rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts

April 3, 2024 / Documentary

Leading statesmen, generals, terrorists and others who made the headlines in one of history’s most bitter and enduring struggles tell the story of the Arab-Israeli conflict in The 50 Years War: Israel and the Arabs. Opening with the U.N decision to partition Palestine in 1947, the program charts the ensuing half-century of enmity, warfare, mediation and negotiation.

April 3, 2024 / Arthouse

Intrigue and deceit in medieval Hungary, with spectacular choreography by Miklós Jancsó. Gáspár, the youngest scion of the ruling family, returns home from Italy and discovers he is destined to be crowned king. However, the path to the throne is convoluted and in the death dance around the court nobody can escape their fate. Ninetto Davoli, known from Pasolini films, also plays an important role alongside László Gálffi, while József Madaras and György Cserhalmi similarly excel in this carnival-like allegory mixed with pantomime.

April 3, 2024 / Drama

In 1954, escorted by a sergeant, a French nun travels through Tonkin, spreading the good Catholic word as she goes. A mute child leads her to a remote village. Installed at a carpenter, the travelers prepare the projection material indispensable to their propaganda. At nightfall, in a storm, a group of maquisards surrounded the house. Fortunately, the carpenter is a respected man. The attackers withdraw. After a sudden rise in water, the mute child loses the precious message that had been entrusted to him by a wounded maquis…

April 3, 2024 / Drama

A man and a woman meet in Vienna in 1970 and remember together the events of 1919, when they were separate patients of Sigmund Freud. One was suicidal after a lesbian affair, the other unable to love except without sex. They discuss their memories of Freud and his analysis of their problems. These memories from 1919 are shown in flashbacks.

April 1, 2024 / Drama
April 1, 2024 / Drama

Middle-aged businessman, Simon Léotard finds his future in jeopardy when his partner Julien commits suicide after having accumulated a mass of debts. Simon’s unscrupulous business rival Lépidon offers to save him from bankruptcy by buying his company, at a discount rate. Reluctant to fall into Lépidon’s trap, Simon decides to resolve the crisis himself. A prostitute, Mado, provides him with the solution to his problems…

April 1, 2024 / Short

A cheerful parking attendant considers it his job to do more than validate parking. He wants to validate the customers themselves, delivering compliments about their appearances and the inner qualities behind them. Everyone who comes up to him with a ticket walks away validated as a worthwhile human being. Soon, the parking attendant becomes so popular that people line up for validation. His life hits a roadblock when he goes to the DMV to get his driver’s license photo taken and is met with a beautiful photographer whom he can’t get to smile.

April 1, 2024 / Fantasy

This short, written and directed by Christine Parker (Channelling Baby) takes an allegorical look at the creative process. A writer has a korero with a trickster spirit guide Hinekaro (voiced by Rena Owen), and conjures worlds from the words she inks on a page. In her imaginative struggles she’s visited by a ruru owl and her younger self, and other creatures are brought strikingly to life via special effects (beetles from a book, an eel hiding in a toilet bowl). Hinekaro was adapted from a 1991 short story by Booker Prize-winner Keri Hulme.