A lonely old man lives in a desolate block of appartments in Vienna which is to be pulled down to make way for something more profitable. He fights for his humble home, fortifies it to defend himself against invincible forces of profit. A staid cinematography follows the character’s resistance and downfall.
Category: Arthouse
Os Mutantes examines the lives of three kids in their early teens who have rejected life in juvenile homes or with foster families to take their chances on their own. They drift into petty crime and are exploited by sexual predators; the two boys end up working in a pornographic film, while Andreia becomes pregnant.
The Magicians were a rock band. The guitarist of the band committed suicide three years ago. Several other members of the band that has meanwhile split up meet each other on a cold New Year’s Eve. It’s snowing. They hang around in a bar. Thinking of better times. The film was made in one shot. A filmic bravura piece. Maker Song Il-gon profited from the freedom of his commission to experiment with making a film without editing. This resulted in a beautiful play with the unity of place and action, as in the theatre, and a reflection on the time past of the story.
David lives in the outskirts of Essen, where director Thomas Arslan also grew up, with his single mother in a social housing project. Heavy metal and girls are at the center of his life. He looks forward to the end of his school years and the new phase of his life with more trepidation than hope.
A day in the life of 21-year-old Deniz, who aims to become an actress and makes her living by dubbing movies. After she has split with her old boyfriend she gets to know Diego and spends the evening with him.
Hani Susumu’s Inferno of First Love, is a brilliant, unforgettable, and sensitive film. Working from a script by playwright, and experimental filmmaker, Terayama Shuji, Hani’s film captures Shun, an orphan, who falls in love with a pretty young nude model named Nanami, with his sexual inadequacies, problem childhood, and coming of age. Examining Shun, we see the reality of child molestation, with deep scars that ripple into adulthood, exposing the twin monsters of repression and inadequacy looming overhead. Shun’s complex relationship with his parents, Nanami, and a young girl named Momi he befriends, eventually lead to disaster, as society closes in, so does fate.
Faced with death, Sindbad looks back on his life. Old photos and letters evoke past loves and short-lived passions. In these rambling memories, he recalls past moments of pleasure in a woman’s smile or a magnificent lunch. The plastic world of remembering is demonstrated by the freely flowing visual images. This poetic vision made on the basis of the Sindbad short stories by Gyula Krúdy is a core work of Hungarian film. Zoltán Huszárik builds up a strange world from fragments of events, visual shards and subjective feelings.
The day that Pier Paolo Pasolini was killed, Glauber Rocha decided to make this film about the life of Christ in the Third World. Starting from a dialectical synthesis between capitalism and socialism, and a search of interracial relationships in Brazil, Rocha created a work of religious and prophetic tone that results in a kind of bewilderment contemplative, now lyrical, now frantic, soaked in a new messianism. In his last film, the director proposed a tune of sounds and images that build a picture of Brazil and a portrait of himself.
