It is French Colonial Vietnam in 1929. A young French girl from a family that is having some monetary difficulties is returning to boarding school. She is alone on public transportation when she catches the eye of a wealthy Chinese businessman. He offers her a ride into town in the back of his chauffeured sedan, and sparks fly. Can the torrid affair that ensues between them overcome the class restrictions and social mores of that time? Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Maugerite Duras.Read More »
Quote: In conurbations where hundreds of thousands live alongside one another, in the era of a highly technological society, in which communication has never played such a significant role, man has become lonely. Disappointed by his fellow human beings, he turns to animals. Dogs and other domestic animals serve him as companions, life partners, cuddly objects and bedfellows.Read More »
Quote: Director Lee Kwangmo took 10 years to complete Spring in My Hometown, a movie dealing with the Korean War period. The main plot is the life of a boy named Sungmin and his view of adults trying to continue life with what is remains after the Korean War. Rather than dealing with the historic facts of the Korean War itself, this movie depicts the emotions of the post-war generation during that time. Thus, the movie views the historic tragedy in a very contemplative, nostalgic way. The movie’s beautiful images explain why those days that everyone remembers as miserable, were in fact beautiful. Rather than a memory of the Korean War, Spring in My Hometown indirectly reflects the war through the memories of the post-war generation. Other Korean War movies opt to directly show painful experiences and suffering associated with the bloody conflict; in contrast, Spring in My Hometown shows the emotional side of this painful period through the filter of experience that is in the past. In that sense, this movie deals with history yet is not historic because the experience of the Korean War and its aftermath is still an ongoing situation. (Korean Film Archive)Read More »
Independent filmmaker Nina Hedenius Det speglar i mitt öga [My Eye Is Reflecting] is a poetic film on the act of seeing and on the details that rarely gets our attention. The film is a collage of diverse scenes depicting life, death, objects and people; a Swedish crayfish party, a classroom, cows in the meadow, the Stockholm subway… With musical effects by Ralph Lundsten.Read More »
The third and final collaboration between Marco Bellocchio and controversial pyschotherapist Massimo Faggioli following Il Diavolo in Corpo (1986) and La Condanna (1991). Despite being selected as an official entry in Cannes, some award nominations (which it won for its cinematography) and admiration in a few quarters, the film was condemned by the majoriry of critics who lamented Bellocchio’s talents being wasted by the pretentious Faggioli. Usually considered Bellocchio’s worst film, Il Sogno della Farfalla is undeniably well made and does contain some haunting imagery. Read More »
Synopsis The book EL SIGLO DEL VIENTO, the third part of a trilogy about the history of Latin America, is not a traditional historical work. The Uruguayan writer and journalist Eduardo Galeano (1940) was even exiled for a long time to prevent his headstrong and critical style from becoming too famous. His style, which combines dry facts about the exploitation, the oppression and the violence in South America with individual anecdotes and literary creativity, is preserved in the documentary that Fernando Birri adapted from the book. In ‘chapters‘, each dealing with a certain period in the history of this century, an image is created of a continent that is constantly afflicted by setbacks and misery. Read More »
Plot: Aging Cuban musicians whose talents had been virtually forgotten following Castro’s takeover of Cuba, are brought out of retirement by Ry Cooder, who travelled to Havana in order to bring the musicians together, resulting in triumphant performances of extraordinary music, and resurrecting the musicians’ careers.Read More »
The story tells of a travelling saleslady who gets a younger rival from her boss and is doomed to be mobbed out. However the new girl soon discovers that she also is only a plaything for the boss and after a rough start the two women come together and play a bit Thelma and Louise …Read More »
Petra professionally works as a thief abroad to finance the studies of her younger sister Franziska in Germany. When she returns, she realizes that her sister has a secret, too.Read More »
