1990s

Cremaster 4 adheres most closely to the project’s biological model. This penultimate episode describes the system’s onward rush toward descension despite its resistance to division. The logo for this chapter is the Manx triskelion – three identical armored legs revolving around a central axis. Set on the Isle of Man, the film absorbs the island’s folklore as well as its more recent incarnation as host to the Tourist Trophy motorcycle race. Myth and machine combine to narrate a story of candidacy, which involves a trial of the will articulated by a series of passages and transformations. The film comprises three main character zones. Read More »

Cremaster 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney’s abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1. Cremaster 2 embodies this regressive impulse through its looping narrative, moving from 1977, the year of Gary Gilmore’s execution, to 1893, when Harry Houdini, who may have been Gilmore’s grandfather, performed at the World’s Columbian Exposition. The film is structured around three interrelated themes – the landscape as witness, the story of Gilmore (played by Barney), and the life of bees—that metaphorically describe the potential of moving backward in order to escape one’s destiny.Read More »

Cremaster 1 is a musical revue performed on the blue Astroturf playing field of Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho – Barney’s hometown. Two Goodyear Blimps float above the arena like the airships that often transmit live sporting events via television broadcast. Four air hostesses tend to each blimp. The only sound is soft ambient music, which suggests the hum of the engines. In the middle of each cabin interior sits a white-clothed table, it’s top decorated with an abstract centerpiece sculpted from Vaseline and surrounded by clusters of grapes. In one blimp the grapes are green, in the other they are purple. Under both of these otherwise identical tables resides Goodyear (played by Marti Domination). Read More »

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Helke Sander interviews multiple German women who were raped in Berlin by Soviet soldiers in May 1945. Most women never spoke of their experience to anyone, due largely to the shame attached to rape in German culture at that time. She documents the pregnancies, abortions, illegitimate children that resulted, as well as the break down in family relationships, the stigmatization these women experienced, and mental and physical duress these women underwent at the time of the rapes and as treaties were passed between the German and Soviets that never mentioned reparations for the rapes.Read More »

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In this 20-minute film, Jean Marie-Straub, who was born in Metz, Lorraine, unfolds the changing history of his homeland, a country torn by different wars and states. Victories are defeats and vice versa, and the land is saturated with iron, coal and blood. “Lothringen!” (“Lorraine”) is Straub’s personal account of “How Green was my Valley”, a lesson in topographical land survey and history.Read More »

What happens if your husband is early retired? That is the master question of Germany’s famous actor, writer and director Vicco von Bülow’s comedy. He understands very well to show the audience the small things of life, that can be funny as well. Although nothing important or extraordinary happens in this movie, it is interesting for every minute. You won’t find simple jokes and gags (like in a Zucker movie) in this film, but you will be fascinated about the subtle sense of humor of Loriot. The only thing to criticise is the very poor quality of scenery and camerawork what seems to be an effect of the low budget of this film. But I would consider “Pappa ante portas” (a German-Latin play on words that means “Daddy in front of the door” and is an allusion to the Latin figure of speech “Hannibal ante portas”) as one of the ten funniest German movies in the history of German comedies.Read More »

The documentary is a very interesting and informative survey of Lichtenstein’s work, structured around interviews of various art critics along with continuous commentary by Lichtenstein himself.

Lichtenstein analyzes several of his most famous pieces and explains his artistic processes and development in detail. There is also fascinating footage of Lichtenstein working in his studio. Refreshingly, Chris Hunt does a good job in presenting the material in a very unbiased, objective way. The film appears to be part of a series of documentaries for a British TV channel.Read More »

After decades of work in Italy and Germany, Giuseppe is retired and returns to his family home in Istria. He is lonely and his mother advises him to get married. She hands him over his father’s uniform from the Austro-Hungarian army. Giuseppe sets off on a quest to find a wife in the “transitional East” hoping to be warmly welcomed. The road takes him to Budapest, Montenegro, Vojvodina. His plan is not so easily realised…Read More »

The consequences of a housewife smoking or not smoking a single cigarette branch out into a dozen separate destinies and parallel universes, each with its own conclusion, in these two French features by Alain Resnais. Adapted and translated from six of the eight comic plays comprising British playwright Alan Ayckbourn’s Intimate Exchanges, they can be seen alone or together, and in either order. The project, a tour de force for two actors playing multiple roles (Pierre Arditi and Sabine Azema), succeeded at the box office when released in France in 1993, and as a unit the two films swept the Cesars (French Oscars) for best picture, director, actor, and set design.Read More »