Characters adrift in an isolated landscape collide with the past and each other as they unravel the secrets of a dead man’s dreams. A moody meditation on anti-heroism, the film pays tribute to the black and white style of cinema noir.
Month: November 2020
Based on Arata Osada’s book Children of the A-bomb: The Testament of the Boys and Girls of Hiroshima (1959) the film retells the horrors of the Hiroshima bombing through the eyes of children. It mainly consists of illustrations drawn by the children.
Antonioni had a long fascination with India which gave way to this 1977 short capturing the country’s most important Hindu festival, Kumbha Mela, during which millions of worshippers gather to pray where the Ganges, Jamuna and Saraswati rivers converge. The film material remained unused until 1989, when Antonioni was convinced to edit it and to present it at the Cannes Festival.
This film documents the legendary SoHo restaurant and artists’ cooperative Food, which opened in 1971. Owned and operated by Caroline Goodden, Food was designed and built largely by Matta-Clark, who also organized art events and performances there. As a social space, meeting ground and ongoing art project for the emergent downtown artists’ community, Food was a landmark that still resonates in the history and mythology of SoHo in the 1970s.
Franz West (1909-85) remembers his youth in Vienna: the variety of the Jewish population of the so called Matzah-Island, his commitment to the worker’s movement of the Red Vienna and the rise of Austro-fascism and National Socialism. West’s masterly narration combined with impressing archive footage illustrate and elucidate the complex Austrian history between WW1 and WW2.
The brothers Santos and Rufino Peralta are used like animals in the workplace at the Parana Stop. There they encounter enormous hardship and inhuman conditions of work as a consequence of the immense greed of the managers. A worker’s rebellion is maturing, to the point that it is developed into trade union of workers who respond against their grief. Finally, the workers plot a counterattack and punish their corrupt employers.
Bill Saunders arriving in a lawless town is quickly made Marshal. But when he arrests the gang members, the victims refuse to testify. However one rancher is willing to testify and when the gang kills him, Bill jails the killers. This causes the gang leader Rawhide to reveal the identity of the big boss and Bill goes after him.
A soporific adaptation of The Awakening, Kate Chopin’s proto-feminist, turn-of-the-century novel about a Kentucky-born wife and mother of two whose summer season on Grand Isle with her husband’s easy-going Creole friends frees her from inhibitions. Courted by the young Robert, she finds herself through swimming, unrequited love, painting and other unconventional behaviour.