1990s

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An Iranian man drives his truck in search of someone who will quietly bury him under a cherry tree after he commits suicide.Read More »

Minimal in budget as well as in style, form, and content – the entire production is said to have cost a mere $10,000 – this black-and-white 16 millimeter tragicomedy was shot by two UCLA film students chiefly on and around their own campus. Both filmmakers play themselves in the movie, as do all the other characters; the slender plot is a literal restaging of events that actually happened, with everyone re-creating his or her original role. A single subject – Zahedi’s unrequited love for, or infatuation with, Erin McKim over the space of what appears to be two or three months – is the focus of practically every scene and shot.Read More »

In Kærlighedens Smerte (Pain of Love) by the Danish veteran director Nils Malmros we follow the life of a young woman with a childish innocence and great impulsiveness called Kirsten. Kirsten grows up in a middle class home with sympathetic bourgeois parents. We watch Kirsten as she experiences her first innocent relationship with a rather immature boy, as she starts to lust after and date older men, as she experiences failures, as she breaks down mentally, …Read More »

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In That Land is a rare journey into a world which in many respects has not changed in a hundred years. Its territory is a small village in the north of Russia, a region which for better or worse has been largely overlooked by the probing eyes of the modern world. The film centres around three main characters who come to signify the essence of the Russian soul. Chapurin is the village’s team-leader who takes care of the people, yet will betray them for the right price. A shepherd, Skuridin, feels the weight of a difficult family life and harsh political realities on his shoulders. Lastly there is Zaika, a talented soul wasting his life on alcohol. Facing an unforgiving landscape, they embrace life and death in ways unique to their circumstances, universal in spirit.Read More »

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A vagabond swordsman is aided by a beautiful ninja girl and a crafty spy in confronting a demonic clan of killers – with a ghost from his past as their leader – who are bent on overthrowing the Tokugawa Shogunate.Read More »

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A woman’s terribly dull life is upended by a one-night stand pregnancy, causing her to seek retribution.Read More »

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From a bird’s point of view atop a 13th century church, the human world seems alien and weirdly self-absorbed. People ride bikes, jog, attend weddings and churches and make an elaborate ritual out of tending and grooming a loved one’s grave.

That’s the way it looks, anyhow, in “Kestrel’s Eye,” a Swedish film that offers a genuine bird’s-eye view of the world. Directed by nature-film veteran Mikael Kristersson, “Kestrel’s Eye” was made over 2 1/2 years, during which Kristersson filmed a family of kestrels (European falcons) in the church steeple they had made their home.Read More »

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A minimalist deadpan comedy involving drifting characters and objects, this film focuses on Silvia Prieto, a rather unexceptional young woman who on her 27th birthday resolves to make some changes in her life — changes that bring out a few eccentricities. When she discovers that there are other women who share her name, she develops a bizarre obsession with the “other” Silvia Prieto, an obsession that involves unraveling the riddle of her own identity. Silvia Prieto is a meditation on what it means, or doesn’t mean, to be yourself. —Anthology Film ArchivesRead More »

Postmen in the Mountains (Chinese: 那山那人那狗; pinyin: Nàshān nàrén nàgǒu; literally “That Mountain, That Man, That Dog”) was a 1999 Chinese film directed by Huo Jianqi. A personal film, Postmen in the Mountains tells the story of an old man (Ten Rujun) who for years served as the postmen for rural mountain communities. On the eve of his retirement, he again sets off to deliver the mail, but this time brings his son (Liu Ye). Together, they deliver mail into the rural heart of China and in the process the son learns from the mails’ recipients more about his father.Read More »