1990s

Mustafaa is a high school philosophy teacher whose life is turned upside down when the landlord decides to raise his rent. When he fails to pay the new rent, he moves to a cheap dilapidated room on the roof of the building, which had been abandoned after being occupied for many years by a black magician. Mostafaa begins his own journey with black magic when he falsely claims an ability to communicate with spirits and demons, and becomes rich and famous working as a fortune teller. However, getting arrested as a charlatan puts his ‘magic powers’ to the ultimate test. Directed by Ali Abd Elkhaik and starring the well known Egyptian actor Ahmed Zaki.Read More »

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“1871” is a visually sumptuous, multi-layered treatment of the Paris Commune which was selected for the “Un Certain Regard” section of the 1990 Cannes festival.Read More »

It is July 1st of 1997, and Hong Kong is bright in celebration. The United Kingdom handover of Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China leaves Ga Yin, and his fellow soldiers without work. Which leads them to find employment and money any way they can get it. Without much success, Ga Yin decides to join his brother Ga Suen in the triad gang world.Read More »

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Allison is a “square” good girl who has decided she wants to be bad and falls hard for Cry-Baby Walker, a Greaser (or “Drape” in John Waters parlance). Spoofing Elvis movies and Juvenile Delinquency scare films of the ’50s, this movie follows the adventures of Cry-Baby who, though he is sent to juvie, is determined to cross class (and taste) boundaries to get Allison back.Read More »

Synopsis:
Andreas is a car thief. The cars he steals he turns over to people with whom he has minimal relations. His only friends are a prostitute who helps him in his jobs and a fisherman with whom he once did time in jail. One day he has a chance encounter with Ismini who lures him into a dangerous game.

U-turn was screened in the “Greek Film Noir” section of the 48th Thessaloniki International Festival.Read More »

Review by James Berardinelli:
“If you turn on the evening news these days, one of the first images you’re likely to see will originate from the devastated former Yugoslavia, where centuries-old hatreds have boiled over to ignite a scenario of unspeakable horror. Yet the sights of Bosnia, presented by TV as gruesomely tantalizing tidbits of violence and death, rarely provoke a reaction from the casual viewer. That’s how it has always been with television news programs, however — their coverage of any event, designed for those with limited attention spans, is superficial in the extreme. It’s nearly impossible to generate any strong feeling for a situation, no matter how cruel or inhumane it is, when all you get is a quick series of MTV-like clips.Read More »

Looks very interesting, some of Bitomsky’s classic techniques dollying through spaces, stop pans and quite a lot of movement with the camera. Among other structures looks at a housing complex, several houses, a library, a school and a concert hall designed by Scharoun.Read More »

Tina is a young warehousewoman in a supermarket. She is in love with Fred but still lives at her mother Nadine’s. When Nadine dies, Tina looks for meeting her father Ludovic, who she never knew. But she first meets her half-sister Lise, and Constantin, the unusual Ludovic’s lawyer.Read More »

Criterion wrote:
A celebration of cinema’s centennial, One Hundred and One Nights finds Agnès Varda at her most playful. It is also perhaps her unlikeliest project: a star-studded comic fantasy with an extravagant sense of style and an adoring but slightly off-kilter perspective on the magic of filmmaking. French New Wave icon Michel Simon is a mysterious aging impresario named Simon Cinéma who has hired a young film student, Camille (Julie Gayet), to simply sit with him at his mansion and talk about movies. Skeptical yet increasingly enchanted, Camille bears witness to cinema itself coming to life, allowing Varda to wittily integrate a mind-boggling parade of appearances by screen legends (Catherine Deneuve, Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anouk Aimée, Robert De Niro, and many others), and attest to the vigorous health of the movies at the close of the twentieth century.Read More »