In the offices of a prestigious New York daily, a junior editor and his veteran secretary are locked in a battle of wills over office culture. Will speed, efficiency and organisation win out, or are the old ways best? This short was Oscar nominated in 1999 and features a cameo performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman.
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
A leading director of the Czech film renaissance provides a philosophical meditation on life and death, set amidst complex hospital apparatus and the sadness, hope, or resignation of the patients. Existentialist rather than optimist, the approach is one of humanistic atheism, accepting death as part of life. Interviews with doctors and nurses explore their outlook; all speak of death as a fact, without either sentimentality or religiosity. The studied objectivity of the film only imperfectly hides an intense emotionality.
HOBO is a travelogue of sorts, a portrait of life lived by homeless men on and off the railways in America. John T. Davis spent three months travelling on the boxcars with his principal subject, Beargrease, who each year leaves his home to ride the rails and scavenge for food. It is a world mostly populated by men, many of them ‘misfits’, who for various reasons find life on the margins of settled society easier than being a part of it. The film confronts the romance and mythology created by the many songs about life as a hobo, but finds romance and beauty in the landscapes of the American west.
This film documents the journey of actress Jane Fonda and her husband – future California state senator Tom Hayden – through North and South Viet Nam in 1974. They travel from villages to towns talking with ordinary Vietnamese about their lives and the effects of the war on their lives, families, and communities.
A live action viewpoint camera cuts between various mundane settings – children in a nursery, a house, office, workshop, church, hospital, farm, train and so on. The images are increasingly treated with effects, then shift to animation – showing rolling abstract patterns – before reverting back to live action, to be brought up short by a door with a notice pinned to it: “Stop! Entrance Prohibited”.
Scissors dance like a ballet dancer on sheets of paper. She carves the sun, the flower, the fish. The boy needs new toys. Scissors offers colored cubes and patterned balls. And then she cuts out the girl. A naughty boy wants all the toys for himself. The girl is offended and hides. The boy understands that being alone is boring. Then the scissors cut out many more boys and girls. The fun games begin.
Period piece about a Brazil that is no more. This movie is the sequel to “Black God, White Devil”, and takes place 29 years after Antonio das Mortes killed Corisco (the “Blond Devil”), last of the Cangaceiros. In “the old days”, Antonio’s function in life was to exterminate these bandits, on account of his personal grudges against them. His life had been meaningless for the last 29 years, but now, a new challenge awaits him. When a Cangaceiro appears the local Land Baron, an old man, does what seems obvious to him: he calls Antonio das Mortes, killer of Cangaceiros. At first, Antonio is ecstatic. His life has gained new meaning. But soon it becomes obvious that this new Cangaceiro (named Coirana) is no Corisco, but an idealist.