Thirty-year-old Irén dreams of a separate apartment so she can move in with her lover, the married Attila. Hope is sparked by one of the man’s acquaintances, the construction contractor Hevesi, but in order to apply for the larger apartment, she must first enter into a marriage of convenience with the young Gábor. Irén takes out a loan on her modest kindergarten teacher salary, wanders through the mazes of socialist bureaucracy, while Hevesi and her nominal husband harass her with sexual offers, and by the time the day of moving in is within reach, it turns out that Attila doesn’t want to leave his family after all.
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
Ulrike Ottinger’s singular debut feature is an extravagantly stylized lesbian pirate spectacle that radically deconstructs decades of male-oriented adventures. Madame X (Tabea Blumenschein) is the notorious pirate ruler of the China Sea who recruits a motley crew of women (among them avant-garde icon Yvonne Rainer as a disillusioned artist) to leave behind their humdrum lives and join her on her outlaw ship, the Orlando. Once aboard, the women’s search for freedom leads them on an odyssey that, in Ottinger’s words, “is not a journey outward into adventure but a journey into the interior.”
Within a few years, Chiu, a small-time crook, has become a gang leader. But his professional ambitions are actually quite different: he wants to leave illegality behind and make a career for himself and his lover in Canada – as a chef. However, this craft must first be learned and Chiu’s talent in the field of cooking leaves much to be desired.
A controversial documentary screened in the official competition at the Cannes Festival. It depicts a hypnosis session in which participants, under its influence, inflict pain on themselves and others. The film addresses important themes such as manipulation, abuse of power, and collective obedience, provoking strong reactions from audiences and critics.
A documentary, almost silent depiction of a meeting between a woman and a worker on a bridge — this intimate ritual without dialogue is interpreted as a symbol of love, hope, and human encounter in a minimalist representation.
Edited together by Richard Linklater in 1991 from film countdowns and tail leaders from films submitted to the Austin Film Society in Austin, Texas from 1987 to 1990. It is Linklater’s tribute to the film countdown.
Mystical, ephemeral and nearly lost to time, alchemy was a “magical theory of nature” widely held in pre-Enlightenment Europe. Author Terence McKenna portrays John Dee, court magician to Queen Elizabeth I, in this history of the discipline. McKenna discusses the role of the science as he travels to key sites in alchemic lore throughout Eastern Europe, including Heidelberg, home to the world’s only contemporary alchemy lab.
A young boy strays through a wrought-iron gateway into an overgrown garden filled with insects and birds. Amidst the sculptures of Antiquity, he glimpses a mermaid-like woman in a wheelchair and begins to follow her. The film consisting of engraving-like drawings is a surrealistic coming of age tale played out on the boundary of this world and the realm of myths.