2000s

In an isolated village in Extremadura (Spain), the Jiménez and Fuentes families have a violent history of land disputes, jealousy, envy, and violence.Read More »

The mesmerizing, utterly unclassifiable science films of Jean Painlevé (1902-89) must be seen to be believed: delightful, surrealist-influenced dream works that are also serious science. The French filmmaker-scientist-inventor had a decades-spanning career in which he created hundreds of short films on subjects ranging from astronomy to pigeons to, most famously, such marine-life marvels as the sea horse and the sea urchin. This definitive three-disc Criterion collection brings together the best of these, and includes more than two hours of interviews with the filmmaker, drawn from the eight-part French television series Jean Painlevé Through His Films, directed by Denis Derrien and Hélène Hazera. Also included is The Sounds of Science, an original score by Yo La Tengo to Jean Painlevé’s films, plus an interview with the band.Read More »

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PHANTOM LOVE is a surreal, highly visual drama about an enmeshed family, in which violence and trauma are steadily percolating, just beneath the surface.

The lead character is LULU (Marina Shoif): a very beautiful, but angry and isolated woman, who lives alone, and works in a casino in Korea-town, Los Angeles. Lulu’s lover is much younger than herself-the relationship is charged but emotionally disconnected. Lulu’s younger sister, NITZAN (Juliette Marquis), is in the midst of a psychotic breakdown, caused in part by prescription medication. Lulu feels emotionally invaded by her mother, who wants to come to town and stay in Lulu’s apartment in order to try and help the younger sister-but this feels like a further intense invasion, and Lulu refuses.Read More »

“A collection of previously almost impossible to find early Psychic TV and Temple of Psychick Youth (TOPY) film and video creations unearthed from the archives of Porridge with Everything Inc. These include works by and/or featuring Derek Jarman,Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, Trojan, John Balance, Leigh Bowery, Cerith Wyn Evans, Marie Losier, Nicolas Jenkins, Mr. Sebastian, Hazel Hill, Lady Jaye P-Orridge and others.

DVD compiled and mastered by Hazel Hill. “Read More »

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Compline is a night devotion or prayer, the last of the canonical hours, the final act in a cycle. This film is also the last film I will be able to shoot in Kodachrome, a film stock I have shot since I was 10 years old. It is a loving duet with and a fond farewell to this noble emulsion.
–Nathaniel DorskyRead More »

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Antonio-Pedro Vasconcelos’ Os Imortais (The Immortals) ironically opens with a funeral. The last of the immortals is present among the crowd, the others having died or disappeared over the years. The man being buried, however, is the policeman who found out about the criminal secrets of the immortals. This is an intriguing start for a mediocre film, in which this tongue-in-cheek sort of cleverness is reserved for the opening scene only. The “immortals” are a group of Portuguese war veterans who earned their title in the colonial wars in Africa in the early 1970s. When Portuguese East Africa became Mozambique, they returned to their fatherland only to feel left out and misunderstood. Read More »

A tortured artist is stuck in an abusive relationship with a woman, whose torments (demonstrated through nightmarish scenes of disembowelment) are slowly driving him mad.Read More »

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Recording of the annual Christmas folklore street ritual Krampus in Austria, in which people dressed up as hairy monsters scare the wits out of the population. The accompanying metal soundtrack by The Melvins provides a curious American perspective.Read More »

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David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises” opens with a throat- slashing and a young woman collapsing in blood in a drugstore, and connects these events with a descent into an underground of Russians who have immigrated to London and brought their crime family with them. Like the Corleone family, but with a less wise and more fearsome patriarch, the Vory V Zakone family of the Russian mafia operates in the shadows of legitimate business — in this case, a popular restaurant.Read More »