rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts

December 31, 2024 / Documentary

Serge Toubiana spent a year in the company of Isabelle Huppert. Wherever she went he followed, including prepping for a theatre production of Medea, doing promo work at Cannes, posing for photo shoots, as well behind the scenes footage of Huppert working with Claude Chabrol on Merci Pour le Chocolat’ and Michael Haneke on The Piano Teacher.

December 30, 2024 / Experimental

In the final days of the American Civil War, an emigre Hungarian military officer attempts to map the situation of the enemy. Many veterans of the 1848 War of Independence in Hungary fought on the northern side. Experienced Fiala, Boldogh who struggles with homesickness and the reckless Vereczky all experience their enforced emigration in different ways and news of impending peace elicits different reactions from them all. Gábor Bódy’s film is a thoroughly experimental work, constantly surprising and disorienting the viewer, posing serious questions, with a unique style of expression and perspective.

December 30, 2024 / Drama

Csöre is a 7-year-old orphan girl living in unbearable circumstances in rural Hungary during the 1920s. The poverty-stricken Dudás couple only take in the little ‘waif’ in return for the placement fee they receive from the orphanage, while the wealthy Szennyes family use her as a domestic servant. Fate is equally hard on her in both places. It would appear that there is no end to the humiliations the innocent child has to bear. László Ranódy adapts for film the classic novel by Zsigmond Móricz, with shattering effect.

December 30, 2024 / Documentary

Canadian documentary filmmakers Janis Lundman and Adrienne Mitchell, over the course of a year, gathered footage of five very different 16-year-old girls, who each offered her own views on a range of topics relevant to adolescents. Collecting the girls’ most intimate viewpoints on relationships, substance abuse, their families and their aspirations, Lundman and Mitchell offer a poignant look at the hopes and fears of young women at the brink of adulthood.

December 30, 2024 / Experimental

The Chinese Typewriter is about education and language, and the way a society is shaped by them. It exemplifies the politically committed film that defies the strict rubric of avant-garde. Daniel Barnett seems less interested in challenging traditional form than in exploding his own occidental vision. He transforms cyclonic cutting among a character-filled Chinese printing shop, a school, and street life into a visual poem that extracts the country’s fierce mechanistic energy while leaving the fragrant residue of humanity.

December 30, 2024 / Comedy
December 25, 2024 / Family

The toys in the playroom of the Jones household magically come to life when their owners aren’t looking. On Christmas Eve, as the toys eagerly await the arrival of a new toy, Rugby the tiger plots to make sure he remains the favorite toy.

December 25, 2024 / Television

In this one-man show starring Rich Little, Ebeneezer Scrooge (played by Rich as W.C. Fields) hates Christmas, and it’s up to the Ghosts of Christmas Past (played by Rich as Humphrey Bogart), Present (played by Rich as Columbo) and Future (played by Rich as Inspector Clouseau) to convince him otherwise.