1990s

An early Garrone documentary in 3 episodes: “Silhouette”, “Euglen & Gertian” and “Self Service”.
In three plainly told segments, the bleak lives of Third World immigrants are examined as they try to establish themselves in their new home in Italy. In true neorealistic style, the stars themselves are immigrants reenacting real-life situations. The first segment examines the activities and circumstances of three Nigerian prostitutes; the second segment looks at the life of an Albanian boy laborer, and the third, of an Egyptian gas-station attendant.Read More »

Dariya the maid getting a boy to touch her large breast is just one incident that occurs when Yohan and Victor infiltrate two families, forcing young Liza and blind Ekaterina to appear in porn, but they are not so innocent themselves.Read More »

Continuing the Setouchi trilogy — which began with 1984’s MacArthur’s Children — this film looks at Japan just after World War II. The film opens with documentary footage of the 1995 Hanshin earthquake that flattened Kobe. The devastation reminds an elderly Keita Onda of the ruined landscape of Kobe just after the Allied bombing raids, which he witnessed from his home on nearby Awajishima Island. Cut to 1945, when Keita’s father, Kokichi (Kyozo Nagatsuka), receives the ashes of his eldest son who died on the battlefield. A rigid traditionalist, Kokichi decides to follow custom and return the ashes to his son’s birthplace in Kyushu. He hires out a car — a lavish expense that has the neighbors’ tongues wagging about a possible mass suicide. Instead, the family — consisting of the father, the mother Fuji (played by Shinoda’s wife, Shima Iwashita), Keita (Hideyuki Kasahara), daughter Hideko (Sayuri Kawachi), and teenaged son Koji (Jun Toba) — end up on a ferry bound for the south of Japan. Koji and his father are locked in a battle of wills. While dad preaches the value of tradition, Koji is much more interested in all things American. As the film progresses, Koji falls for a beautiful war-orphan named Yukiko (Hinano Yoshikawa). Also featured in this film are side stories about other passengers on the boat, including a sweet-talking black marketer who enlightens Kokichi on the joys of foreign liquor, a drug-addled soldier who falls in love with an impoverished woman about to turn tricks just to eat, and a dapper middle-aged man who jumps from the boat.Read More »

A semi-literate who was deprived of schooling during the Cultural Revolution, Li Huiquan, is released from labor camp. But his attempts to make good are continually thwarted. His street stall selling clothes puts him on the fringe of the black market, and he soon gets lured back into his old neighbourhood gangs. His disenchanted comrades include a nightclub chanteuse as well as an escaped convict. (IMDb)Read More »

Synopsis
Documentary film on the memories of four children from Eisenhüttenstadt who were all born at the same time the Berlin wall was built.

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1991 stellte der DEFA-Autor Thomas Heise seinen Dokumentarfilm ‘Eisenzeit’ vor, der vier Jugendliche aus Eisenhüttenstadt porträtiert. Der Film zeigt quälend und schmerzlich, wie sie an den Schwierigkeiten mit Staat, Gesellschaft und Familie zerbrachen. Schon 1981 wurde die Idee zum Film geboren, konnte aber aus politischen Gründen nicht umgesetzt werden. Erst zehn Jahre später zeigte der Film die selbstzerstörerische Flucht dieser selbstdenkenden Jugendlichen in Drogen und Selbstmord.Read More »

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A documentary focused on the modern-day village of Innisfree, the location used by legendary director John Ford for his Irish romance The Quiet ManRead More »

From the book “Brazilian Cinema” – Edited by Randal Johnson and Robert Stam:
“The Third Bank of the River” is a coproduction (French and Brazilian) and, like the Guerra film, it too ingeniously interweaves diverses stories by its source author. Beginning with the story that provides the title for the film – the virtually wordless drama of a man who abandons his family to live on a boat in the middle of the river – Nelson Pereira dos Santos integrates four other stories. Liojorge (Ilya São Paulo) the son (in Nelson’s re-creation) of the enigmatic boatman of the first story, follows an enchanted cow and thus becomes the protagonist of another story (“Seqüência”) in which the cow leads him to the most beautiful woman in the world (Sonja Saurin).Read More »

A Lebanese photographer living in Brazil in the ’30s manages to film the band of Lampião, a legendary Brazilian bandit.Read More »

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Comedy is certainly not the first thing that comes to mind when we think of Japanese cinema. But a few more films like Koki Mitani’s hilarious screwball farce “Welcome Back, Mr. McDonald” could change all that.

This movie is ostensibly a goofy comedy about a live radio drama that goes haywire after the imperious diva playing the lead insists on certain last-minute changes. Her demands set in motion a desperate chain of events that transform a sudsy romantic drama set in a Japanese fishing village into a ludicrous action-adventure fantasy set in the United States.Read More »