After the Prague Spring of 1968 leaves Yorick, Martha and Ondrej orphaned, the trio of young characters find shelter in a bombed church and construct a surrealistically anarchic existence based on a philosophy of denial of life circumstances and careless playfulness with the purpose of pretending they enjoy the peace and freedom they do not have. Each character undergoes a personal growth process after Yorick and Ondrej competitively seek to develop a relationship with Martha, which escalates to unforeseen consequences.
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
In a drab desert town, some 200 miles south of Reno, an indecisive man with an unfaithful wife dreams of someday, someday, taking charge of his drifting life.
In a white ward in a clinic a lifetime balance on the verge of death. Memories are herding together in the mind of seriously ill Aleksandrov, a scientist, who evaluates and reevaluates his own life: friendships, loves, career. Images of his youth are crowding in: of his beloved, of his children, of evenings, spent with his friends, ups and downs. And no one is able to say if all this made any difference.
Characters adrift in an isolated landscape collide with the past and each other as they unravel the secrets of a dead man’s dreams. A moody meditation on anti-heroism, the film pays tribute to the black and white style of cinema noir.
Based on Arata Osada’s book Children of the A-bomb: The Testament of the Boys and Girls of Hiroshima (1959) the film retells the horrors of the Hiroshima bombing through the eyes of children. It mainly consists of illustrations drawn by the children.
Antonioni had a long fascination with India which gave way to this 1977 short capturing the country’s most important Hindu festival, Kumbha Mela, during which millions of worshippers gather to pray where the Ganges, Jamuna and Saraswati rivers converge. The film material remained unused until 1989, when Antonioni was convinced to edit it and to present it at the Cannes Festival.
This film documents the legendary SoHo restaurant and artists’ cooperative Food, which opened in 1971. Owned and operated by Caroline Goodden, Food was designed and built largely by Matta-Clark, who also organized art events and performances there. As a social space, meeting ground and ongoing art project for the emergent downtown artists’ community, Food was a landmark that still resonates in the history and mythology of SoHo in the 1970s.
Franz West (1909-85) remembers his youth in Vienna: the variety of the Jewish population of the so called Matzah-Island, his commitment to the worker’s movement of the Red Vienna and the rise of Austro-fascism and National Socialism. West’s masterly narration combined with impressing archive footage illustrate and elucidate the complex Austrian history between WW1 and WW2.
