2000s

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Poet Yusuf (35-38) returns to his childhood hometown, which he hadn’t visited for years, upon his mother’s death. He is faced with a neglected, crumbling house. Ayla, a young girl (17-19) awaits him there. Yusuf has been unaware of the existence of this distant relation who had been living with his mother for five years; He stays by his dead mother’s bedside for a while on the morning of his return. Ayla’s presence alleviates the emotions evoked by death to an extent. But how will Yusuf cope with the guilt that embraces him after the funeral? Will he manage to overcome it? The maternal household’s chattels, and everyday habits, the staid rhythm of the provinces and the spaces filled with ghosts&; The town he once had left to escape all this, re-enchants Yusuf. Yusuf finds out on the day he’s due to return to Istanbul that he is obliged to perform the sacrifice his mother had been prevented by death from fulfilling. Ayla pressures him.Read More »

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Young director Marko, after several unsuccessful attempts to shoot his first feature film, makes an acquaintance with a porn director Cane and starts making films with him, showing his anger towards the society he lives in. After the conflict with Cane he starts his own porn cabaret club in which the socio-political shows are frequently performed. He gathers porn stars around himself. Gay couple Johnny and Max, a transvestite Ceca, junkies Rade and Darinka and others. However, Cane’s brother who is a policeman interrupts a premiere, the press destroys them as well, and Marko decides he should leave Belgrade and have a tour around Serbia with his crew. Read More »

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How to approach Mladen Djordjevic’s first film, a documentary on the Balkan porn industry, in the wake of the current crop of transgressive cinema coming out Serbia? It is cheap and shoddy and experimental – pretty much a on-the-job-training-ground for the wonderful and excellent follow-up, The Life and Death of A Porno Gang which lifts the best and most interesting visuals and story elements to puts them in service of a vastly improved narrative and artistic framework. The eventual (hopefully soon) DVD release of latter by Synapse Films will have Made in Serbia included as a supplementary feature; and that is about right place for it. It is overreaching and unwieldy at times, but this 97 minute feature is not completely devoid of charms and insight.Read More »

A story that mixes fantasy, philosophy and everyday reality. The problem with Antoine Martin is that he only exists one day out of two. And it is from this circumstance so personal that he meets Clémentine, a girl who lives full time. All this will only deepen his anguish.Read More »

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In Hezké chvilky bez záruky (English title: Pleasant Moments), acclaimed director Věra Chytilová manages to make profound statements on the nature of humanity with such a striking concealment that most viewers won’t even notice them. It’s a continuation of her post-New Wave career; the surrealist masterpiece Daisies is often pointed to as her greatest achievement, but she continued to make equally important films under communist rule – they just had to be so subversive the censors wouldn’t even notice. One of my favorites is 1977’s Panelstory, the definitive story of life in a panelak (apartment complex) with biting political commentary so hidden that it makes it all the more worthwhile to discover. As a senatorial candidate from the political party Strana Rovnost Šancí, Chytilová no longer remains in obscurity. Unfortunately for some, her post-New Wave films still do. But for those of us willing to give them a chance, they’re still as relevant and sublime as her efforts from forty years ago.Read More »

Marie-Christine Questerbert’s La Chambre Obscure (The Dark Room) stands apart as a costume drama set in Italy in the 14th century.

Aliénor is the daughter of Gérard de Narbonne, a distinguished doctor of medicine of the 14th Century. She puts the skills she has inherited from her father to good use by curing the king of France of a life-threatening fistula. By way of recompense, she asks to marry Bertrand de Roussillon, whom she has loved since childhood. Alas, Betrand has no love for Aliénor, and rather than consummate the marriage he goes off to fight in Tuscany…Read More »

Five years after their summer together in Barcelona, Xavier, William, Wendy, Martine and Isabelle reunite.

MUBI wrote:
Five years after their adventures in Barcelona in The Spanish Apartment, many of the exuberant flatmates are reunited, including Xavier who is soon thirty and struggles as a writer. He commutes to London for a job co-writing TV with Wendy and ghostwrites an autobiography for a model in Paris.Read More »

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On the anniversary of the death of the mother of a hip and happening Tokyo-based photographer, the son returns to his hometown for the funeral. What follows is a return to the past that is more than just a trek home. Old relationships, love, conflicts and memories resurface and collide. Apparently, old perspectives don’t wither.Read More »

A closely hewn remake of the first half of Viennese Actionist (and convicted sex offender) Otto Muehl’s 1967 film Kardinal with the following minor substitutions: the original woman is played by the artist, the original artist is played by a woman wearing a powdered wig, and the film is presented as a Karaoke sing-a-long to a tune by one of Otto Muehl’s more effete 80’s popstar countrymen.Read More »