While working on a documentary, Michel Negroponte encounters a homeless woman in Central Park who claims to be Robert Ryan’s daughter. What more, the woman, Maggie, says she’s the god Jupiter’s wife and periodically receives radio transmissions from him. Intrigued, Negroponte abandons his old project and starts interviewing Maggie. The result, after two years, is a film that attempts to separate fact from fiction and reconstruct the fascinating real life of this endearingly eccentric woman.
Tag: 1990s
Former music-video director Michael H. Shamberg debut film is an experimental drama about a woman who comes to terms with painful childhood memories. Orlando is an expatriate American sports journalist living in Paris. She is also slowly recovering from childhood sexual abuse from her father and an incestuous relationship with her late brother. As she wanders the streets on a rainy evening, she sullenly ruminates over her memories. Both Kristin Scott Thomas and Christina Ricci play small parts in this film, while legendary filmmaker Chris Marker provides computer graphics.
Yuriko works at home all day as a tape transcriber, while her husband, Takashi, works as a school teacher. Yuriko’s behavior grows stranger and more distant and she starts spending all day “patrolling” the neighborhood. Takashi follows her one afternoon and begins to suspect that she may be suffering from schizophrenia.
An ironic backstage short, in which a young actress in her dressing-room, preparing to go onstage for a play which she tells us is failing, reflects on the performers’ and audiences’ lack of enthusiasm, and reminisces about a failed love affair. Meanwhile, the other performers carouse enthusiastically and we hear the audience’s enthusiastic response.
In this gay classic from acclaimed filmmaker Ira Sachs, 18-year-old Lincoln Bloom leads a relatively straight teenage life, but finds himself drawn to the anonymous sexual encounters of local gay bars and video arcades. He soon meets Minh, a Vietnamese immigrant, and embarks with him on a trip down the river, where their doomed relationship hits a dramatic turning point.
Four people at the breakfast table, an American family, are locked in the beat of the editing table. The short, pulsating sequence at the family table shows, in its original state, a classic, deceptive harmony. Matin Arnold deconstructs this scenario of normality by destroying its original continuity. It catches on the tinny sounds and bizarre body movements of the subjects, which, in reaction, become snagged on the continuity. The message that lies deep under the surface of the family idyll, suppressed or lost, is exposed–that message is war.
Norman Foster is widely considered to be one of the world’s greatest living architects. While other international practices have succumbed to commercial pressures, Foster has retained a reputation for innovation and originality. He is also highly respected for his flair when adapting or converting older buildings to present-day needs. His designs are always rooted in his concern for minimal environmental damage and maximum technological efficiency.This film follows Foster at work in his office and on the site of some of his major new projects, including the Law Faculty at Cambridge University and the telecommunications tower in Santiago de Compostela.
A look at the 40-year career of acclaimed feminist artist Nancy Spero, who, in her own works, is concerned with “rewriting the imaging of women through historical time.” With Spero’s own voice as narration, this documentary tracks her development as she matured against the grain of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, and Pop Art when “there wasn’t room in the art world to make way for political or activist art.”
