Adapted from an Appalachian Jack Tale set in the late 1940s, this tale follows a World War II veteran named Jack who, in return for an act of kindness, receives two magical gifts: a sack that can catch anything and a jar that can show whether a sick person will recover or die. Jack becomes a national hero when he rescues the president’s daughter from a serious illness by capturing Death in his magic sack. However, after many years without Death in the world, Jack realizes that he has upset the natural order and releases Death to save humankind from perpetual old age and misery.
Tag: 1980s
This ecologically-minded film builds on the contrasts of idyllic, untouched nature and small communities versus the world of rigid, faceless, gigantic machine monstrosities. This film that was created at the time of mass demonstrations against the levelling of Transylvanian villages and the barrage system on the Danube in the late 1980s was inspired by the novel Farewell to Matyora by Valentin Rasputin about a Siberian village flooded because of the construction of a hydroelectric power station.
This movie tells the story of the early life and rise to fame and fortune of French fashion designer Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, beginning with her upbringing in an orphanage and training as a milliner, but concentrating on her relationship with Etienne de Balsan and her tempestuous love affair with his friend Boy Capel, and the role the two men played in setting her up as an independent business woman.
In the 1940 Olympics, prisoners of a German stalag organized sports games in the underground. Had it not been for the war, they probably would have met the camp supervisors in the sports arena. Meanwhile, the SS men try to break them with punitive gymnastics.
A young boy is locked into his apartment when his mother goes out and must care for his baby brother and cope with various domestic catastrophes while his grandmother and a neighbor try to locate his mother or the key to the apartment.
Bette Gordon explores the cinematic representation of women in this feminist experimental work, which, in the words of the filmmaker, centers on “women’s inability to place and define themselves in language and politics, the location of radical struggle.”
David Anderson’s waking dream is a poetic animated journey through the rich fantasy life of a child’s unconscious, combining elaborate cut-outs, intricate drawn cell animation and live action. A young boy finds himself in a mysterious express train travelling through a forbodeing and surreal landscape.
A group of down-home Italians from Brooklyn, with Anthony in the lead, settle into a vacation beach house with another group of teens from Philadelphia. Anthony finds his interest focusing on blond Philadelphian Cindy, and the rest of the film follows with the usual pairing off, disagreements, and discussions.