This animated story of the thrilling adventures of a toy mouse and his child is based on the modern classic of children’s fiction written by Russell Hoban. From their home in the toy shop window, the mouse and his child find themselves cast into a rubbish tip where they become prisoners of the slimy rat, Manny (voiced by Peter Ustinov). Helped by their friends, a fortune-telling rat, an actress parrot, a performing seal and a pink elephant, the mouse and his child plot to escape Manny’s evil clutches and discover how they can become self-winding.
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
Living in their own fictional world devoid of humankind, large anthropomorphic robots, constructed by Survival Research Laboratories (S.R.L.), act out scenarios of perpetual torment, exasperated consumption and tragic recognition.
In Pieter Bruegel’s painting, “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” the fall of the god, Icarus, passes unnoticed on earth. The farmers continue to work the land and the boats sail on. As William Carlos Williams later wrote in his poem of the same name, “a once mighty god becomes a little splash quite unnoticed.” In Chris Sullivan’s version, Icarus becomes Ray, an aging priest whose congregation is dwindling as fast as his sanity. As Ray’s condition deteriorates, society fails to notice or care.
Charles Bremer, a retired, wealthy aesthete, regularly hires Lisa, a young female artist’s model, to strip for him to the soundtrack of a Donizetti aria. Charles writes letters to his dead mother, plays church organ, loves flowers, and attends drawing classes. Lisa meanwhile is having problems with her chauvinist, drug-abusing boyfriend David, a modernistic painter who keeps hitting her for money. As Charles and Lisa form a strong attachment that has nothing to do with sex, it becomes clear that the aggressive David presents a problem that needs to be solved.
While working on a documentary, Michel Negroponte encounters a homeless woman in Central Park who claims to be Robert Ryan’s daughter. What more, the woman, Maggie, says she’s the god Jupiter’s wife and periodically receives radio transmissions from him. Intrigued, Negroponte abandons his old project and starts interviewing Maggie. The result, after two years, is a film that attempts to separate fact from fiction and reconstruct the fascinating real life of this endearingly eccentric woman.
10-year-old Kathy prefers pigtails to curls and runs away for the day to avoid a hair appointment. While she’s off having adventures with her best pal Jeeter, her parents clash over how to handle the situation. Kathy’s mother worries that her daughter doesn’t “fit in” while her father believes she’s “just an individual” and should be allowed to grow up at her own pace. At the end of the day, Kathy must return home to face the inevitable.
Over an eight-year period in the 1970s, Leo Hurwitz made this film tribute to his deceased wife and colleague, the film editor and director Peggy Lawson. His most personal work and his last major production, Hurwitz’s film is at once epic and lyrical; a portrait of an individual and chronicle of the times; an ode to the spirit of artistic collaboration and a testament to political idealism. The film contains beautiful original material plus documentary footage and reconstructions — excerpts from a number of Hurwitz’s films; the voices of Paul Robeson, Kaiulani Lee and Alfred Drake; and music that ranges from Bach to Marc Blitzstein.
An old man meditates by the sea. A little girl is building a sandcastle. A young couple is frolicking on the beach. The day fades into the evening, as do the memories of youth. Pika päeva ehavalgus (The Light of a Long Day) is a poetic short film about the course of life, shot on 16mm. It won medals at amateur film festivals in Yugoslavia, Austria, Finland, Lithuania and the Baltic Union Republics for the humanistic treatment of the subject and the best directorial and acting work.