Three ‘Bukowskian’ torrid nights in the life of a man in search of love. Harry, 12, is young and naive. Love, for him, is romantic love between princes and princesses demurely kissing each other on the mouth. His father is a hero who kidnapped his mother and married her on a lonely mountain peak – Later on, he’ll do the same. But Harry has a lot to learn. He also learns that there are handsome men and ugly ones, that love can be unfair. That one can find comfort in drinking – but above all he learns that man is capable of anything – absolutely anything. – to get his fair share of love.
rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films Posts
The history of the first victim of modern artillery and its moving agony, amidst conspiracies and betrayals of the powerful. Life and death of Giovanni De’ Medici, a young brave captain in the war of Charles V against the Pope, in the first half of 1500.
In London’s Soho, Johnny Solo runs the Pink Flamingo Club. He’s tough to intimidate. So when he starts getting threats and demands for protection, he fights back. Behind the takeover plot is a competitor, Diamonds Dielli. Midnight Franklin, who’s Johnny’s girlfriend and one of the club’s headliners, wants to get Johnny out of the business. In the background are a sadistic client, an underage chorus girl, a wisecracking siren who’s not averse to rough trade, a visiting journalist, and a dancer who guards her past. Can Johnny win the struggle with Diamonds, and can Midnight get him out of harm’s way?
A prisoner is found unconscious in his cell after an attempted suicide. The prison doctor is called to resuscitate the man and so must face an ethical dilemma.
Material was cut in as it came out of the camera, embarrassing moments intact. 100′ rolls timed well with music on old 78s. I was interested in immediacy, a sense of ease, and an art where suffering was acknowledged but not trivialized with dramatics. Whimsy was our achievement, as well as breaking out of step. – Ken Jacobs.
A sensitive, low-key portrait of the East Bay Activity Center, a school in Oakland, California, started in the 1950s to help emotionally disturbed children. The atmospheric documentary opens with hilly East Bay streets shrouded in fog. The mist lifts as the film moves to children at play. Often shown in unobtrusive close-up, the youngsters appear as thinking individuals, enjoying the swings, puzzling out problems, or interacting with their teacher in the classroom.
A must-see for all Rainer Werner Fassbinder fans. Radu Gabrea’s campy 1984 biopic about the late director stars the very talented Eva Mattes in drag in the title role, manipulating his Munich stock company in a variety of perverse ways while coming on as a slob enfant terrible. Funny, insightful, and packed with inside references that enthusiasts of the director and his myth will particularly enjoy, this is good, decadent fun even for spectators with only a casual acquaintance with Fassbinder; Mattes’s hallucinatory performance has a fascination all its own.
The 1978 series pilot True Grit is based on the 1969 John Wayne film of the same name. Warren Oates brings his own characteristic touches to the old Wayne role of Rooster Cogburn, the “one-eyed fat man” (now a one-eyed thin man with a beard) who agrees to help headstrong orphaned teenage girl Mattie Ross (Lisa Pelikan). Mattie wants to get to her relatives in California, but she and Cogburn get off to a bad start when Rooster loses their train fare in a poker game. He tries to recoup their loss by mining for gold in Wyoming, then by riding shotgun on the gold shipments. Had the pilot sold, it would have detailed the further adventures of Cogburn and Mattie (as indicated by the original network title, True Grit: A Further Adventure).