2000s

The story of two outlaws and a bounty hunter in 1940s Manchuria and their rivalry to possess a treasure map while being pursued by the Japanese army and Chinese bandits.Read More »

Quote:
Lockhart began by constructing a portrait studio in a small rural community, and extending an open invitation to local children, and then by immersing herself in their environment and noting the complexity of their interactions. Her highly descriptive, almost painterly portraits, taken over the course of several years, abjure narration for the pleasure of the gaze and the notion of temporality. The studio remains a constant, its black backdrop, cement floor and natural lighting a theatrical setting that allows the children to develop a different kind of relationship to the camera. Those stills stand in stark contrast to the pictorialism of a series showing the community’s majestic natural surroundings, and to the portraits on 16mm film that accompany them, which are both literally and figuratively moving.Read More »

Synopsis by Mark Peranson (cinema-scope):
James Benning is not quite Stravinsky, and his first high-definition video (and first film shot outside the US) is not exactly the Rite of Spring, but a trip to the heart of the Ruhr Valley for the premiere of Ruhr at the Duisberg Film Week carried a certain nervous anticipation. After years of shooting on 16mm and finally abandoning it for HD because of an endless series of processing and projection errors, Benning was about to enter further unexplored territory: digital projection.Read More »

Quote:
Mr. Laffler (Jiří Lábus) is strange. Everyone in the office he runs knows that. The clerk, Costain, (Lukáš Hlavica) also knows this, so he is very surprised when his otherwise impersonal boss does something as human as inviting Costain to dinner. But not at home. At home, he says, he does not accept guests. He leads him to an inconspicuous, secluded restaurant U Sbirra, where a very closed company of strange people meet.Read More »

16-year-old Zohar lives with her younger sister and single mother Debbie, in a poor neighbourhood in Tel Aviv. When a teenage boy comes calling on her at home, tomboy Zohar must deal with first signs of womanhood.Read More »

The life of a popular professor is turned upside down when his number and address are found in the pocket of a dead student.Read More »

Synopsis:
Michelle McNally is “special” in more ways than one. She cannot see – nor hear nor speak – She inhabits a world of infinite black – of a seamless, endless void where nothing reaches her and she reaches nothing. Her world is frightening in its complete remoteness. On the sheer will of her ferocious rage against destiny, Michelle struggles to stay afloat in the impenetrable whirlpool her life has become. into this devastating isolation enters a battle weary teacher, Debraj Sahai, life’s wounded but arrogantly insolent warrior. Read More »

Quote:
When suicide hotline counselor Rinko (Asuka Kurosawa) receives explicit photos of herself from a mysterious caller, she is thrown into a depraved game of hidden fantasies and unrestrained sexual desire. As the voyeuristic stalker becomes determined to alter her passionless life, Rinko’s compulsively clean husband Shigehiko (Yuji Koutari) attempts to hunt him down and the three disillusioned soul’s paths will inevitably intertwine.Read More »

Plot summary: (from anutshellreview.blogspot.com)
Feng Xiaogang’s Assembly was the opening film at last year’s Pusan International Film Festival, and tickets were sold out in record time once they were made available online. Such is the faith (or curiosity) of the new film from the director who brought us movies like World Without Thieves, and martial arts Hamlet The Banquet. When you think of Chinese directors making a movie based out of Chinese history, you can’t help but imagine the massive amount of propaganda that get so blatantly infused into the story and especially the dialogue. But here, Feng managed to bring about a movie which goes beyond the usual ra-ra, and shows us that a movie with universal themes can also come out from what is essentially a war movie based upon China’s tumultuous era after WWII.Read More »