1990s

In 1996, filmmaker Tatsuya Mori received permission to tape the inside activities of Japan’s religious cult Aum Shinrikyo—the enigmatic group that released sarin gas into Tokyo’s subway system in 1995. Focusing on the group’s bumbling, confused spokesperson Araki Hiroshi, Mori caught much more than the cult’s daily life with his camera. He captured the media frenzy that engulfed the group, the vicious tactics of undercover cops against cult members, and the anger of local residents who wanted to evict the cult from their community. Looking for more than a simple depiction of this controversial group, Mori exposes and examines the contradictions in Japanese society that would produce such a cult and then feed on it. This edgy, provocative documentary created a heated debate in Japan, where the cult still resides under a different name.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Tomiko is a conductor in a rural bus driven by the handsome Niitaka. Tomiko had received a letter from her best friend Tsuyako, a conductor in another bus company, just after Tsuyako was killed in a bus accident. Tsuyako wrote that she felt that her fiance and driver, Niitaka, planned to kill her. Tomiko therefore plans to take revenge on Niitaka. However Tomiko falls in love with Niitaka, even though she also suspects him of being the Tokyo bus driver serial killer, who killed his female conductors after tiring of them.’
– Will GilbertRead More »

Synopsis:
Uomini, anni, vita (People, Years, Life) is an allegorical film about the subservience of the people of the Caucasus (both Christian and Muslim alike) in general and Armenians in particular by the Soviet State. Mother Russia even makes on appearance in the beginning of the film in the form of a Saint, with all the Caucasian peoples being made to bow down to her.Read More »

Iskander, a gentle Uzbek man, is convinced by a Russian friend to give an impromptu speech praising the Communist Revolution. Impressed by his eloquence, the Soviets make Iskander a spokesman – a precarious position in a turbulent time.Read More »

Synopsis:
In 1996, Marcello Mastroianni talks about life as an actor. It’s an anecdotal and philosophical memoir, moving from topic to topic, fully conscious of a man ^Óof a certain age^Ô looking back. He tells stories about Fellini and De Sica’s direction, of using irony in performances, of constantly working (an actor tries to find himself in characters). He’s diffident about prizes, celebrates Rome and Paris, salutes Naples and its people. He answers the question, why make bad films; recalls his father and grandfather, carpenters, his mother, deaf in her old age, and his brother, a film editor; he’s modest about his looks. In repose, time’s swift passage holds Mastroianni inward gaze.Read More »

Quote:
Set in ’50s Spain, a young man (Sanz) leaves the army and looks for a job so he and his fiancée (Verdu) can get married. He rents a room from a widow (Abril), and shortly begins a torrid affair with her. The fiancée figures it out and decides to win him back by offering herself to him and taking him to meet her family. Ultimately he has to make a decision. Based on a true story.Read More »

Quote:
VAN GOGH deals with the last three months of the painter’s life. It was shot in Auvers-sur-Oise, a small village 30 kilometres outside Paris where Van Gogh actually spent the last three months of his life (May-July 1890). He had just spent a year at the asylum in Saint Remy and although still suffering from depression he was in better health. His three months in Auvers-sur-Oise was a time of great creative activity. He painted a canvas every day spent in Auvers and some of his greatest masterpieces.Read More »

Quote:
When I heard that Aki Kaurismaki was making a silent black-and-white feature, I expected something arch and postmodernist. Yet in spite of a few flashes of mordant humor, some wonderfully spare sound effects, and a few minimalist lighting schemes that suggest 50s Hollywood, this 1999 film is a moving pastiche whose strength is its sincerity and authenticity. A fallen-woman story set in the present, featuring a farm couple and an evil playboy from the city who lures the wife away, it conveys the sort of purity and innocence associated with silent cinema storytelling, including a love of nature and animals, a taste for stark melodrama, and an emotional directness in the acting–evocative at various times of Griffith in the teens and Murnau in the 20s.Read More »

Personal photos are interspersed with fragmentary drawings and flashes of colour, observed and/or remembered everyday events – all of which add to a general sense of reminiscence. Sometimes a hand appears (Breer’s own) on top of a photo, reminding us that the photo is but an object in the film, not the film itself.Read More »