If you awoke on Christmas Eve to find your partner dead on the floor, how would you react? Morvern Callar takes the viewer into the strange world inhabited by Morvern, who reacts to her lover's sudden demise with cool detachment. A soundtrack of cool electronica interspersed with the odd classic replaces dialogue for most of the film, which accompanies Morvern on a mental and physical journey to make sense of the loss of her partner and the futility of her mundane existence.
A search for both family and cultural identity takes place on a tandem bicycle in this emotional drama from Bulgarian filmmaker Stefan Komandarev. Alexander was born in 1975, when Bulgaria was being ruled by an oppressive political regime that encouraged distrust among its people. Alexander (Carlo Ljubek) was raised in an extended family, with his parents Vasko (Hristo Mutafchiev) and Yana (Ana Papadopulu) sharing their home with Yana's folks Bai Dan (Miki Manojlovic) and Sladka (Lyudmila Cheshmedzhieva).
"The film was shelved by the censors in 1981. It was entirely out of the question to show something like that, even on television"
Price hikes sets off a strike in a large provincial town. As protestors gather outside the Party Headquarters, the Party Secretary must find a way to defuse the situation. Unfortunately his calls to the capital were met with indifference, and meanwhile the protest becomes more and more violent.
Set in beautiful 14th century Sweden, it is the sombre, powerful fable of peasant parents whose daughter, a young virgin, is brutally raped and murdered by swineherds after her half sister has invoked a pagan curse. By a bizarre twist of fate, the murderers ask for food and shelter from the dead girl's parents, who discovering the truth about their erstwhile lodgers, exact a chilling revenge.
Austere, fragmented, and minimalist, Katzelmacher captures the inert lives of a group of aimless, financially struggling apartment dwellers on an anonymous residential city street. The film opens to an implicit shot of one of the residents, Erich (Hans Hirschmüller), parked alongside a grocery store, biding idle time in his car as his lover Marie (Hanna Schygulla) closes shop for the evening. It is an insightful glimpse of interminable silence and existential waiting that defines the lives of the residents as they attempt to escape from the inertia of their daily existence through anonymous sexual encounters, alcohol consumption, rumor mongering and, on occasion, lapses of domestic violence.
The crowning glory of Mac Allan’s engineering career will be the construction of a tunnel beneath the Atlantic Ocean to connect America with Europe. But first he must find financial backing for the project. After some fierce negotiations, the project is given the go-ahead and work can begin. Unfortunately for Mac Allan this bold feat of human endeavour will involve a greater sacrifice than he had imagined...
One of the best Israeli films of all time, highly influenced by the French New Wave cinema of that time. Three Days and a Child (Hebrew: Shlosha Yamim Veyeled) is a 1967 Israeli drama film directed by Uri Zohar. It was entered into the 1967 Cannes Film Festival where Oded Kotler won the award for Best Actor.
"Heavily artistically infused this chamber piece from Bergman lauded numerous international awards for both the film and the performances. It's beautiful imagery from Sven Nykvist's magnificent cinematography, its high level of pretension and its inability to be comprehensible have given it a unique place in cinema history. "Persona" can causes a myriad of personal reactions.
Equal parts documentary, children's story, and narrative drama, Cave of the Yellow Dog is a beautifully filmed adventure that the entire family will enjoy. It's unique on many levels, the most notable being that the charismatic family portrayed in the film are an actual family, and none of them are professional actors. The eldest daughter (played by adorable Nansal Batchuluun) appears to be about 6 or 7 years old. Her life is nothing like that of an American first grader. She goes away to school, returning home during the summers.
Alone in her empty flat, from her window Anne observes the people passing by who nervously snatch up the personal belongings and pieces of furniture she has put out on the pavement. Her final gesture of taking a ring off her finger signals she is leaving her previous life in Holland behind. She goes to Ireland, where she chooses to lead a solitary, wandering existence, striding through the austere landscapes of Connemara. During her travels, she discovers a house that is home to a hermit, Martin
ALL tangled up in the madness of a Rio de Janeiro carnival, full of intoxicating samba music, frenzied dancing and violent costumes, the Frenchman Marcel Camus presents us a melancholy tale in his color film, "Black Orpheus" ("Orfeu Negro"), which came to the Plaza yesterday.
It is a tragic story of a Negro chap and a Negro girl who meet at the time of the annual blowout, fall suddenly and rapturously in love, whirl through the night in a furious revel and fall off a cliff in the dawn. At least, the fellow falls off the cliff, holding the dead body of the girl in his arms. She has been killed the previous evening while trying to escape a scoundrel in a skeleton costume.
One of the master pieces of the Egyptian Cinema in the 20th century based on the novel by the great Egyptian writer Taha Hussein (1889-1973). The novel itself is regarded as a masterpiece of the Arab literature.
The classic conflict between desire and obligation set deep in the countryside and manifests itself through a love story between Amna the maid and the engineer she works for, and who she plans to take revenge on for seducing her late sister and destroying the honor of her whole family.
Two young characters in this story of rebellious youth are named after two Germans, brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl who were imprisoned and executed for their anti-Nazi stance during World War II. In this film, the rebels do not have such a clear-cut enemy but nevertheless, they cannot accept the way life is heading in Austria of the 1950s and they revolt by stealing, mugging, and trying out terrorist methods (bombs). Their future seems to be inexorably heading on a collision course with the forces that have "locked them out."
The Road to Guantánamo, co-directed by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross, is a ferocious, partisan, and moving account of how three young men from Tipton, in the Midlands, ended up in the world's most notorious prison. The film-makers' rage at what happened to their protagonists is palpable, while they are also alert to the absurdity and gallows humour of it all. Nothing in Winterbottom's recent Tristram Shandy movie, A Cock and Bull Story, is as far-fetched as what we see on screen here.
This is a very rare film so I decided to upload it without the subtitles. I've also included a short Angelepolous film, Ekpomb (1968)i, along with it. Since I don't speak or read Greek, I can't tell you much about either film. Ekpombi has no description on allmovie nor on imdb. It's documentary style, focused on the swinging sixties.
As for Anaparastassi (Reconstruction, also known as "Reconstruction of a Crime" ) here is what allmovie says:
Set in the boarding school milieu, the film depicts the meeting of shy Gregor and mysterious Billie. Billie has a son, her husband is in jail. Arthur, Gregor's friend, is a serial Lothario, forever unfaithful to his girlfriend Pia. Both Arthur and Billie have had a similar mystical experience related to someone's death. While Gregor believes that an elective affinity between two people preordains their lives, Arthur does not even subscribe to romantic feelings between the sexes.
Arthur is a failure at school and becomes mixed up with criminal elements, Gregor goes on to attend university, and remains in pursuit of Billie who passes in and out of his life on several occasions.
IMDB Review: Author: lazar_x from Montreal, Canada
"Don't let anyone tell you horror stories about the camera work, they probably never had an ounce of imagination anywhere in their bodies!
For those of us who are bored blind with standard Hollywood-ian movies, this kind of camera work is very refreshing. The constant motion puts us right into the characters' world and helps foster an instant connection with them. Not that one wouldn't connect with them without the fancy directing! On the contrary, Jan, Jule, and Peter will reawaken the idealist in anyone.
Plot summary from Imdb: "The wife of Nasim, an Afghan immigrant in Iran, is gravely ill. He needs money to pay for her care, but his day labor digging wells does not pay enough. A friend connects Nasim to a two-bit promoter who sells tickets to watch Nasim ride a bicycle continuously for a week. The promoter brings in sick and aged spectators, haranguing them to find hope in Nasim's strength. Aided by his son, who feeds him as he rides, Nasim grinds out the days and shivering nights. Local officials believe this may be a plot and Nasim may be a spy; they try to sabotage him as do those who bet he won't finish the week. Will desperation alone get Nasim the money? Is any triumph an illusion?"
Synopsis: A couple sets out to find the perfect bride for their son, whether their son likes it or not, in this Israeli comedy. Zaza (Lior Louie Ashkenazi) is a graduate student in his early thirties who has finally found the woman of his dreams -- Judith (Ronit Elkabetz), a Moroccan immigrant with a daughter, Madonna (Sapir Kugman), from a previous marriage. Zaza and Judith have similar interests, a great personal rapport, a keen understanding of one another's feelings, and excellent sexual chemistry, but for Zaza there's one little problem -- his parents.
Deceptively simple and executed with a documentary feel, this drama represents a highly personal journey home for ex-patriot Palestinian filmmaker Elia Suleiman. The film is divided into two sections. The first documents the paradoxical but sleepy existence in the Arab part of Nazareth. The second part takes a more political view of the city and in it, Suleiman takes a more active role. He has come to his former home in search of inspiration, but what he sees are many disturbing images of Arab people trapped in a cultural identity crisis, a point best illustrated by the plight of a young Arab woman who wants more independence than traditionally allowed in her part of town but cannot find it because of prejudiced residents on the Jewish side. -- Sandra Brennan
