2000s

Synopsis:
Sotto la veste di fattorino quello che sarà il nuovo direttore del manicomio di Gorizia si rende conto delle condizioni in cui vivono i pazienti del manicomio.
Tra elettroshock, lobotomie, camicie di forza, percosse e clausura i malati mentali vivono in una raccapricciante situazione. Diventato direttore riesce a modificare il ruolo di operare dei medici e degli infermieri e migliorare le condizioni di vita dei pazienti. Sfrutterà l’ampio giardino dell’ospedale prima interdetto ai pazienti per passeggiate e pranzi all’aperto.Read More »

Tony Rayns, Time Out Film Guide wrote:
One-time Lino Brocka protégé O’Hara is not shy of traditional melodrama, still the lifeblood of most Filipino cinema, but Demons fits no established genre template. Part social history, part ghost horror story, part romance, part quasi-Marxist parable, it has no obvious antecedent except parts of Night of the Hunter. Set on Negros Island, the action spans nearly 20 years in the lives of Nena (De Leon), daughter of a fish-farmer, and Jose (Alano), the son of casual labourers. As they move through puberty and try to bridge the class gap, the island is riven by terrorist actions and military reprisals (echoing assassinations and political turmoil in faraway Manila), giving new meaning to the local mythology of jungle demons. O’Hara balances the narrative between drama and elegy, between occasionally shocking images and the poetry of Amado Hernandez and Florentino Collantes. Often wonderful.Read More »

AMG :
“French director Alain Cavalier ventures into pseudo-documentary territory with his 2002 film René. Purportedly concocted as a means for Cavalier to help actor Joël Lefrançois lose weight while not making a straight documentary about Lefrançois’ ordeal, René instead focuses on fictional children’s theater actor René (Lefrançois) from provincial France who is undergoing a bit of a personal crisis. Having just been abandoned by his girlfriend, René decides dieting is the only way to win back her love.Read More »

Quote:
Kaoru, a woman in her 30s, is married to an older, blind and apparently mute man, whom she cares for in a house in a small coastal town on the Izu Peninsula. She claims to be dependent on him, but what binds them does not seem to be love. In her wandering, Kaoru discovers the bar of an association.Read More »

Synopsis
A mentally-disturbed man takes residence in a halfway house. His mind gradually slips back into the realm created by his illness, where he replays a key part of his childhood.Read More »

Synopsis
An uncompromising look at the ways privacy, safety, convenience and surveillance determine our environment. Shot entirely at night, the film confronts the hermetic nature of white-collar communities, dissecting the fear behind contemporary suburban design. An isolation-based fear (protect us from people not like us). A fear of irregularity (eat at McDonalds, you know what to expect). A fear of thought (turn on the television). A fear of self (don’t stop moving). By examining evacuated suburban and corporate landscapes, the film reveals a peculiarly 21st century hollowness… an emptiness born of our collective faith in safety and technology. This is a new genre of horror movie, attempting suburban locations as states of mind.Read More »

Jean-Pierre Melville’s independent and original approach to film-making on titles such as Bob Le Flambeur, Le Doulos, and Le Samourai earned him the reputation of the father, or at least the precursor, of the French New Wave. However, what is less known is that Melville spent eight years of his life between 1937 and 1945 as a soldier in the French army and then the Free French Forces, which he joined after the French defeat the Germans. Having escaped through the South of France to Spain, he became a member of the Resistance and took on the code name of Melville (after Herman Melville, the writer he most admired). Read More »

“Neshat spoke to The Stranger’s Jen Graves on Tuesday, by phone from her home in New York.

I first want to talk about Zarin, the anorexic prostitute who hallucinates at the sight of her john, then flees to a women’s bath—a beautiful place, sparkling with dusty light—where she scrubs her own skin until she bleeds. A few years ago, I caught your short video portrait of her, and was never able to get her out of my mind. You’ve said her character feels the closest to you.Read More »

Quote:
Ever-provocative and prolific Rosa von Praunheim takes on uniform fetishes, extreme-right skinheads, gays in the original Nazi leadership, and more in his latest docu, “Men, Heroes and Gay Nazis” somehow weaving it all together into a compelling look at the appeal of fascism — even to those who are its frequent victims. Beyond gay-fest travel, feature could score select offshore telecast and DVD deals.Read More »