1990s

On 9 January 1836, Pierre Lacenaire goes to the guillotine, a murderer and a thief. He gives Allard, a police inspector, his life story, written while awaiting execution. He also asks Allard to care for Hermine, a lass to whom he has been guardian for more than ten years. In flashbacks, from the prison as Lacenaire writes, from Allard’s study as he and Hermine read, and from other readers’ memory after the book is published, we see Lacenaire’s childhood as he stands up to bullies, including priests, his youthful thieving, his first murder, his brief army career, his seduction of a princess, and his affair with Avril, a young man who dies beside him.Read More »

This rich documentary follows the legendary Senagalese filmmaker Sembene Ousmane from the Pan African Film Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso back to the streets of Dakar and his Galle Ceddo home at Yoff, overlooking the sea. Revisiting several locations of his films, Sembene Ousmane reminisces about his career and discusses his craft.Read More »

Synopsis
Pierre et Lou sont séparés. Lui sur le point de se remarier mais y renonçant à la mairie. Lou travaille sur un film présentant les statues de Mars et Vénus au Louvre. Pierre et Lou sortent ensemble quelquefois le soir. Mais tandis qu’il papillonne d’une femme à une autre, Lou se lie à Théo, le conservateur du musée, détesté par Pierre. Lou participe aussi à l’action d’une association luttant pour les personnes traversant des difficultés morales. Lou termine son court-métrage qui est projeté.Read More »

Wakamatsu’s rare mainstream action film shot in Australia. There’s still plenty of sex and radical politics, along with a lot of explosions.Read More »

Quote:
Fascinating and rich with wry humor, Exile Shanghai is an extraordinary cultural odyssey that affectionately conjures up the lost Jewish world of Shanghai. In the dark days of the 1930s, the Chinese metropolis was the last refuge for Europe’s persecuted Jews—a place that did not demand a visa. Those who managed to find refuge there brought with them the social and gastronomic delights of Vienna and Berlin. Ottinger’s four-and-a-half-hour mosaic features interviews with former members of the Shanghai expatriate Jewish community (many of whom relocated to Northern California), and her ever-curious camera cruises the city in search of its lost synagogues, schools, and salons.Read More »

The life of Jewish Expressionist poet and performance artist, Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945), told chronologically in vignettes given context by archival footage of turn-of-the-century Germany, World War I, and the ascent of the Third Reich. Her poetry often comprises the soundtrack. We see her in relation to men: her first husband, whom she leaves after her son is born; artists like Chagall and Franz Marc; an older muse and then a second husband; and, Gottfried Benn (1886 – 1956), physician and poet. Benn’s life is also chronicled: homosexual encounters, his attraction to Else and the Berlin scene, and his politics. Her poems addressed to him define this cultural moment.
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Synopsis:
The story follows 3 members of a mental asylum, Tsumiji, Coco and Satoru, as they escape from the asylum, and into the real world. On the way, they find a vicar, who changes their out-view on life, by giving them a bible. Tsumiji takes interest and starts believing in god, while Coco believes the world began when she was born. While they look around town, they must walk ontop of the fences and walls to avoid the floor. They read in the bible that the world will end on the 10th July, so they roam around town attempting to find the perfect place for a picnic with the best vantage point to view the final event.Read More »

IMDB review by: Claudio Carvalho from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
In the unified Germany, the aspirant of singer Anna (Maria Schrader) drives her old Russian car to a small town trying to get the job of singer in a bar. Meanwhile, the twenty years old Lisa (Anna Thalbach), who is disturbed with the suicide of her father, arrives in the same town. They meet each other by chance in a bank, where they begin a successful career of bank thieves. A nasty detective from the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in charge of the investigation starts a touch chase trying to catch them and destroy the empathy of the population for them.Read More »

from nytimes:
David Williams’ movie “Thirteen” belongs to a burgeoning genre that determinedly blurs the line between fiction and documentary filmmaking. Largely improvised, with no screenplay and featuring a cast that includes untrained actors as well as professionals, this portrait of a sullen, quirky 13-year-old black girl growing up in Richmond, Va., feels utterly real during much (though not all) of its 87 minutes.

Nina (Wilhamenia Dickens), the movie’s unsmiling central character, is a tomboyish adolescent who shortly after her 13th birthday becomes withdrawn and stops speaking. One day she simply disappears from the house where she lives with her salty, God-fearing mother, Lillian (Lillian Folley), who narrates the film. When Nina reappears several days later from an autumnal trek into the Virginia mountains, she is a bit less glum than before.Read More »