A compassionate study of aged women living in a retirement home through the observations of Jean Campbell as she moves from room to room talking with other inmates and discussing her experiences within the institution.
Tag: 1970s
Brocani conjures together all your favourite European cultural and historical myth figures in order to attack the centuries of ‘sublimation’ that have produced our cities and their inhabitants. The gang’s all here: Frankenstein’s monster gropes towards the awareness that his mind is a universe; Attila, naked on a white horse, liberates his people from their ignominy; the ultra-caustic Viva bemoans the frustrations of married life and drifts into the elegiac persona of the Bloody Countess Bathory; Louis Waldon is a hip American tourist searching for the (missing) Mona Lisa. The range is extraordinary, from stand-up Jewish comedy to a kind of flea-market expressionism. Brocani’s approach is contemplative rather than agitational, which confounds the impatient; Gavin Bryars’ lovely Terry Riley-esque score matches the ambience exactly.
Reluctantly, a sulky adolescent returns to her parents’ house for yet another boring summer vacation, dabbling in desire and the art of desirability, eventually mixing reality with vision, caged fantasies with the fierce female sexuality.
A man wearing a mask of King Kong walks through a maze unrolling a ball of thread. Franco Brocani renewes his interest in the dens of perdition providing a free vision of the classic myth of the Minotaur. Shot in an art gallery in Rome and adapted from a story by Jorge L. Borges.
Sándor Sára’s short experimental film juxtaposes pitiful war memorials against actual footage from the First World War. Thus, by exploiting the power of montage, the absurdity of celebrating war is brought to the fore along with the tragedy of how ordinary people are manipulated by ideologies and then despatched to the slaughterhouse. Pro Patria can be viewed as the overture in Sára’s film series on war, in which he does not yet apply the medium of the ‘talking heads’ documentary but instead the montage art form in order to dig deep into the subject: the tragic truth of the individual sent off to battle.
Four socialites unexpectedly clash: heiress Brooke Carter runs into gambler Johnny Spanish at the race track while playboy Michael O. Pritchard nearly runs into stage star Kitty O’Kelly with his car. Backstage at Kitty’s show, it turns out she and Brooke are old friends who attended public school together. The foursome do the town, accompanied by Brooke’s companion Elizabeth, who throws herself at Michael’s butler and chauffeur Rodney James.
A seriocomic look at the life of Julie Walker. Bored with her marriage, and encouraged by her friends, she contemplates an affair. Fantasy and reality mix often, leading to complications and headaches.
In a final act of defeat or defiance, a man builds a sinister contraption. This darkly humorous low-budget short film satirises the typical male pursuits of physical toil and precision craftsmanship. The Contraption is directed by James Dearden who would go on to write Fatal Attraction (1987) and stars The Rocky Horror Picture Show‘s Richard O’Brien.