Between 1986 and 1990, Arthur Aristakisian lived among the tramps and beggars of the city: drug addicts, emotionally disturbed, physically handicapped, and blind people. LADONI is the result of these four years. The film follows the beggars in their tough daily lives. Aristakisian has a biblical view of these outcasts, which is particularly expressed by the poetic voice over, intoning philosophic-spiritual reflections of a father who is talking to his unborn (aborted) child. According to Aristakisian, this refers to the direct cause for his film: the confusion that came over him when his girlfriend had an abortion.
Category: Arthouse
Penniless and without a future, an English teacher agrees to tutor a pampered woman, only to become enmeshed in a strange reality and a downward spiral of desire and illusion, guilt and self-contempt. Will the ugly truth set him free?
Bella, a sensitive and clever girl, experiences her first disillusionment at the school graduation ball. The following morning, she meets Apostol, a middle-aged man, architect, and former participant in the anti-fascist struggle. He reveals to her his views on life. He introduces her to Bufo, a younger person, and a failure as an actor although possessing “the talent of a friend”. Thus the trio is formed. Bella marries Bufo, though Apostol remains the man and person whom she would have desired to meet in her lifetime.
A runaway cat-loving girl begins a love triangle with a reckless older man and a young biker in high school. The film follows their subsequent chaotic relationships.
On a dirty grey street in Berlin, a crowd gathers round an eccentric old woman who is performing a strip-tease. Dragged off to a psychiatric hospital, she demands cocaine instead of thorazine, tries to seduce everyone in sight, and insists that she is the legendary dancer Anita Berber, darling of the decadent ’20s. Suddenly, in true Wizard of Oz style, the film departs from monochrome reality into the colour-drenched world of the woman’s fantasies, a wildly exaggerated evocation of Weimar Berlin filmed in full-blown expressionist style.
St. Petersburg, early 20th century. The handsome and secretive Johann specializes in shooting erotic pictures depicting the floggings of bare-bottomed women. With the help of his assistants, the photographic creations gradually penetrate the peaceful households of two upper-class Russian families.
Charles Bremer, a retired, wealthy aesthete, regularly hires Lisa, a young female artist’s model, to strip for him to the soundtrack of a Donizetti aria. Charles writes letters to his dead mother, plays church organ, loves flowers, and attends drawing classes. Lisa meanwhile is having problems with her chauvinist, drug-abusing boyfriend David, a modernistic painter who keeps hitting her for money. As Charles and Lisa form a strong attachment that has nothing to do with sex, it becomes clear that the aggressive David presents a problem that needs to be solved.
Former music-video director Michael H. Shamberg debut film is an experimental drama about a woman who comes to terms with painful childhood memories. Orlando is an expatriate American sports journalist living in Paris. She is also slowly recovering from childhood sexual abuse from her father and an incestuous relationship with her late brother. As she wanders the streets on a rainy evening, she sullenly ruminates over her memories. Both Kristin Scott Thomas and Christina Ricci play small parts in this film, while legendary filmmaker Chris Marker provides computer graphics.