Bandh Darwaza is the Indian version of Dracula. A childless woman visits the lair of an evil magician in order that she may conceive. When she gives birth to a baby girl the magician demands that she hand her over. She refuses and has the magician killed. Years later he is revived as a fully fledged member of the undead. He comes looking for the now teenage girl intending to make her his slave.Read More »
Synopsis by Matthew Tobey
Amid the bloody tumult of Communist dictator Ceausescu in 1989 Romania, a hedonistic and morally sidetracked physician, Daniel Pavenic (Michael Gambon), attempts to hold his annual dinner for 12 of his closest friends. Only three such friends are willing to brave the dangerous war-torn streets to go to Pavenic’s mansion, where they find themselves investigating the shocking, debauched relationship between their host and a once-beautiful house servant. The more the guests learn about the twisted relationship, the more they find themselves re-entangled in their own dark memories. The book upon which this drama is based, The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini, by Stephen Dobyns, was set in Chile.Read More »
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The enigmatically titled Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatjana [Pidä huivista kiinni, Tatjana] is Kaurismäki’s take on the road movie. It represents something of a contradiction for non-Finnish viewers, being one of the director’s most accessible films but also one whose subtleties are unlikely to be fully understood by a foreign audience, and I’m including myself in that sweeping suggestion.Read More »
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A little nachtmusick, a deep blue overture to the series. Breathing in the cool night airs, breathing out a children’s song; then whispering a prayer for a night of easeful sleep.Read More »
An uptight and conservative woman, working on tenure as a literacy professor at a large urban university, finds herself strangely attracted to a free-spirited, liberal woman whom works at a local carnival which comes to town.Read More »
Synopsis by Mark Deming
A man discovers that his fantasies and his real life are beginning to look a lot alike in this drama. Richard (Jim Metzler) is battling cancer of the spinal column, and while it’s currently in remission, the disease has left his body in sad shape; Richard is tired, anxious, depressed, and confined to a wheelchair, and while his sister Peep (Kay Lenz) is helping to care for him, Richard is convinced that she’s more interested in making a claim on his estate than protecting his well being. Richard’s friend Duncan (John Ritter), a frequent visitor, is an aficionado of New Age healing and pain-management techniques, and he teaches Richard how to hypnotize himself, willing his mind into a dream state when his discomfort is too much to bear.Read More »
Reprise is a three-hour documentary about a legendary and anonymous short film, The Resumption of Work at the Wonder Mills, shot in 1968 by two film students in front of the Wonder factory in Saint-Ouen: as employees return to work a woman appears in the crowd, rebels and refuses to return to the factory. This mysterious rebel is the pretext and the subject of this film. Le Roux investigates this pasionaria. He tries to find her by meeting former workers, activists and trade unionists. The opportunity for the filmmaker to unfold a piece of history buried, to give voice to workers who had never been able to tell their experience, explain their working conditions, express their nostalgia mixed with suffering.Read More »
La falaise is the first short film by Faouzi Bensaïdi, a Moroccan director who has continued, after this first success already showing his special leg, with Trajet and Le mur , then feature films, including A Thousand Months , noticed at Cannes, and the last one. date, Volubilis . This film, in theaters at the moment, reveals, like La falaise , the director’s interest and concern for his country, for his pains and his peculiarities. In both works, there is an important social dimension and an exacerbated dramatic sense.Read More »
Thomas and Alfred were born around the same time; a fire in the nursery had nurses scrambling to save the newborns. Because he felt that he deserved Alfred’s good fortune at being born into a wealthy family, Thomas conceives the idea that he and Alfred were switched at birth, and he can’t help seeing that his unhappiness should be Alfred’s, from the loss of his sister to his inability to have a relationship with the woman Evelyne. So, as his life is ending, he formulates a plan of revenge against his bitter enemy, his lifetime adversary, the man who stole his existence.Read More »