In this British crime drama, an honest railroad signalman finds himself sorely tempted when he witnesses a murder and later finds $20,000 floating in the harbor. The trouble begins when he decides to take the money and leave town with his daughter and a gold digger. Based on a novel by Georges Simenon.
Year: 2023
Skyward examines the relationship between man, birds, and the environment at Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary in St. Petersburg, FL. Centering on the growth and development of a family of Canadian geese, and restoring nature’s ecological balance.
In 1959, Peter Weiss made his first feature length film, Hägringen, with Staffan Lamm and Gunilla Palmstierna in leading roles. The script to the rather experimental film is based on the novel Document I which he had published in Swedish in 1949 on his own initiative. The film shows the encounter of a young man with a large city that is yet unknown to him. His passage, accompanied by often surrealistic and absurd impressions, turns into a tour-de-force through various urban milieus.
In just 14 minutes, Avraham Heffner’s short film successfully refines the confession of a quarrel and reconciliation between an ageing couple in late 1960s Tel Aviv. The heroine’s omnipresent, stream-of-consciousness narration provides a harsh account of life together. And though it is a short film, Slow Down was nonetheless hailed a harbinger of a new style of Israeli filmmaking and storytelling, while director Avraham Heffner himself admitted it was his favourite film. Based on a short story by Simone de Beauvoir (L’âge de discretion).
Based on an autobiographical novelette by the well-known Kerala writer Basheer, this is a love story, set in a prison cell the 40s, between the imprisoned Basheer and a woman from the neighbouring prison compound. They are separated by a high wall so that they never see each other and have to devise ingenious ways of communicating. Produced for TV, the story is played out in confined spaces with a sense of claustrophobia and suppressed violence which enhances the emotional impact of the moving love story.
This was the first of a trilogy of films that director Rodríguez filmed to exalt the box office figure of Villa. Narrated in the form of independent episodes, it has seven segments of which the last one is the longest and narrates the love that a singer named Jesusita feels for the bold, but married, general. Between the episodes the loyalty of the man is shown, the sense of justice, his hypocritical heresy and the aspect of a womanizer and conqueror.
This colourful short animation traces the insecure protagonist’s path to tobacco addiction after he discovers, as a teengaer, that smoking can make him “cool”. His addiction follows him well into adulthood, until the scare of lung cancer forces him to face his demons. This funny yet cautionary tale is told by the protagonist as he sits on a psychiatrist’s couch, his recollections amusingly illustrated in colourful vignettes of his past. Both entertaining and visually rich, the film is a deterrent against smoking drawn in typical ’60s modernist/pop-art style.
All of those handsome young men in their flying machines are billeted in a field next to the Widow Berthelot’s farmhouse in France. Her daughter Jeannine is curious about the young men fighting for England in World War I and their airplanes. Then one of the aviators is killed. His replacement is Captain Philip Blythe who can’t help but notice Jeannine. When he lands the first time, she is standing in the middle of his “runway.” She makes a more favorable impression when he sees her later by the lilacs. When all of the young men depart on a mission, Blythe promises to return.