David Gladwell (Requiem for a Village) was just 20 years old when he made A Summer Discord, an imaginative amateur, silent short film set in the countryside which tells the story of a little girl who is reprimanded by her mother. Of particular note is the film’s dark nightmare sequence which is shot in colour (unlike the rest of the film) and which anticipates Gladwell’s later, highly poetical films.
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
Karemoana was the final destination of Manfred Signal, retired teacher of drawing, whose life was dedicated to nursing her dying mother, and instructing generations of young girls in the art of accurately depicting shadows. But now her mother has died and Manfred feels free to break away and begin life anew. She journeys ‘up north’, and begins to settle in her idyllic island home in a little white cottage near the sea. She had looked forward to savouring the feeling of aloneness, but her first long night in her new home is one of terror.
While on assignment to document poverty in Brazil for Life magazine, African American photographer Gordon Parks encountered one of the most important subjects of his career: Flávio da Silva. Parks featured the resourceful, ailing boy, who lived with his family in one of Rio’s working-class neighborhoods known as favelas, in his 1961 photo essay “Freedom’s Fearful Foe: Poverty.” His reportage resulted in donations from Life readers but also sparked controversy.
This film depicts the life of the 19th-century Portuguese writer Wenceslau De Moraes by means of nine ancient ballads from China. The writer married a Chinese woman after he left his wife and family to go live in Macao. Later, he moved to Japan where he fell in love with a Japanese woman, staying in Japan for the rest of his life. Mixed in with the career and loves of Moraes is the history of Portugal at home and in its colonies.
A disturbed young woman is kept prisoner in a castle by her aunt for her money. The game-keeper, her guardian, tries to rape her but she escapes. In her flight she meets a man also running away, from two killers.
A child is confronted with the (ever young) old age of the world, its hazards, its cinema and music, shot in seven days in Rome, Fiumicino, Ciampino and Cinecittà. What will happen on July 12, 1995, in Rome? What will become of July 12, 1995, in Rome?
On Aug. 19, 1991 in Crown Heights (Brooklyn, N.Y.) a Hasidic man accidentally runs over a Black boy (Gavin Cato). Three hours later a young Jewish scholar (Yankel Rosenbaum) was murdered by Black youths. Four days of fire-bombing and riots ensued. Anna Deavere-Smith acts out the roles of these 18 persons involved in the racial conflict, trying to present the differing views of this serious problem. Includes actual film footage of the riots and violence.
HARVEST OF DESPAIR is the first documentary to be made about “the forgotten holocaust,” the 1932-33 famine in the Ukraine. Archival film footage and the riveting testimonies of survivors now living in the U.S. and Canada point to the appalling cause of the famine – a deliberate genocide plan decreed by the Soviet central government for political and economic gain. While their wheat-fields produced abundant grain for export, 25,000 Ukrainians starved to death daily, totalling 5 to 10 million by the end of 1933. Called “one of the greatest cover-ups in history,” the grisly horrors described are still denied by the government today. The film indicts not only the Soviet Union, but a world that permits such things to exist, even today.