French

  • Henri-Georges Clouzot – La Vérité AKA The Truth (1960)

    1951-1960CrimeDramaFranceHenri-Georges Clouzot

    Plot summary from IMDB:
    Dominique Marceau is on trial for the murder of Gilbert Tellier. The counsels duel relentlessly, elaborating explanations for why the pretty, idle and fickle girl killed the talented and ambitious conductor freshly graduated from the conservatory. Was it passion, vengeance, desperation, an accident? The acquaintances of Gilbert testify, as well as Dominique’s former lovers, and her sister, Annie, the studious violin player engaged to Gilbert. The evidence they give progressively paints a more finely-shaded picture of the personalities of Dominique and Gilbert, and of their relationship, than the eloquent and convincing justifications of the counsels.Read More »

  • Yves Yersin – Les Petites Fugues aka Little Escapes (1979)

    1971-1980ArthouseDramaSwitzerlandYves Yersin

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    Synopsis
    Pipe (Michel Robin) has worked on the same farm for forty of his 66 years of living. Now he is in his “salad” years, and in retirement is free to explore the world in ways he never did before. He buys a small motorcycle with the help of an Italian migrant laborer and begins touring the countryside. Formerly somewhat docile, he gets into scrapes and fights, and eventually loses his cycle. Nonetheless, he has a chance to see the Alps from the sky. He has always wanted to see these legendary mountains, and is disappointed to realize that they are just big piles of rock.Read More »

  • Marguerite Duras – Césarée / Les Mains négatives / Aurélia Steiner (Melbourne) (Vancouver) / La Caverne noire (1979)

    1971-1980ExperimentalFranceMarguerite DurasShort Film

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    Quote:
    Filmed in 1979, these four short films share a common method: they combine texts written and read by Duras (in voice-over) with images shot by Pierre Lhomme.Read More »

  • Tony Gatlif – Djam (2017)

    2011-2020AdventureDramaFranceTony Gatlif

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    Djam, a Greek girl, is sent to Istanbul on a mission to find a motor-boat part of her uncle, a former sailor and great fan of the Greek musical style rebetiko. In the city, she meets Avril, a French woman who works as a volunteer with refugees but who has run out of money and not known in Turkey. Generous, fearless and unpredictable, Djam leaves with Avril to Mytilene – a journey of music and encounters.Read More »

  • Myriam Mézières & Alain Tanner – Fleurs de sang AKA Flowers of Blood (2002)

    Drama2001-2010ArthouseMyriam MézièresSpain

    Quote:
    As its titles suggests, Flowers of Blood belongs entirely to the physical and sensual dimension of Tanner’s œuvre – a dimension contributed by Myriam Mézières in a Flame in my Heart and The Diary of Lady M. The script in this case was written by Mézières herself, based on her own memories, and she actually co-directed the film with Tanner.Read More »

  • Deborah Haywood – Pin Cushion (2017)

    2011-2020Deborah HaywoodDramaUnited Kingdom

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    Quote:
    Super close Mother LYN and daughter IONA (Dafty One and Dafty Two) are excited for their new life in a new town. Determined to make a success of things after a tricky start, Iona becomes ‘best friends’ with KEELY, STACEY and CHELSEA. Used to being Iona’s bestie herself, Lyn feels left out. So Lyn also makes friends with BELINDA, her neighbour. As much as Lyn and Iona pretend to each other that things are going great, things aren’t going great for either of them. Iona struggles with the girls, who act more like frenemies than friends, and Belinda won’t give Lyn her stepladders back. Both Mother and Daughter retreat into fantasy and lies.Read More »

  • Yves Allégret – Germinal (1963)

    1961-1970DramaFranceYves Allégret

    Synopsis
    Adaptation of Zola’s novel about 18th-century French coal miners going on strike to fight for better conditions.Read More »

  • Christophe Honoré – Métamorphoses (2014)

    2011-2020ArthouseChristophe HonoréFantasyFranceQueer Cinema(s)

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    Quote:
    One of France’s most unpredictable writer-directors, Christophe Honoré (Dans Paris, Love Songs) offers an audacious, erotically upfront re-reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, enacted by a fearless cast of (largely unknown) young actors in contemporary French settings. Kicking off with a startling take on the story of Diana and Actaeon, Honoré’s film follows the wanderings of Europa (Akili), a high-school student who encounters a marauding truck driver – none other than Jupiter (Hirel), father of the gods. Streams of stories within stories bring the old transformation myths a modern-day slant – Narcissus as an arrogant teenage heart-throb, Orpheus as a charismatic housing-estate preacher – and add a multi-racial, polysexual perspective, teasing out the perversity, violence and rapture of classical legend. You may detect shades of Borowczyk, Pasolini, Rohmer and Derek Jarman’s Sebastiane, but this savage, rhapsodic, moving film is something entirely its own. A fabulous soundtrack completes the wayward beauty –BFIRead More »

  • Patrice Enard – Pourvoir (1981)

    1981-1990ExperimentalFrancePatrice Enard

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    He was part of the french underground from the late 60’s to begging 80’s. He was related to directors such as Philipe Bordier, Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, Marcel Hanoun, etc. His early stuff is quite political (maoïst), and then his cinema tends towards psychoanalysis.

    Quote:
    Patrice Enard’s ‘Pourvoir’ is a film mainly comprised of images of women in nature, his style is stark and repetitive, shots are angular, which both hide and reveal. There is though a visual poetry to his work – once the smoke dissipates, a sexual liberation emerges, with subtle flourishes in the staging and editing threaded together by Marxist and Freudian discourses.

    Enard was as much an academic and critic as he was a filmmaker, his work is at times highly theoretical, emerging out of his interests in psychoanalysis. Pourvoir is his longest work.Read More »

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