In this, his 1977 feature-film debut, director Kidlat Tahimik, who is widely regarded as the father of independent Philippine cinema, stars as a Filipino jeepney driver who wants to emigrate to America to become an astronaut. Dreaming of an idealized version of the West, he chairs the fan club of the rocket designer Wernher von Braun and is a devoted listener of Voice of America. Traveling in his colorfully decorated extended jeep he arrives in Paris, where his illusions can’t survive.
Tag: 1970s
Gabe Kaplan stars as David Greene, a New York deli owner who moonlights as a basketball coach at pickup games around the city. One day, David gets the offer of his dreams: a coaching position at Cadwallader College in Nevada.
A traveling minister and his wife are quietly menaced by a devil cult in the Old West. By the time the Good Reverend figures out what’s going on it may be too late to stop the evil.
This Hungarian black comedy is set at a very special fantasy park that allows visitors to play organized war games. It proves to be a very popular attraction amongst the bored tourists until they suddenly realize that they are shooting real bullets. The authorities quickly close the park, but then recruits its director to begin using it to train real troops.
Glauber Rocha films the funeral of his friend Di Cavalcanti, one of the most important Brazilian painters and artists of all time. The director/writer pays his tribute to Di by narrating an eloquent speech, referencing poets such as Augusto dos Anjos e Vinicius de Moraes, along with images of Cavalcanti’s work and the funeral as well – with the latter event being a spur of the moment to the director who rushed with his camera to the place when he heard the news.
♦♦ Amos Vogel’s “Film as a Subversive Art” ♦♦
Sentenced to life imprisonment for illegal activities, Italian International member Giulio Manieri holds on to his political ideals while struggling against madness in the loneliness of his prison cell.
The early 1970s were very good to glam rockers Slade. In their native Britain, they invaded the charts with 17 Top 20 hits, including six at #1. Devoted fans couldnt play Slades anthem-rock loud enough, and the band played to packed clubs and concert halls all across the country. Like The Beatles and The Who, Slade too was seduced by the call of celluloid. In 1975, the band answered that call, starring in the critically lauded Slade in Flame. A darker kind of Spinal Tap, the film features the band starring as a fictitious version of themselves, while taking a gritty, realistic look at the underbelly of the music industry, where hustlers, sharks and managers prey upon hot new bands.
Seize the Time was shot in the United States following the activities of the Black Panther Party. Antonello Branca’s film blends fiction and documentary. One only professional actor, Norman Jacobs, goes through simbolic pop visions of american imperialism set against real images like police combings, students marches, drills, interviews. it is an America where black people and above all Pathers are killed and repressed according to a precise plan. The film should have been screened at the Venice Film Festival but Branca prefered to withdraw it due to the unacceptable conditions set by the festival direction.