1990s

Double Happiness (1994). Jade is a twenty-something Chinese-Canadian struggling actress. But she is caught between two worlds — traditional and modern — and this is affecting important aspects of her life, from the men she dates to how she fares at auditions. In terms of men, Jade reluctantly satisfies her parents’ old world standards by letting them choose her dates, and even letting them decide how she’ll look when she goes out. But on the sly, Jade’s modern attitudes are reflected in the motorcycle jackets she wears, and her involvement in an interracial relationship. Meanwhile, on auditions, Jade would prefer to play non-“Asian“ characters, but nonetheless finds herself being typecast at every turn. How will Jade rectify the dichotomies that are affecting her life — without losing her family?Read More »

Marc is in love with Lucien, who’s in love with Suzanne, who’s in love with someone else.

L’amour à l’état brut, avec ses perles et ses cailloux, ses imperfections et ses éclats de vie. Sandrine Bonnaire superbe d’émotion et de vérité.Read More »

Quote:
A decade after he broke through with Breaker Morant, Australian director Bruce Beresford made another acclaimed film about the effects of colonialism on the individual. In a performance that earned him the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear for best actor, Maynard Eziashi plays the title character, a Nigerian villager eager to work as a civil servant for the British authorities, including a sympathetic district officer (Pierce Brosnan), in the hope that it will benefit him in the future. Instead, his ambition leads to his tragic downfall. Mister Johnson, based on the 1939 novel by Joyce Cary, is a graceful, heartfelt drama about the limits of idealism, affectingly acted and handsomely shot.Read More »

Plot
A Hong Kong variation on Robin Hood. The corrupt officials of a Chinese village are continually robbed by a masked bandit know as “Iron Monkey” named after a benevolent deity. When all else fails, the Govenor forces a traveling physician (Donnie Yen) into finding the bandit. The arrival of an evil Shaolin monk, brings the Physician and Iron Monkey together to battle the corrupt government.Read More »

The painter Picasso awakes from the dead, steals one of his paintings from a psychiatrist’s and his wife’s kitchen and wanders through Munich, where he meets the psychiatrist’s patient, Takla Bash, and falls in love with her. Ignoring that she is actually his daughter he plans a phenomenal love affair including a film about a blue cow. This surreal film includes many of director/writer/star Herbert Achternbusch’s own paintings.Read More »

Quote:
This short film is only thirteen minutes long, but it is a razor-sharp depiction of civilization pushing out Europe’s last wilderness in Northern Sweden. The white man is hunting ptarmigan, enormous exer-tions are being expended, watercourses are running dry and forests are being devastated. Thirteen minutes about a world in change. But un-fortunately not for the better.
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From Wikipedia:
The Wedding Maidens (Chinese: 出嫁女; pinyin: Chūjià nǚ) is a 1990 Chinese drama film directed by Wang Jin. It was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival where it won the Special Silver St. George.Read More »

Quote:
The Italian filmmaker Paolo Benvenuti is little known outside of Italy, although several recent festival retrospectives have begun opening the world’s eyes to this iconoclastic director. His 1992 work Confortorio is set during one long night in 1736 Rome, as a group of Catholic high priests attempts to “convert” two Jewish thieves who have been sentenced to death. “Every death has to be comforted; every soul has to be saved,” says one priest; the two stubborn thieves, however, have other plans for their (after)lives, even as their “saviors” move from religious fervor to torture.Read More »

Quote:
Since weeks it’s cold and wet. It’s already late, Karl Winter is on his way home. Under dark circumstances he accidentally meets a woman of mysterious fascination – Martha… And so begins a love story of fatal dynamics which throws Karl far off the tracks of reason. Wicked dreams and subliminal changes in Karl’s surroundings confirm his feelings that with Martha the uncanniness has also entered his life.Read More »