An early film by American film director George Moorse. Kuckucksjahre portrays a clique of “dropouts” in the 1960s. There is Hans, who lives aimlessly into the day until he finds someone he can admire in the successful guy Ardy. Because he suddenly wants to stop doing nothing, however, he is abandoned by his girlfriend Petra. Then there is Sybille, who loves both Hans and Ardy. Ardy, however, falls in love with Astrid, with whom he eventually leaves.
Category: Arthouse
In the wake of a young man’s suicide attempt, his family gathers in their large house in the country, where complex interrelationships play out against a tense vigil. Winner of the 1991 Jean Vigo Prize, Desplechin’s rarely screened featurette displays many of the hallmarks of his mature style: the deft handling of a sprawling cast of characters (played by several Desplechin regulars, including Emmanuelle Devos), the nuanced understanding of family dynamics, and the wide-ranging literary allusions. All come together in an incisive, poignant examination of the myriad ways we deal with tragedy.
Film adaptation of the short Büchner story of the same name, which tells of the stay of the psychotic Sturm und Drang poet Lenz in the home of the Alsatian priest and philanthropist Oberlin. The poet, whose pathological hallucinations are becoming increasingly unbearable, hopes for help from the gentle clergyman. But Oberlin, too, knows no advice; he regards his friend’s illness as God-given.
Renowned Egyptian director Youssef Chahine established his international reputation with Cairo Station after it screened at the Berlin Film Festival. Focusing on a group of marginalised luggage carriers and soft-drink sellers who live in abandoned traincars, Chahine posits Cairo’s main railroad station as a microcosm of Egyptian society. A crippled newspaper dealer (played powerfully by Chahine himself), falls in love with a beautiful but indifferent lemonade seller who is engaged to the muscular and virile leader of the luggage-carriers. Swept away by his obsessive desire, the crippled man kidnaps the object of his passion, with terrible consequences.
39-year-old François meets 22-year-old Muriel. She agrees that on a certain day they will meet at a hotel and he will see her naked, and promises not to sleep with her at that occasion.
A telling story of an unemployed Vietnam vet in Butte, Montana, whose wife leaves him after seven years when she feels there is no longer communication between them and – more painfully and pointedly – because she is unable to have a child owing to his sterility from exposure to Agent Orange. Told in a gentle style, richly emotional, Bell Diamond was made with non-professionals drawn from the community of Butte.
Yaaba unfolds in the spectacular landscapes of rural Burkina Faso in a mythical time when peasant life was still unspoiled by colonialism. It is the story of a friendship between Bila, Nopoko and an old woman shunned as a witch by the rest of the community. Unafraid of her, twelve-year old Bila calls her “Yaaba” (grandmother) and learns the value of intolerance and his own worth as a human being. Ouédraogo, who shot the film in his own village, said that it was “based on tales of my childhood and on that kind of bedtime storytelling we hear just before falling asleep.”
Gengobe Satsuma, an exiled samurai cast out as an Asano clan retainer is given a second chance to join his brothers in arms to become the 48th Ronin against the Shogunate. His faithful servant gathers the 100 ryo required for his acceptance. Gengobe is also in love with a greedy geisha named Koman. About to be sold to another man, Gengobe learns that for him to keep her, her debt is exactly 100 ryo.