August 1962, and one day is much like the next. La Dolce Vita starring Anita Ekberg is playing in cinemas and apartment block janitor uncle Simon hosts the in-house morning radio show with news, advice and music. The Communist Youth League is organizing a competition. The winning team of the Talent Show can take part in the World Youth Meeting far away in Helsinki. Naturally, the winners have already been decided. This musical satire built on reworked hits and gags parodies both the Kádár system and those who look back on it with nostalgia.
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
After his snowmobile breaks down during a hunting trip, an Inuk hunter leaves his family in Cape Dorset and travels to Frobisher Bay to earn money for repairs. With the help of his cousin, he becomes a taxi driver, but his attempt to adapt to city life soon leads him into drinking and trouble.
This sweet, quiet film is set during World War I. It is the story of Amy, a proper, but lonely housewife whose husband is away at war. She finds solace in a friendship with a more worldly female photographer, only to have her entire world turned upside down when the friendship becomes genuine love and she is forced to choose. Groundbreaking for its powerful yet non-prurient portrayal of lesbian first love.
Trümpi is a road movie that follows Jew’s harp virtuoso Anton Bruhin on a musical journey from Zurich and the Swiss Alps to Siberia and Tokyo. Accompanied by the distinctive sound of his trümpi (the Swiss-German word for Jew’s harp), Bruhin explores musical traditions ranging from folk to avant-garde, bridging cultures between town and country, East and West.
This program explores the film work of the painter, abstract artist, engineer, animator and film artist Oskar Fischinger, with many examples of his work. Writer William Möritz and Fischinger’s widow Elfriede discuss his work with film animator and historian John Canemaker.
This program presents excerpts from German plays written in the 1920s that illustrate tensions that contributed to the rise of Nazism. The plays are “Gas” by George Kaiser, “Hoopla! Such is Life!” by Ernst Toller, and “The Private Life of the Master Race” by Bertolt Brecht.
A nuclear awareness fan-film satire, from 1984, synced to “Life During Wartime” by the Talking Heads, created as an expression of dismay on that era’s trigger happy leaders. It traveled the world among like-minded films a generation ago, with recognition in Portugal, Tunis, Brazil, and around the US. The MPD awarded it the “Bill Barton Animation Film Award” in 1985.