Quote: Un cinéphile rencontre sur une plage de Ramatuelle son cinéaste préféré. Il lui propose de mettre en film la douloureuse aventure qu’il vient de vivre. Les deux hommes vont tricoter les scènes, chacun à sa manière. Le cinéaste ne cesse de repousser le projet, arguant que la chute n’est pas bonne. Mais peut-être a-t-il une bonne raison de ne pas aller au bout de l’aventure … (from commeaucinema)
Quote: An aged film director, hidden behind tinted sun glasses on a beach on the French Riviera is recognized and accosted by a man who suggests he put his own adventures on the silver screen.
The film maker thinks his life story is insignificant and rejects the project by arguing that the denouement would sink without a trace.
Quote: Growing up in the shadows of Shanghai, Bei (Li Zhinan), a disillusioned dancer, spends most of his time in a drug-induced haze. But when he begins developing AIDS-like symptoms and fears he could be seriously ill, he turns to his three best friends to help him forget. Complications ensue when Bei and another friend, Jie (Zhou Zijie), begin to feel more than mutual camaraderie, which throws their sexuality into serious question.
Quote: Sebastian is an ordinary man in his thirties who is utterly devoted to his loyal dog and works in a slew of banal temporary jobs. As he moves fitfully through adulthood, he navigates love, loss, and fatherhood—until the world is rocked by a sudden catastrophe, upending his already turbulent life.
Quote: “The film Life in Hands (David Maryan, 1930, USSR) is an instructive historical case of the transition from the bright experiments of Sergei Eisenstein and Alexander Dovzhenko to agitprop as the focus of all the most odious in Soviet cinema. Prior to this work, Marian was a screenwriter for several films, which, as far as we know, have not survived, and this is his directorial debut, which borrows a lot from both the Earth (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930, USSR) and the General Line (Sergei Eisenstein, 1928, USSR) – both thematically and in dramatic and visual solutions. “ google translate
Quote: The film is about a change in the way of life in the city and the countryside.
The cursed legacy for the young state are drunkards and truants, who have not yet rebuilt their lives in the new social conditions. But life is changing: the inhabitants of the commune dormitory, a huge, cubist-style house, “orderly” run in the morning for exercise, eat in the canteen, which resembles a factory conveyor belt.
This propaganda film is interesting because of its imagery: The “connection between the city and the village” is represented by a montage of fast-moving shots of harvesting by factory workers and students.
Synopsis Haute-Savoie, 1951. Hellé is a young deaf-mute living among the mountains. She’s ignored by everyone except, now and then, the local woodsmen, who use her for their pleasure. She has no education, no knowledge of right or wrong. One summer, a young man comes to spend the holidays in her village…
Quote: An extraordinary debut from one of Hollywood’s most bankable UK ex-pats, Tony Scott’s Loving Memory (1970) follows an isolated brother and sister who live with their memories and a grisly secret. Critically acclaimed on its release Loving Memory was beautifully photographed by celebrated cinematographer Chris Menges – who captures perfectly the misty mystery of the Yorkshire moors – and feature a stunning, sinister performance from Rosamund Greenwood (Village of the Damned, The Witches) as a haunted innocent.
“Loving Memory” showcases talents you wouldn’t have guessed that Tony (then a film student going by “Anthony”) Scott had if you were only familiar with his post 70s Hollywood work. That’s not to say that he isn’t good at what he does, as he’s shown that he has a good deal of talent when it comes to loud, macho action films. Yet here we see a different side of the director. Gone are all special effects, and even most dialogue. Instead what we get is a slow, meditative film that showcases Scott’s ability to quietly and simply tell a story that is macabre, unsettling, and strangely sweet. To be sure, this is a very good film, and after finishing it, I couldn’t help but wonder what else Scott might have in him. Even those who find themselves turned off by his post “The Hunger” oeuvre should find themselves pleasantly surprised by this truly wonderful film.
Quote: In “Evil”, the stories and lives of the characters intertwine as a web, where in the center we engage in the relationship of Cathy and Peter. Cathy is Irish, Catholic and from a very young age she’s attracted by the great struggle for social ideals holding a huge sense of justice, in the work with illegal immigrants. Has for Pedro an excessive love. Submissive-dependent, and is not aware of his changes over time. Peter is a respected lawyer who has set aside the ideals of youth. Its success is the result of involvement in “lobbying” economic and political. Obsessed with sex, it engages in assiduous and constant extra-marital relationships, consciously cheating Cathy, although still loving her.
Includes a commentary track with the director Alberto Seixas Santos (no subtitles) Extras (with subtitles in Portuguese, English, French, Italian and Spanish) Making Of 24’21” Trailer 2’09’
The South of France. Internationally famous pianist Aurore collapses one night during a performance, over-exhausted from too many concerts. Tired of music, she believes she no longer has anything to offer her public. Then she meets Jean, an electrician who installs residential security systems. Despite their differences, they immediately fall in love and plan a new life together. Jean intends to leave his long-time partner, Dolorès, but she will stop at nothing to keep him.
Review (Geraldine Bloustien, ‘Jane Campion: memory, motif and music’. Continuum) Passionless Moments, although possibly one of Campion’s most whimsical pieces, has all the hallmarks of her later films. It is concerned with the insignificant, unsolicited moments of daydreaming when one is caught almost unawares. The film consists of ten self-contained vignettes of the sudden thoughts of ten very different individuals. Classical Hollywood cinema concerns itself with the heightened moments of passion of individuals with whom we identify in some way because of their bravery, humour, innocence, heroic qualities and so on. In traditional feature films and documentaries we are usually introduced to the characters’ backgrounds, motives and problems. However, in Passionless Moments the characters serve only to illustrate some quirky aspect of human nature and relationships.
The film is narrated by a detached BBC documentary-styled male voice-over – the voice of authority – which tells the viewers about each one minute segment of the film as though it were a highly significant study of life. The technique actually serves a similar function to the diagram and subheading in Peel. We laugh because we recognise the way we too can be totally self-absorbed in a sudden idea or thought which for that moment assumes great significance for us. There is, for example, the child Lindsay Albridge who, on his way home from an errand, imagines his parcel of beans to be really a bomb that will explode in twenty seconds if he doesn’t get it home on time. Although each of the characters is referred to by name, all we learn of him is this one banal moment (out of undoubtedly many) in his life and which for him at that moment makes him stop his current activity, assuming great significance for that short span of time. Although we are shown ten very different individuals it is the similarity of the day-dreaming that we are asked to consider – as we were with the extreme close-ups of the faces at the end of Peel.
The humour, the way the moments are exaggerated, are underscored by the visual treatment. A fish-eye lens is used to distort distances as in “Ibrahim makes sense of it”; Ibrahim contemplates the strangeness of his perception – the fact that from one side of his body he can see the word ‘Sex’ and from the other side he can see the word ‘Thing’, the words being on the ends of a single-line aphorism on a painting behind him. As he ponders, the fan in the room rotates on its axis in the extreme foreground, occupying almost the whole space of the frame. The movement of the fan repeats the rotating movement that Ibrahim used at the beginning of the sequence as he practised his yoga. Now he is a still shadowy figure in the background of the frame. It is as though the animate Ibrahim has become immobile while the inanimate object, the fan, whirs with apparent life and force – a humorous visual connection for the viewer between ‘sex’ and ‘thing’.
In several places in Passionless Moments Campion makes use of cut-away shots of fantasy as in the sudden vision of a room full of scattered denim jeans in “Clear Up Sleepy Jeans”, in Julie Fry’s vision of a board room where executives ponder the dimensions of paper to fit on the back of tissue boxes, Angela’s recollection of Rufus (her uncle’s pet pig) and Ed Tarbrey’s memories of his school football team. In all these segments the fantasy sequence heightens the humour and our sense of the ridiculous. Animation, which will be used again to great effect in Campion’s later film Two Friends, is employed here in “There Are No Woodpeckers in Australia”. The non-diegetic electronic music that was used to emphasise the sense of wonder and insight in Peel in this film serves to highlight the gentle satire: Gavin Metcalf who is attempting ‘to put his life in order’ by listening to the sound of his own ear-drum sees the floating particles of lint and remembers that his mother said these were fairies.
Leading very separate lives, Christy and her boyfriend Buddy live together in her parent’s basement with their baby Mikey. As Christy, a waitress and aspiring writer, and Buddy, a plumber’s apprentice, struggle with the realities of their lives, questions are formed about obligations, consequences, and all the identities we employ to get through the day.
Shortly after WW2, a military transport plane carrying an assortment of passengers crashes into the South China Sea forcing the survivors to await their rescue into a life-raft.
Jane Campion directs this notable adaptation of the Henry James novel, The Portrait of a Lady of 1881. Independent woman Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman) refuses two suitors, Lord Warburton (Richard E. Grant) and Caspar Goodwood (Viggo Mortensen), when they propose marriage. Instead she travels to Florence, where family friend Madame Merle introduces her to Gilbert Osmond (John Malkovich) and his daughter Pansy. Soon Isabel finds herself falling for the mysterious Osmond. They are engaged to be married within three months, but much unhappiness lies ahead.
A sequel to ‘LAST BUS’, this semi-dramatised documentary looks at what the subsequent history might have been of the boys in the gang that attacked the conductor in Last Bus, what might have caused the boys to behave in the way they did, and what the nature of their punishment will be.
Malgortzata and Paul have a rendezvous in West Berlin to spend some time together before she has to go back to Warsaw and he returns to his wife and daughter. The two talk, disagree, argue, make-up, quarrel and talk some more.
Desdemona lives on an isolated island with her strange family: her father Mario, her stepmother Dulcinea and her mentally challenged sister Paulova. As the only inhabitants on the island loneliness and desolation engulf all members of her family. Desdemona tries to ward off her boredom by taking long walks along the beach or engaging in acts of self-gratification. She often tries to seduce her own father Mario to engage in acts of a sexual nature. Their daily routine is interrupted by the arrival (by boat) of a robust male stranger who brings friction into Desdemona’s family.
Quote: On the anniversary of the death of the mother of a hip and happening Tokyo-based photographer, the son returns to his hometown for the funeral. What follows is a return to the past that is more than just a trek home. Old relationships, love, conflicts and memories resurface and collide. Apparently, old perspectives don’t wither.
Quote: Simon and Rachel love each other simply, without ‘stories’, until a first argument. The breach then opens for God to take on the appearance of Simon in order to visit or tempt Rachel. She, however, seems able to make the difference between a god, a husband and a lover, even in the same person… and some later on have noticed something too.
Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid shows no signs of slowing down in this shattering follow-up to his bat-out-of-hell Synonyms. A film of radical style and splenetic anger, Ahed’s Knee accompanies a celebrated but increasingly dissociated director (Avshalom Pollak) to a small town in the desert region of Arava for a screening of his latest film. Already anguished by the news of his mother’s fatal illness (Lapid’s film was made soon after the death of his own mother, who had worked as his editor for many years), he grows frustrated with a speech-restricting form he is encouraged to sign by a local Ministry of Culture worker (Nur Fibak). The confrontation ultimately sends him into a spiral of rage aimed at what he perceives as the censorship, hypocrisy, and violence of the Israeli government. This boldly shot and conceived work, which won the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, feels as though it has welled up from the depths of its maker’s soul.
