A family trip which transforms into a tragicomic psychological drama. Claiming that it was her son’s wish, Grandma Valerie is determined to transfer his urned remains from the small Czech town to their native Slovakia. Her daughter-in-law accompanies her, as do her two adult granddaughters, one nearing the end of her pregnancy with a five-year-old in tow, the other with her husband. Tense relations and conflict come to a head along the way, and the truth erupts from under layers of pretence and deferential consideration. The truths revealed are at times surprising, at others bitter or even comic, but always cleansing.
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
In 1973 surfer and sometime director of photography George Greenhough got tired of the overcrowded beaches of Southern California and set of on a journey of discovery. He designed and built his own surfboards, some equipped with underwater camera equipment. With a small group of friends he built a boat and went off the map to find some waves they could truly call their own. This journey of discovery became a breathtaking cinematic trip. Combined with the music of Pink Floyd, an understated first person narrative, and some of the best surfing footage I believe has been ever shot they created one of the most remarkable works of art ever made.
In 1942, in Vilnius, the Nazi annihilate 55,000 Jews and squeeze the 15,000 survivors in a seven blocks ghetto. The twenty-two year old sadistic commander Kittel is assigned to administrate the ghetto in the capital of Lithuania, becoming the master of life or death. When he finds the gorgeous Hayyah sneaking with one kilo of beans stolen from the German army, he sentences her to death; but when he is informed that she was a former successful singer, he decides to activate the old theater and promote shows in the ghetto. The Jewish Chief of Police, Gens, uses the theater and a sewing factory to save as much lives as he can; in his ambiguous position, he kills Jews to save lives of others.
With the help of a couple of her oddball friends, a woman takes her former lesbian lover to a hotel to convince her that their affair shouldn’t end. After much shouting and some sex, things complicate when the lover’s husband shows up.
An aging salesman is fired from his job after a long career in it. Broken, without much to look forward to, he tries reconnecting with his wife and kids who he had always put down as he dedicated himself to work.
Mauro, a judge, is worried about his older sister Marta, who took care of him since he was a boy, and is now affected by psychic problems and suicide fantasies. She seems to recover from her depression when Mauro acquaints her with Giovanni, a brilliant actor at the edge of legality. Mauro become unconsciously jealous of this relationship, and tries to get Giovanni arrested.
The Limbo Line tells a story of Cold War double-crossing with British secret agent Manston trying to break up a group of Russian agents who return defectors to Moscow for brainwashing. When a Russian ballerina defects to Germany, Manston goes after the head of The Limbo Line in an effort to stop the group from kidnapping the defectors. Acting against the orders of his boss, Manston is faced with killing the communist leader of the movement in Germany or allowing the dancer to be turned over for interrogation and reprisals for her political beliefs. Matters are further complicated when Manston finds himself falling for the ballerina…
The life and slow death of Communist journalist and Prague City Council member Jozka Jaburkova in the Ravensbruck concentration camp is the focus of this wartime drama starring Jana Rihakova as the tragic Jaburkova. Suffering almost from the beginning as an illegitimate child burdened with extreme moral expectations by her fanatically religious mother, Jaburkova suffered at the hands of the teachers and authorities in her all girls’ school. Her sympathy for the oppressed or those experiencing unjust hardship or discrimination got her into trouble again and again, both as a student and when she went on to seek employment. As the camera focuses on scenes in the concentration camp, Jaburkova’s memories of her past are shown in flashbacks.