rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts

July 24, 2023 / Thriller
July 24, 2023 / Documentary

In 1974 the film Emmanuelle redefined the adult movie, with the British Board of Film Certification chairman James Ferman describing it as making “sex respectable in cinema”. With an X certificate it made a star of actress Sylvia Kristel and launched one of the most successful film franchises of all time. In the programme film-maker Alex Cox reviews the controversy, the censorship, and the way that Emmanuelle altered what was acceptable for film-makers to show on screen.

July 24, 2023 / Drama

Anna, a woman in her fifties, has just moved into her seaside new house somewhere in Brittany. The place is still cluttered with boxes out of which ghosts appear that start tormenting her. Anna has lived many lives: she has been married three times and has had three daughters from three different men. Quite logically life has not been easy for Anna and for her offspring, Fanny, Camille and Lilli. All those who counted for her, dead or undead, have moved with her into her new house and assail her with reproaches, regrets and accusations. Will Anna manage to escape them and be able start a new life?

July 10, 2023 / Drama

Set over a single early-1960s summer in one of Sarajevo’s mahalas, the plot follows the fortunes of a school boy nicknamed Dino. Simultaneous to being enthralled with a life that flashes before his eyes and ears in the local cinema and youth centre (where, among other things, he watches Alessandro Blasetti’s Europa di notte and listens to Adriano Celentano’s 24 Mila Baci), Dino gets a taste of the world inhabited by local thugs and petty criminals. However, when he is rewarded via a liaison for providing a hiding place for prostitute “Dolly Bell”, his world is turned upside down as he falls in love with her.

July 10, 2023 / Drama

Teen angst, incest, and… what exactly is buried in the basement? This macabre, compellingly bizarro coming-of-age tale charts the strange goings-on within a family living in an isolated, rubble-strewn no-man’s land. One day, as 15-year-old Jack masturbates, his father drops dead. Mother follows shortly thereafter. Rather than tell anyone, Jack and older sister Julie assume the roles of father and mother to their two younger siblings—but take things to the extreme. Based on Ian McEwan’s gothic novel, this should-be cult classic is a gripping, wonderfully weird portrait of nontraditional family values.

July 10, 2023 / Short

The lyric passage of a Monarch butterfly, beginning with its birth, through its delicate metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly and on its journey from country to city. From the first frame, the audience experiences the tension of this perilous flight as numerous adversaries, threaten the butterfly’s freedom.

July 10, 2023 / Animation

Hot Breath Harry is a hot trumpeter at a jazz club. He finds himself drafted into the Army, where he’s assigned to be the bugler of an African-American company. But everyone hates the bugler, because he blows reveille at the ungodly hour of 5 AM sharp. Sure enough, on his first day, Harry gets pelted with everything imaginable. He lands against a wall, where his trumpet falls on him. He plays a swinging wakeup that segues into the title tune, and nobody minds waking up to this. Everyone swings through the whole day, even when three soldiers march into a lake and two soldiers, followed by a grinning alligator, march out.

July 10, 2023 / Animation

This entertaining animated film surveys the history of machines, showing how the discovery of primitive tools led to the development of today’s space age technology. A tribute to human ingenuity and creative genius.