2000s

  • Pascale Ferran – Lady Chatterley (2006)

    2001-2010BelgiumDramaPascale Ferran

    A French adaptation of the second (and much less well-known) version of D.H. Lawrence’s erotic tale.

    Sir Clifford has returned from the Great War to his estate near Sheffield, paralyzed from the waist down. Lady Constance, his young wife, cares for him, but she’s lifeless, enervated. Her physician prescribes the open air, and she finds a quiet retreat at the hut – the workplace – of Parkin, the estate’s gamekeeper. The rhythms of nature awaken Connie – daffodils, pheasant chicks – and soon she and Parkin become lovers. She’s now radiant. Parkin, too, opens up. Class distinctions and gender roles may be barriers to the affair becoming more. Connie’s trip to France, with her father and sister, bring the lovers to a nuanced resolution.Read More »

  • Francisco Rodríguez Fernández – 90 millas (2005)

    2001-2010DramaFrancisco Rodríguez FernándezSpain

    imdb:
    An emotive story that touches the heart! A Cuban family leaves the island on a homemade rubber dingy and decides to bravely cross the dangerous stretch from Cuba to Florida in search of freedom. This is a beautiful illustration of a family’s struggle to survive with the support of each other! Una pelicula emotiva que llega al corazon! Una familia Cubana decide escaparse de la isla en una balsa casera y cruzar el estrecho peligroso entre Cuba y la Florida en nombre de la libertad. Esta historia es un ejemplo maravilloso de la lucha para sobrevivir apoyado por el amor de una familia.Read More »

  • Katy Chevigny & Kirsten Johnson – Deadline (2004)

    2001-2010DocumentaryKaty ChevignyKirsten JohnsonUSA

    Quote:
    In 2002, a group of young students at Northwestern University discover an abnormal number of flaws (confessions extracted under torture, false testimony, etc.) in trials having led to death sentences in Illinois. 13 prisoners on death row are then acquitted after their cases are reviewed. The Republican governor George Ryan, a former supporter of the death penalty, finds himself facing a dilemma a few months before leaving office: ignore this report, or fight to extensively reform the system while making an enemy of his political party. To make his decision, he orders hearings for pleas for mercy for the more than 160 prisoners who are sentenced to death in this state. Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson film these hearings and interview convicts and capital punishment legal experts. By highlighting the flaws of a profoundly racist, sexist and classist judiciary system, Deadline dares to put its finger on the irreconcilable divergences regarding the death penalty, combined here in the figure of a governor holding the power of life or death.Read More »

  • Semih Kaplanoglu – Herkes Kendi Evinde AKA Away From Home (2001)

    2001-2010DramaSemih KaplanogluTurkey

    Plot
    After several years of numbly mourning his parents death, 26 year old Selim (Cevik) takes a chance on the US lottery for passports and wins. He decides to sell the family olive grove to raise enough money to live in Manhattan and to break all roots to Turkey, leaving his girlfriend behind. When Selim’s aged grand uncle, Nasuhi (Keskin) returns from Russia after 58 years he asks Selim to visit with him the olive grove of his youth. Before they depart, Nasuhi finds a beaten Russian girl, Olga (Bielska) who was robbed when she tried to sell herself to raise money to continue her own search for her sea faring father. The three of them visit the olive grove and still standing farmhouse, which Nasuhi immediately starts to repair. Upset with his grand uncles enthusiasm Selim quickly finds a developer who buys the olive grove and reluctantly takes title to the farmhouse as well.Read More »

  • Various – Forbidden Movies from the Brothels of Paris (2004)

    2001-2010EroticaFranceSilentVarious

    Description
    This anthology of eroticism from the 1920’s features a collection of vignettes that were shown in the projection rooms of famous Parisian bordellos such as the Chabanais, the Panier Fleuri, the Sphinx and the Temple of Venus.

    If you’re familiar with Cult Epics’ Vintage Erotica series, you get an idea of what it’s all about. However, contrary to what we could see in the middle of the century—see anno 1950—where the films were making a slight effort at developing exposition, here the settings are as basic as possible, usually limited to a bed where one to three protagonists are experimenting with various positions and toys. This is as pornographic as smut can be and the faded black and white look gives it a creepier look, at the exception of one segment where the contrast is so high it becomes almost—unintentionally—artistic.Read More »

  • Massoud Bakhshi – Tehran Anar Nadarad AKA Tehran Has No More Pomegranates! (2007)

    Massoud Bakhshi2001-2010DocumentaryExperimentalIran

    Tehran is a large village near the city of Rey, full of gardens and fruit trees.  Its inhabitants live in anthill-like underground holes.  The village’s several districts are constantly at war.  Tehranis’ main occupations are theft and crime, though the king pretends they are subject to him.  They grow excellent fruits, notably an excellent pomegranate, which is found only in Tehran.
    – Asar-o-Lblab, 1241 A.D
    Tehran Has No More Pomegranates! is a postmodern documentary that is as witty and engaging as it is informative.  The style of the film is fun and very visual, with the director, Massoud Bakhshi, using incredible archival footage, an original visual approach and terrific soundtrack that takes us through 150 years of Tehran’s history. Onscreen, Bakhshi may fail to complete his film, but he succeeds in both documenting Tehran’s history and entertaining us with its poignant contradictions.Read More »

  • Various – Vintage Erotica Anno 1920 (2006)

    2001-2010EroticaFranceMax van NordenQueer Cinema(s)Silent

    Cult Epics presents all nineteen shorts contained in this collection in their original aspect ratios. The shorts where originally filmed on 8mm, 9.5mm and 16mm film stock. The quality of each short varies with nicks, scratches, fading and various other print damage cropping up through out. The quality of these shorts is about on par with most silent films from this era that have been released on DVD. What I find most amazing of all is that these shorts have even survived through the years as these films range from seventy five to eighty five years old so print damage is expected. These shorts are without any spoken dialog. Each one is accompanied by music which sounds clean and free of any major sound defects. The French titles cards for these silent shorts have not been translated so no subtitles have been included for this release. Read More »

  • Andrew Lau – Bat sei ching mai AKA Bullets of Love (2001)

    Andrew Lau2001-2010ActionDramaHong Kong

    Sam, a Hong Kong cop, has busted crime lord Night. Ann, Sam’s girlfriend, is the prosecuting witness. Night is jailed for five years. On a trip to Paris, Ann is killed by an assassin. Sam quits the force and two years later, runs a bar on Lamma Island with his uncles. One day, a Japanese tourist who looks exactly like Ann arrives. Sam and the lady soon fall in love. However, that love is shortened when she holds a dark past and after a successful appeal, Night is back and out for revenge.Read More »

  • Delphine Gleize – Carnages (2002)

    2001-2010ArthouseDelphine GleizeDramaFrance

    Quote:
    After a bull is killed in a bullfight, its body parts are transported across Spain, France, Italy and Belgium. The bull’s parts fall into the wide variety of people, including: an Italian actress selling the bones in a supermarket promotion, a Spanish woman who dines on its steaks, a little girl in France who imagines a world where animals are much larger than humans, and a taxidermist whose wife is simultaneously giving birth to quintuplets.Read More »

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