rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts

February 9, 2022 / Arthouse

In Ulrike Ottinger’s contemporary reinvention of the famous morality tale, fin de siècle dandy Dorian Gray is reimagined as a drag role, played without comment on the switch by Veruschka von Lehndorff in the male lead. Ottinger’s collision of Oscar Wilde and Fritz Lang features Delphine Seyrig as one “Dr. Mabuse,” the head of a sinister multinational newspaper agency that conspires to create, control, and destroy celebrity figure Dorian Gray. The film is an odyssey through eye-popping tableaux, including a trip to an unforgettable underworld.

February 8, 2022 / Documentary

Glauber Rocha films the funeral of his friend Di Cavalcanti, one of the most important Brazilian painters and artists of all time. The director/writer pays his tribute to Di by narrating an eloquent speech, referencing poets such as Augusto dos Anjos e Vinicius de Moraes, along with images of Cavalcanti’s work and the funeral as well – with the latter event being a spur of the moment to the director who rushed with his camera to the place when he heard the news.

February 6, 2022 / Arthouse
February 6, 2022 / Arthouse
February 6, 2022 / Cult

The early 1970s were very good to glam rockers Slade. In their native Britain, they invaded the charts with 17 Top 20 hits, including six at #1. Devoted fans couldn’t play Slade’s anthem-rock loud enough, and the band played to packed clubs and concert halls all across the country. Like The Beatles and The Who, Slade too was seduced by the call of celluloid. In 1975, the band answered that call, starring in the critically lauded Slade in Flame. A darker kind of Spinal Tap, the film features the band starring as a fictitious version of themselves, while taking a gritty, realistic look at the underbelly of the music industry, where hustlers, sharks and managers prey upon hot new bands.

February 6, 2022 / Comedy

A story of two teens discovering their budding sexuality. Greg is having his first sexual experience and first relationship with his friend’s mother, a woman twice his age….while Denise is angry with Greg, and sleeps with another girl. Both are in a hurry to mature, but both must deal with the repercussions of growing up, moving out, and leaving the security of childhood behind.

February 6, 2022 / Comedy

Danny Glover stars as Apples Finnerty, a low budget film director whose life is crumbling. Finnerty can’t get work, he’s been evicted, and his wife is unfaithful. As he drives in to the hills, he gets a flat. A “helpful” stranger turns out to be an armed robber. Apples kills his assailant in self-defense and switches identities with him, escaping his own disastrous past. Unfortunately, his new identity is in hot water with the mob.

February 6, 2022 / Documentary

Confessions of a Sociopath is an autobiographical film on digital video and Super 8 film, conceived as a real-life version of Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. In this film, Joe Gibbons plays a fictionalized version of himself as he discovers a roomful of Super 8 footage from his own life, detailing events he can no longer recall. This footage shows his earlier film experiments, his descent into destructive behavior, and his “bottoming out” on drugs and alcohol. At a certain point, the films are replaced by random photos, police records, and psychiatric hospital records.