmic output should be.
But can it ever be what it ideally ought to be? Again, Sen, as is his wont, is not forth coming with a clear answer. His prescription, however, is rather unambiguous: cinema should confront social realities, no matter how harsh; it cannot continue being as cavalierly escapist as it is in India and yet expect to be taken seriously on the global stage. As film director and critic Chidananda Dasgupta says on camera: “India lives too much by myth and too little by fact”. That, for Sen, is where the problem begins. And ends.Read More »
Four female cons who have formed a band in prison get a chance to play at a police ball outside the walls. They take the chance to escape. Being on the run from the law they even make it to sell their music and become famous outlaws.
The film stars Katja Riemann, Jasmin Tabatabai, Nicolette Krebitz and Jutta Hoffmann. Both the film and soundtrack album were commercially successful in Germany, but Bandits grossed less than $25,000 in the United States. Much of the soundtrack was written and performed by the actresses themselves. The soundtrack reached number one in the German album charts.Read More »
Sai Moon-Kin (Tsui) is a rich man who lives with his concubines and his son and a daughter named Yiau (Loletta Lee), who is raised like a boy and is ignorant of the ways of love. Because her brother is mentally retarded, Yiau wants to be her father’s heir but feels that she needs to go to school for the required education. Her desire to attend school leads her to a love affair with a lustful young scholar (Ken Lok). Only after she is equipped by a protective chastity belt, does her father let Yiau go to school, guised in drag.Read More »
Quiet and reserved kindergarten teacher Juli (Marta Angyal) and awkward coal miner Tamas (David Janosi) meet during the summer in a small coal-mining town. This French-Hungarian film, part of the Vu Par series, details the problems of their romance, leading to the fateful events experienced by the young couple on the evening of December 31,1999.Read More »
From IMDB:
Nounours is the nickname of a “cousin” an informer with a special arrangement with the police: he gets 10% of the drugs seized thanks to his help. When his personal contact, inspector Maurin, commits suicide, inspector Gérard Delvaux takes over. Meanwhile, judge Lambert is uncovering the illegal practices of the policemen. Her persistent investigations, which had cornered Maurin, are leading to Gérard, and also to Nounours as the source of heroin that led to recent cases of deadly overdoses. Nounours promises Gérard increasingly bigger catches which he is intent on realising before he is forced to reveal who Nounours is to judge Lambert. Written by Eduardo CasaisRead More »
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Nineteen-year-old Ari confronts both his sexuality and his Greek family. Ari despises his once-beloved parents, former radical activists, for having entombed themselves in insular tradition. Ari is obsessed with gay sex, although he does make an unenthusiastic attempt to satisfy the sister of one of his best friends. While all of this is going on, he’s facing problems with his traditional Greek parents, who have no clue about his sexual activities.Read More »