A man sentenced to death reflects on his arrest, interrogations, torture… and a bit on the time before, long gone, swallowed up by pain and numbness.
Tag: 1970s
The third installment in the Coffin Joe Trilogy, The Awakening of the Beast, follows Coffin Joe’s sadistic experiments on four drug addicts who volunteer to take LSD. The experiments are intended to prove that drug use is related to sexual depravity. Director José Mojica Marins once again plays Coffin Joe, who sits with a panel of psychiatrists on a television show, using videos of the addicts as proof of the connection between drugs and lewd sexual behavior.
Péter Szoboszlay’s strongly socially critical film is permeated by the stylistic motifs of psychedelic pop-art and hippy Art Nouveau. The hero is a typical figure of the soft dictatorship, the tyrannical janitor, in the character of which one can almost see the spectre of fascist ideology. The pseudo-documentary (albeit with sociographic authenticity) interview with the janitor is be performed by actor–director Péter Halász.
Story about a small dance band in the late ’50s making pocket money by doing local weddings and hops with decorously swung versions of ‘Sugar In The Morning.’ Their leader is Sven Klang, brilliantined and eternally grinning, a car dealer by day and a people dealer by night. His control of the band, on and off stage, in and out of bed, is complete – until the arrival of the new alto saxophonist who has played the Stockholm club circuit, a full-time jazz man whose art is his life.
The true story of John Chapman, a college president who took a sabbatical and went out and got a job as a general laborer, to try to experience life outside his well-ordered but insulated college environment.
A former priest becomes embroiled in the drama raging between a Mexican rancher, his unhappy daughter and psychotic son whilst dealing with his own issues of guilt and a loss of faith. A new relationship with the local brothel keeper seems to offer a fresh start but the rancher and his son are set on making him pay for his interference and his own inner demons are never far away.
Told in flashback as Prince Mieszko I lies feverish in his bed just before the Battle of Cedynia, Gniazdo recounts how the revered leader extended Poland’s borders, formed an alliance with Emperor Otto I, and ultimately strengthened his country’s autonomy by achieving victory during that crucial battle in the year 972.
French documentary on the world of a brain-damaged, physically-handicapped child confined to a wheel chair, unable to speak but trying desperately to communicate with his nurse and the other children in the hospital. It chronicles his friendship with another youngster even more crippled than himself, their joy in being together, their little spats and, finally, the termination of their friendship by death. Directed by Pierre Jallaud, it is a remarkable achievement, treating its subject creatively yet with complete integrity. There is no commentary, no dialogue, only the natural sounds of the children and their environment.