Lena Horne’s famous song “Now!”, which was banned in the U.S. in the 1960s, was an angry call for struggle against racism. This film uses Horne’s song as the vehicle for a montage of film and photographic images from the U.S. civil rights movement. These images of racial struggle and oppression in the United States convey the heroism and pathos of the black protagonists of the Civil Rights movement, and the brutality of white police and Klansmen and the system they represent. Santiago Alvarez responds to the song’s escalating rhythm by moving between images to evoke the violence with which American society was being torn apart by white supremacy, and the intensity of the African-American struggle to right these injustices.
Tag: 1960s
Jane Fonda rehearses for the stage play Fun Couple, which is her first starring role on Broadway. As the daughter of the famous Henry Fonda, Jane strives to prove her acting chops in live theater; for her, the real measure of success. The film follows Jane through demanding rehearsals, testing the play for live audiences and, finally, opening night in New York. Though her show opens to devastating reviews, Jane’s love of acting, her determination and her resilience shine through the biting criticism. Takes viewers backstage and behind the scences with a surprisingly endearing young actress. Jane captures the earliest stirrings of the star Jane Fonda would become.
A humorous and satirical comedy, which places a man from the year 2222 one day in the (then) present day life in GDR, East Germany under Communist regime. Using a crystal for mind reading he uncovers some improprieties and moral weaknesses in the “Beautiful future” professed by VEB (“Volkseigener Betrieb” – “State Owned Holdings”).
Kazmierz Dziewanowicz’s hobby is very strange. He collects people who was born on the 29 of February. One day he sees that in his colection there are two men with the same name, the same birth place, the same date of birth and the same parents. In the middle of the night somebody kills him. The Intelligence Agency begin an investigation.
A team of agents is sent to a secret location in South America to investigate reports that a group of Nazis actually rescued Adolf Hitler at the end of the war and are hiding him.
An allegorical story about a prisoner and a guard, and about the difficulty to grasp the border between freedom and captivity. The film shows the relativity of the relationship between the executioner and the victim. They both need some contact, they need something to do, they need thoughts. The film won the Crystal Award, the Grand Prix of the 7th International Animated Film Festival in Annecy, the Honorary Diploma at the 20th International Film Festival in Locarno, and the Third Prize at the 7th Cracow Film Festival (1967).
Hani Susumu’s Inferno of First Love, is a brilliant, unforgettable, and sensitive film. Working from a script by playwright, and experimental filmmaker, Terayama Shuji, Hani’s film captures Shun, an orphan, who falls in love with a pretty young nude model named Nanami, with his sexual inadequacies, problem childhood, and coming of age. Examining Shun, we see the reality of child molestation, with deep scars that ripple into adulthood, exposing the twin monsters of repression and inadequacy looming overhead. Shun’s complex relationship with his parents, Nanami, and a young girl named Momi he befriends, eventually lead to disaster, as society closes in, so does fate.