An aged and powerful magnate is dying. He offers Laura, his young and beautiful mistress, a birthday gift; a sophisticated display of virtual reality in which he will “come to life” for her after his death. But Laura much prefers that her mother, the Duchess, who has taken her place in the magnate’s heart and bed, dies instead.Read More »
The same morning that carnival begins, a serene finds in Madrid the corpse of a rich and greedy lender who has been murdered. The main suspect is a seller of watches that owed much money to the old woman, but her daughter, not content with the arrest of his father, begins to investigate on their own …Read More »
In this long interview done by the TVE (Televisión Española), Julio Cortázar reveals details on the creative process of his tales and which were his writing habits. During the interview (TV program “A fondo”, 1977), the Argentinean writer also talks about his family, his first writings, about Argentina and the exile, among other subjects.Read More »
Synopsis:
Narrative of a period of 8 years(1926-1934) in the life of the leader of Nicaraguan revolution ‘Sandino’ , who was known in his time as “the general of free men.”Read More »
Synopsis:
In 1952, twenty-three year old medical student Ernesto Guevara de la Serna – Fuser to his friends and later better known as ‘Ernesto Che Guevara’ – one semester away from graduation, decides to postpone his last semester to accompany his twenty-nine year old biochemist friend ‘Alberto Granado’ – Mial to his friends – on his four month, 8,000 km long dream motorcycle trip throughout South America starting from their home in Buenos Aires. Their quest is to see things they’ve only read about in books about the continent on which they live, and to finish that quest on Alberto’s thirtieth birthday on the other side of the continent in the Guajira Peninsula in Venezuela. Read More »
Synopsis:
After years in Mexican exile, Buñuel returned to his native Spain to make this dark account of corruption, which was immediately banned. A young nun, full of charity, kindness, and idealistic illusions about humanity, visits her uncle and tries to help some local peasants and beggars. But her altruism is greeted with ridicule and cruelty. Pinal gives a superb performance in the title role, and Buñuel’s clear-eyed wit is relentless in its depiction of human selfishness, ingratitude, and cynicism. The final beggars’ orgy – a black parody of the Last Supper, performed to the ethereal strains of Handel’s Messiah – is one of the director’s most memorably disturbing, funny, and brutal scenes. A masterpiece.
— Timeout.Read More »
From Allmovie:
Government bureaucracy and ineptitude, as well as social foibles, get a drubbing in this socio-political satire by director Fernando Birri. Everything starts when the families in a poor, mud-hut neighborhood lose what little they own in a bad flood. In steps the militia to rescue them, and then the local government comes next as the politicos hope to gain points by relocating the group of unfortunates. Nothing goes right for the essentially honest, simple villagers who are now the dispossessed. One family seeks temporary shelter in a boxcar and ends up being attached to a train that then takes them on an interesting journey. Meanwhile, no one seems able to help them out and when the hubbub has died down, the families are not much different than when the flood first washed them out. Director Fernando Birri was particularly interested in Neorealism and would eventually move to Cuba.Read More »
Synopsis:
A couple traveling through the countryside strike a man on a bicycle. When they get out of their car to examine him, they find that he is injured but not dead. But instead of helping the man, Juan (Alberto Closas) and Maria Jose (Lucia Bosé) do the unthinkable. They flee – rather than reveal that they have been carrying on a long-term affair.
When they return to Madrid, the couple pay a terrible price for their deception. Guilt begins to gnaw away at them, especially at Juan, who is also experiencing conflict with his young students over an ethical issue at the university where he teaches…Read More »
Synopsis:
‘La novia ensangrentada, or The Blood Spattered Bride as it’s more commonly known amongst English speaking audiences, starts as a man & his newlywed wife Susan move into his large ancestral home that come complete with servants. At first things seem perfect but it’s not long before Susan starts to see a mysterious woman in her dreams who seems to leave a dagger for her on her bed one night, a dagger that keeps turning up no matter how hard her husband tries to get rid of it. While doing some detective work Susan discovers that the woman in her dreams resembles one of her husbands ancestors, Mircalla Karnstein. Meanwhile her husband has found a naked woman named Carmilla buried on a beach so he decides to take her home, as you would. Straight away Susan notices that Carmilla looks exactly like the woman in her dreams, now her dreams are about to turn into nightmares…’
– Paul AndrewsRead More »