The life story of the famed rocket scientist Dr. Werner von Braun, one of the most brilliant and controversial figures of the space age. Dr. von Braun helped pioneer man’s adventure into space through his rocket experiments; his was the brain behind the V-2 rockets which blasted London in World War II; his was also the brain which led America into the development and the launching of space satellites.
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
A young orphan who lives with her grandmother in a large Virginian home infatuates herself with the voices of Joan d’Arc. Her nanny seeks out the help of a rich suitor (David Lynch’s first real acting role) to take her and the orphan away when she realizes that the often cruel grandmother cannot offer the orphan the love that she needs.
In February of 1941, South African troops are in action against the Italian forces on the northern frontier of Kenya. An Italian invasion, aimed at pushing the Allied Forces out of Central and East Africa, is imminent. The South African Command realizes it has no forces at its disposal capable of stopping the Italian objective. The Command resorts to a grand bluff, designed to mislead the Italians into believing that heavy concentrations of South African troops are placed at strategic points—thus making the planned advanced impossible.
In this extremely funny satire on Soviet bureaucracy, the protagonist, a hapless author, attempts again and again to get his editors to accept his manuscript — a novel with the title “Blue Mountains or Tieshan.” The story unfolds with the inevitability of a fairy tale in which a naive hero is painfully being initiated into the ways of the world, and while the would-be author wanders through the hallways of his publishers, we in turn learn a lot about the crumbling Soviet system and the inactivity of its bureaucratic functionaries. By Hollywood standards, the film may be slow and repetitive, but it is precisely the repetition of tragicomic situations that bring the film to the heights of a Beckettian absurdity.
Tony Takitani had a solitary childhood. At school he studied art, but while his sketches are accurate and detailed, they lack feeling. Used to being self-sufficient, Tony finds himself becoming more irrational and instinctive. After finding his true vocation as a technical illustrator, he becomes fascinated by Eiko, a client who in turn is fascinated by high end fashion.
An old empty mansion. The ghost of a man who lived there returns to recall the crucial moments of a lifetime. Faced with the proximity of death, the experiences of his past come to the memory of Juan. In a fragmented, sometimes confused way, Juan relives crucial moments of his life and his family, from 1915 to 1966, almost always linked to the names of several women. Memories that remind him of having missed numerous opportunities to be happy.
A soldier in a Soviet nuclear facility finds himself trapped in a bureaucratic nightmare with no exit in sight. The surreal imagery in this cartoon from Armenfilm includes a platoon of miniature shock troopers, mutant generals and dinosaurs singing We Are the World. The sense that communism had failed to advance, and was in fact causing the Soviet Union to turn in on itself, is powerfully felt.