A concentration camp on a barren island is hell for the exiled prisoners. The everyday life of the people who live there consists of interrogations, psychological and physical violence, arbitrary punishments and other torments. One of the prisoners who refuses to yield is subjected to torture. Trying to escape, he falls into the sea. When the Queen visits the island, the prison guards find the runaway and murder him without a second thought, since he is already assumed dead.
Tag: 1970s
In 1973 surfer and sometime director of photography George Greenhough got tired of the overcrowded beaches of Southern California and set of on a journey of discovery. He designed and built his own surfboards, some equipped with underwater camera equipment. With a small group of friends he built a boat and went off the map to find some waves they could truly call their own. This journey of discovery became a breathtaking cinematic trip. Combined with the music of Pink Floyd, an understated first person narrative, and some of the best surfing footage I believe has been ever shot they created one of the most remarkable works of art ever made.
The Reason Why presents two cronies who sit before an isolated country house and gradually spill forth their personal feelings about the things they have killed. Addresses the impulse toward war, violence and murder, pondering whether man is a violent animal ‘programmed’ to kill.
Charles Colson was involved in the infamous Watergate scandal that brought down the administration of former President Richard Nixon. Colson was sentenced to prison for the crimes he committed in the name of “national security”, and while in prison he underwent a religious conversion. This film tells the story of his life up to, including and after his conversion.
In 1900, Stepha, the vivacious 30 year old daughter of a wealthy couple, agrees to marry her cousin Paul, who has accumulated large debts as an Austrian army officer. Paul refuses to work or to consummate the marriage, and then his health steadily declines.
Using interviews and other footage shot especially for this documentary, French director Claude Lanzmann investigates the state of Israel in 1972. This movie concentrates on Israelis going about their business of everyday living. One interview shows the reactions of a concentration camp survivor, now a police chief, to being called a “Nazi” by demonstrators. Another segment follows the experiences of a Russian Jewish immigrant, beginning with his first visit to the Wailing Wall and continuing to his disturbing perception that he is welcomed more by virtue of his being Russian than for the fact that he is Jewish.
Maddalena Ciarrapico arrives in New York City from Italy to get married and brings her fiancé a gift of mortadella (large Italian pork sausage) from her co-workers at the sausage factory where she used to work. But she is refused permission to bring the mortadella into the country because of the ban on meat that may contain food-borne diseases. An indignant Maddalena refuses to hand the sausage over, staying in the customs office at the airport, sparking a diplomatic incident in which she attracts widespread sympathy and support.
S:TREAM:S:S:ECTION:S:ECTION:S:S:ECTIONED signifies a fairly abrupt shift and departure from Sharits’ previous mandala films; this was his first work in many years that did not employ the flicker technique and used moving images. Paul Sharits’ epic and groundbreaking work is composed of three repeated, fourteen-minute sections of a river current. Each repetition consists of six dissolving layers of a river flowing in a myriad of directions, broken up by horizontal tape splices acting as dams. Deep and precisely executed emulsion scratches—created by custom tools Sharits made—eventually appear in continuous sets of threes throughout the film until the entire screen is nearly covered. The resulting effects represent, in the words of P. Adams Sitney, a “powerful and beautiful act of vandalism.”