1990s

Synopsis:
Adapted by Nichola Bruce from the acclaimed photographic novel by Timothy O’Grady and Steve Pyke. I Could Read the Sky is a haunting and lyrical film about identity, love, loss, and the isolation and loneliness of the immigrant. Dermot Healy movingly portrays a man reflecting upon his life, from his rural upbringing on the West Coast of Ireland to his journey to London and experiences in the vividly modern metropolis. Driven by a dynamic music soundtrack that draws from both environments, the film is a labyrinthine, visually extraordinary journey into the textures, fragments, details and layers of one man’s life and memories.Read More »

In Ostkreuz (1991), Michael Klier tells the episodic story of 15-year-old Elfie, who literally and metaphorically inhabits a no-man’s-land between the two Germanys during the Wende, and deploys a neorealist aesthetic to reinforce the difficulties confronting the girl, and by inference, Germany. (Filmgalerie 451)Read More »

Quote:
Gesualdo was a nutcase, but a brilliant one. His madrigals are among the most moving moments in music history. You will walk away from this film realizing all of the above. While using what appears to be actual employees at the various sites of Gesualdo’s life, we are given a tour of his physical life and his music. There are performance excerpts from his madrigals. There is a learned professorial type giving us a biography of his life.Read More »

Quote:
Jag Mandir is a quiet and often overlooked film in the vast oeuvre of Werner Herzog. Apparently, 20 hours of footage was shot that covered the whole fest and the film hardly presents us a twentieth of that. A native walking into the film in between may well fail to immediately realize that it is his country that is being shown and these are figures from the mythology of various sections of his nation. You might take if for a scene from a procession in Thailand or a sketch from festival from Africa or even a snapshot from the gala celebrations in Brazil. Such is the diversity it presents that it reminds us of those clichés about Indian culture.Read More »

Quote:
Set in the year 1950, Pablo Neruda, the famous Chilean poet, is exiled to a small island in Italy for political reasons. His wife accompanies him. On the island, a local, Mario Ruoppolo, is dissatisfied with being a fisherman, like his father. Mario looks for other work and is hired as a temporary postman, with Neruda as his only customer. He uses his bicycle to hand deliver Neruda’s mail. Though poorly educated, the postman eventually befriends Neruda and becomes further influenced by Neruda’s political views and poetry.Read More »

Sukezo, a farmer manga comic artist, takes up the art rock business by setting up a shop in a shed by the river. He tries hard to be successful, but business does not go well and the family becomes progressively poorer.
Based on the Manga by Yoshiharu Tsuge.Read More »

Roy Chen Chih-Lai is a sick rapist/serial killer with a leg fetish, and cuts off his victims’ legs as trophies after he’s through with them. One day at a bank robbery shootout, he catches police woman Cheng Hsuen on camera, and chooses her to be his next victim. He begins to stalk her and enter her personal life, even waiting for her inside her home. He notices her sister, Kelly, as well (who is also a cop), and her boyfriend, Ken. After he kidnaps and rapes Kelly, Cheng decides to lure the madman by using herself as bait, and bring justice to the situation.Read More »

Face To Face With The Past (Part 2):
Alan Berliner’s “Nobody’s Business”
by Andrew J. Horton (from Kinoeye)

Intrigued by his family’s Central European past, Alan Berliner turned the camera on his father to find out more. Nobody’s Business (USA, 1996) is Berliner’s witty account of the uphill struggle which followed. You might have thought that interviewing your father would be a relatively easy thing for a documentarist to do. You obviously don’t have a father like Alan Berliner’s. Tetchy and cantankerous, Oscar Berliner has little understanding for his son’s project – and this is the joy of the film.Read More »

To earn money for married life, a young engaged man takes a job as an engineer on a privately operated oil drilling rig in the far North of Russia. A friend’s letter brings the sad news that his fiancée has already married someone else and in desperation he quits his job and flies back to Moscow. There all his vast efforts to win her back seem in vain…Read More »