Chris Marker, filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor, and now videographer and digital multimedia artist, has been challenging moviegoers, philosophers, and himself for years with his complex queries about time, memory, and the rapid advancement of life on this planet. Sans Soleil is his mind-bending free-form travelogue that journeys from Africa to Japan.
Read More »
Synopsis:
Director Alain Resnais’s STAVISKY… is a stylized recounting of the life of Alexandre Stavisky, a masterful swindler who sold thousands of worthless bonds, working his way into a massive financial hole and drowning in a riotous political scandal. The film focuses on his heyday, which came in the years just before his arrest and subsequent death in 1934. Surrounded by an aristocratic class of financiers who, like Stavisky, delighted in transferring enormous sums among a multitude of accounts around Europe, he was an expert at moving money. Stavisky inhabited the lavish wooden parlors and grandiose theaters of Paris, the ocean overpasses and casinos of Biarritz, with sexy cars, planes, and women to get him from place to place. Read More »
Vive le tour is director Louis Malle’s affectionate homage to one of France’s most treasured institutions, the Tour de France cycle race. In this short documentary film, Malle and his camera team marvellously capture the ambience of the Tour: the unbridled enthusiasm of the crowds of spectators, the beauty of the French countryside setting, and the gruelling ordeal of the participants.
We see how the cyclists refresh themselves during their marathon races, the sorry effects of dope-taking, the pain and disappointment of injured cyclists and, finally, the indescribable delight of the victors on the podium. With its eloquent and evocative photography, accompanied by Georges Delerue’s enchanting music, this is less a documentary and more a visual poem which says almost all there needs to be said on the greatest cycle race in the world. James Travers (filmsdefrance)Read More »
Despite a paralyzed leg, Grigris, a 25 year old living in Chad, dreams of being a dancer, but his dreams are dashed when his uncle falls critically ill. To save him, Grigris resolves to work for petrol traffickers.
Read More »
City of Pirates
(La Ville des pirates, France/Portugal, 1983)
Raúl Ruiz’s City of Pirates is (de)composed under the sign of Surrealism, with its trust in ecstasy, scandal, the call of the wild, mystification, prophetic dreams, humour, the uncanny. Given the surprising swerves and disorientations evoking Buñuel and Dalí, and the confidence in a poetic discourse recalling Eluard and Péret, one wonders if Ruiz didn’t elaborate his scenario using the Surrealist mode of automatic writing. Troubled, graceful Isidore – Ducasse and Duncan? – is a purely Surrealist heroine, part Ophelia, Salomé, Bérénice, prone to trances, somnambulism, hysterical seizure, contact with the ‘other side’.Read More »
SYNOPSIS
On the eve of the First World War, a wealthy count, Forbek, builds a rocco pleasure dome in the French countryside. He invites his wife and his friends to live a life of idyllic seclusion inside the dome. In 1982, the same dome is the venue for a teaching seminar attended by a number of teachers with some radical ideas for educating children. Both Forbek and the seminar’s organisers are striving for similar things, the creation of a better world. Both are doomed to failure…
taken from here
Read More »
Plot summary
A sailor who was accused of killing a teenage girl and who was presumed to have drowned while making his escape, returns to the Mediterranean island where the alleged crime took place. But all is not what it appears. Robbe-Grillet keeps us guessing as to whether the murder actually took place and teases the viewer with the possibility that the sailor may be a restless spirit or a figment of the imagination conjured up by the victim’s father to assuage his own guilt. Too many questions and not enough answers make for a very frustrating investigation. Read More »
Jean-Luc Godard did not attend the world premiere of his new film, ADIEU AU LANGAGE (GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE), at Cannes. But instead, he sent a letter in motion to Gilles Jacob and Thierry Fremaux, the directors of the Festival.Read More »
Quote:
This utterly compelling psychological thriller from Michael Haneke – one of cinema’s most daring, original and controversial directors – stars Daniel Auteuil as Georges, a TV presenter who begins to receive mysterious and alarming packages containing covertly filmed videos of himself and his family. To the mounting consternation of Georges and his wife (Juliette Binoche), the footage on the tapes – which arrive wrapped in drawings of disturbingly violent images – becomes increasingly personal, and sinister anonymous phone calls are made. Convinced he knows the identity of the person responsible, Georges embarks on a rash and impulsive course of action that throws up some unpleasant facts about his past and leads to shockingly unexpected consequences.Read More »