With fast changing visuals and moods, an artist presents his family’s twentieth-century story. Although Stalin’s sour image is in the background, a boy’s childhood is a dreamlike world of colors and a butterfly. War interrupts youth and romance. Hitler, concentration camps, and conflagration finally give way to a mother and child (father is missing in the war), birds, beauty and more butterflies. The child grows. Pop culture arrives from America, but the grim shadow of Stalinism remains. The artist leaves to study in the West. Art, animation, sex, and love nourish him. He earns a diploma!
Tag: 1980s
A fictional account of Orson Welles’ real passage to Brazil where he was supposed to film a cultural film called “It’s All True”, to present a positive image of Brazilian people and the country’s grandiosity’s to the U.S. government, a project that was part of FDR’s Good Neighbor policy. But Welles got enchanted with everything around him and got distracted from the project, that never got fully made. This movie speculates what really happened to Welles that prevented him from fulfilling his work.
Set in 1894, when Oscar Wilde’s close friendship with Bosie Douglas provokes a quarrel with Bosie’s father, Lord Queensberry. Oscar eventually charges Lord Queensberry with criminal libel. However, the libel suit spectacularly backfires. This BBC miniseries charts the steady slide into disrepute of the notable author and playwright, and stars (a very young) Michael Gambon in the title role.
Policeman Jack Welles finds himself in possession of the pay off from a huge drug deal. He decides to keep the money but his plans turn sour when he discovers his wife with her young lover. In the ensuing struggle the lovers mistakenly believe they have killed Jack. They take the money and run, pursued by Jack and a hit man from the drug syndicate. The action explodes as they each fight for their own desires and obsessions.
When a deranged janitor announces his plot to hold a university to ransom, a plucky young student and her police bodyguard find themselves pushed to the limit as the killer pursues them across campus. Hungarian director Jenő Hódi captures the seamier of New York City circa 1989 in a film reminiscent of the work of his mentor Brian De Palma.
When the small town of Minyaka suffers from a drought, a kind and mysterious stranger offers to make it rain by playing his flute; under the condition that he be paid. But after Fluteman makes it rain, and even stops it; the town council, blind by their greed and pride, refuse to pay him. Fluteman stands before the town and warns them of a curse he would bring; and so the next day the school playground fades into silence as all the children disappear into the bush… except one.
1941 was Francis Lee’s first film; CH’AN his last. In between, he became an expert Sumi-e watercolorist and here he combines eloquent ink paintings with masterful animation methods. This film moves through mysterious shapes, takes the viewer on an explosive meditative journey across the imaginary landscapes of his creations.
A look at the filming of the 1953 political drama “Salt of the Earth,” made by artists blacklisted by Hollywood during the McCarthy era. That film’s producer, Paul Jarrico, speaks about his late colleagues, Herbert Biberman and Michael Wilson, and about the Communist scare that gripped the film community in the 1950s.