In 1935, at the age of 13, Simon Chalumot is enrolled in a military school by his father. His reluctance to become a soldier is apparent to all and he is bullied and abused by the military staff and his fellow pupils. At 15, he runs away, but is captured and returned to the school by his father, a patriotic veteran of the last war. Soon after, Chalumot graduates to a higher military school, but now the bullying is so brutal that he can take no more…
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
Four socialites unexpectedly clash: heiress Brooke Carter runs into gambler Johnny Spanish at the race track while playboy Michael O. Pritchard nearly runs into stage star Kitty O’Kelly with his car. Backstage at Kitty’s show, it turns out she and Brooke are old friends who attended public school together. The foursome do the town, accompanied by Brooke’s companion Elizabeth, who throws herself at Michael’s butler and chauffeur Rodney James.
Eleven-year-old petty teen criminal Maroa lives with her violent grandmother Brígida in Caracas. After her boyfriend Carlos is involved in a shooting, Maroa is arrested and sent to a school where Joaquín conducts the youth orchestra, which he asks the naturally talented Maroa to join. Joaquín is immediately interested in the talented young girl who lacks all notion of discipline; as he becomes the only person to offer her hope in the midst of her rejection, he realizes that through Maroa his own world has also changed forever.
Jean-Claude Lauzon’s highly praised film tells the strange story of Léolo, a young boy from Montréal. Told from Léolo’s point-of-view, the film depicts his family of lunatics and Léolo’s attempts to deal with them. Not one individual in the boy’s life is well adjusted. His brother, after being beaten up, spends the film bulking up on growth protein. The grandfather hires half-naked girls to bite off his toenails and, in a brutal rage, almost kills Léolo. As he witnesses his family decay around him, Léolo retreats into himself and the fantasy world he has constructed. In response to the weirdness of his daily life, Léolo creates a little mental mayhem of his own which Lauzon renders in an amazing series of free-form, surreal images.
A seriocomic look at the life of Julie Walker. Bored with her marriage, and encouraged by her friends, she contemplates an affair. Fantasy and reality mix often, leading to complications and headaches.
In 1461, French nobles fearing King Louis XI may seize their lands, join forces with the rebellious Duke of Burgundy to overthrow the king. One of the Duke’s captains suggests enlisting the aid of Francois Villon who is known to oppose the king and is leader of the Vagabonds, a group that robs the rich to aid the poor. In league with Burgundy, Villon and two of his cohorts enter Paris, but are captured by the king’s men. The king, recognizing Villon’s power over the people, proposes that Villon defend Paris against Burgundy and help uncover traitors in the court.
An American film-critic flies to Berlin to investigate about the life of German filmmaker F. W. Murnau. After meeting his former girlfriend, a painter, and finding a statue near Murnau’s tomb, begins a strange mystic journey through time and space: a romantic unification of ancient and modern world, suspicions and memories, art and life.
In its mesmerizing montage of autistic children, seen at the same institution in discrete, vivid moments of repose, reverie or trance, SEULS marks an encounter at once rapturous and serene. Filmed in a luminous black-and-white evocative of an even earlier era, its subjects appear at times curious but more often merely tolerant or indifferent before the camera (its scrutinizing lens, no doubt, already a part of their monitored world). But the tacitly charged portraits prove deeply humanizing and even collaborative in their formal response to the insistent rhythms and expressions of the children, all of them very much agents in the making of this hauntingly beautiful work.