Dacii - Sergiu Nicolaescu (1966) "With "Dacii", Sergiu Nicolaescu has had his debut as a movie director. The result is an impressive movie with an astonishing distribution and figuration, representative for all his historical movies. Decebal is disposed to supreme sacrifice for keeping the integrity of his people. His son, Cotyso, is offered to the gods, despite Decebal's and his daughter, Meda's despair. Septimius Severus, a young Roman devoted to his adopted country, will have to choose between his blood origins and what he was told by his father."

Dacii; Sergiu Nicolaescu The sdqis Back

Blind Kind -- Johan van der Keuken (1964) One of van der Keuken's earliest works, Blind Child (1964), was praised for its compassionate and artistic portrait of blind school children and their perception of their surroundings. With the use of montage sequences, voiced over with the observations of the children, van der Keuken was able to use artistic expression to portray the sightless children's unique perspective of the world.

Blind Child; Kind; Johan van der Keuken The sdqis Back

Small Deaths -- Lynne Ramsay (1996) "Promising short feature, made by Lynne Ramsay as her graduation movie from film school. It covers three events in a girl's life. The first shows her as a very young girl watching her father get ready to go out for a night. In the second segment she's a teenager who witnesses a nasty incidence involving a cow. While in the third she's a young adult who goes to a creepy building with her boyfriend. He goes upstairs, leaving her to fidget nervously below. But then he calls to her ... Dark, intimate snippets of everyday life, lovingly captured. An impressive debut by the director of Ratcatcher. This immediately establishes the mood, focus and ambition of her later work. It won a prize at Cannes."

Small Deaths; Lynne Ramsay The sdqis Back

Tueur à gages -- Darezhan Omirbayev (1998) "Darezhan Omirbaev (Kairat, Kardiogramma) directed this French-Kazakh film about a young man driven to the precipice in an uncaring world. Marat (Talgat Assetov) works as a chauffeur for a well-known scientist. Driving home from the maternity hospital with his wife Aijan (Roksana Abouova) and their new baby boy, Marat is at fault during a minor traffic accident. The damage payments on both cars put him in debt. Unable to cover costs when the baby gets sick, Marat finds it necessary to follow a gangster's bidding to murder a journalist. Shown in the Certain Regard Section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival."

Killer; Tueur gages; Darezhan Omirbayev The sdqis Back

Wittgenstein Tractatus -- Péter Forgács (1992) "Forgacs' Wittgenstein Tractatus is composed of seven short video essays that refer to one of Wittgenstein's most influential works, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, first published in 1921. Each of Forgacs' brief essays -- set in motion as a torn photograph comes together, only to break apart again -- relates to one of Wittgenstein's philosophical propositions. Black and white home movies from the early twentieth century are accompanied by voice-overs and written texts from Tracatus, in Hungarian and English, and a somber, lyrical score. Scenes of bourgeois life are haunted by forebodings of the future. Drawing upon the disjunction between language and image, Forgacs creates a symbolic illustration of Wittgenstein's theories of logic, language, reality and representation."

Wittgenstein Tractatus; Péter Forgács The sdqis Back

Veredas -- João César Monteiro (1978) "For his feature debut Monteiro creatively borrowed from traditional Portuguese legends to craft a series of echoing, parallel tales of young couples desperately escaping cruel false fathers, each couple on the run across different regions of the country and during increasingly contemporary time periods. A lyrical and profoundly cinematographic allegory with a glisteningly sharp political edge, Veredas traces a pattern of cruelly repressive authority across Portuguese history while also pointing, with cautious optimism, towards the steady presence of youthful resistance. With its stunning choreography of landscape and use of a poetic, associative structure to evoke the longue durée of mythical time, Veredas anticipates Monteiro's mid-career masterpiece Silvestre." —BAM

Veredas; Trails; João César Monteiro The sdqis Back

Blind Kind -- Johan van der Keuken (1964) One of van der Keuken's earliest works, Blind Child (1964), was praised for its compassionate and artistic portrait of blind school children and their perception of their surroundings. With the use of montage sequences, voiced over with the observations of the children, van der Keuken was able to use artistic expression to portray the sightless children's unique perspective of the world.

Blind Child; Kind; Johan van der Keuken The sdqis Back

Dablova past - Frantisek Vlacil (1962) Set in the 18h century when the Inquistion was still in force. A small town is one day visited by a priest who is there on a secret mission. He is a member of the Inquisition sent to investigate the activities of a local miller. The miller and his son are the descendants of an old family whose ancestral home burned down a century ago, but was rebuilt from scratch. The miller inherited much of his knowledge about the land, water, and a building's stability from generations of family experience. His reputation for finding water and predicting when a structure might collapse have come to the attention of the Inquisition -surely he must be in league with the Devil. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide One of the earliest films of the Czech New Wave with typically ingenious music by Zdenek Liska, great camera and other elements typical for the CNW.

The Devil's Trap; Dablova past; Frantisek Vlacil sdqis Back

Dablova past - Frantisek Vlacil (1962) Set in the 18h century when the Inquistion was still in force. A small town is one day visited by a priest who is there on a secret mission. He is a member of the Inquisition sent to investigate the activities of a local miller. The miller and his son are the descendants of an old family whose ancestral home burned down a century ago, but was rebuilt from scratch. The miller inherited much of his knowledge about the land, water, and a building's stability from generations of family experience. His reputation for finding water and predicting when a structure might collapse have come to the attention of the Inquisition -surely he must be in league with the Devil. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide One of the earliest films of the Czech New Wave with typically ingenious music by Zdenek Liska, great camera and other elements typical for the CNW.

The Devil's Trap; Dablova past; Frantisek Vlacil sdqis Back

Atunci i-am condamnat pe toti la moarte - Sergiu Nicolaescu (1971) This is in the top of the list for Sergiu's best films, maybe right under "Mihai Viteazu". A delicate, clever insight on human behavior in times of fear and oppression, written by Titus Popovici, Sergiu's long-time friend and collaborator. Powerhouse cast and crew renders even more beauty to the script. For a change, everything works in this Romanian film. From the first shot, one can feel this is a great film - the kid running in the field, and this feeling persists to the mind-blowing end. Discussions about the army, between Pellea and the kid, the dinner sequence, the funeral rehearsal - they are all unforgettable moments. Definitevly a winner at Cannes Festival 1971, if it had been selected. -- ekisest

Then Sentenced Them All to Death; Atunci i-am condamnat pe toti la moarte; Sergiu Nicolaescu The sdqis Back

L'Albero Degli Zoccoli -- Ermanno Olmi (1978) "Renowned director Ermanno Olmi's award-winning drama is a poignant look at rural peasant life in Northern Italy at the turn of the century. This moving story brings to life the hardships and adversity facing a family struggling to survive under oppressive rule. At a great sacrifice, a family sends their young son to school to learn in lieu of having him work on the farm. Relying on his precious pair of clogs, the little boy must walk the long distance to school every day. When they break, his father sneaks into a prized grove in their village to obtain the wood for a new pair. The callous, wealthy landlord catches him and he is punished severely for his infraction. Winner of the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Olmi's breakthrough film is considered by many to be a masterpiece -- a revealing, serious piece of filmmaking that exemplifies his mastery of movement, color and imagery and above all, depicting the humanity of his subjects."

The Tree of Wooden Clogs; L'Albero Degli Zoccoli; Ermanno Olmi sdqis Back

Hardware -- Richard Stanley (1990) "Music video director Richard Stanley made his feature debut with this apocalyptic, post-industrial nightmare set in the distant future. Dylan McDermott stars as Moses "Hard Mo"' Baxter, a washed-up ex-soldier who spends most of his time in "The Zone" -- a scorched, ochre-colored desert littered with the radioactive debris of an unspecified war (or wars). Mo's recent Zone foray with war-buddy Shades (Jon Lynch) turns up an interesting find -- a pile of droid parts he purchases from a spooky "Zone Tripper" (Carl McCoy, frontman for goth-rock's Fields of the Nephilim), which he carts home to his reclusive artist girlfriend Jill (Stacy Travis) to serve as raw material for her latest work. Unbeknownst to them, the dismantled robot is the prototype of a controversial new battle-droid dubbed the Mark 13, which is designed to reassemble itself from available materials if damaged in combat. In short order, the Mark 13 proceeds to do just that, tapping into the power grid in Jill's fortress-like apartment and targeting her for death." -- Cavett Binion

Hardware; Richard Stanley The sdqis Back

Tau ban no hoi -- Ann Hui (1982) A landmark of the nascent Hong Kong New Wave of the early '80s, this melodrama -- directed by Ann Hui -- concerns the plight of Vietnamese peasants shortly after the fall of Saigon. The film centers on a Japanese photojournalist named Shiomi Akutagawa (George Lam Chi-cheung) who ventures to Danang to document Vietnam's attempts at rebuilding after the war. At first he's bussed around by government officials showing off quaint villages and happy, healthy children. Later, he manages to get permission to wander about the countryside without a government chaperon. Soon he happens upon a young lass named Cam Nuong (Season Ma Si-san) who is from a desperately poor family. At first she is suspicious and even hostile towards the foreigner but quickly they develop a bond of sorts. As Akutagawa starts seeing Vietnam through Cam Nuong's eyes, he starts to realize that everyday life is far different from the state propaganda. Villagers live in constant terror of marauding soldiers, and children scavenge the bodies of executed prisoners for valuables. This film, which was shot in Mainland China, garnered armloads of Hong Kong Film Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay. This film also launched the career of future pop icon and movie star Andy Lau. - Jonathan Crow

Boat People; Tau ban no hoi; Ann Hui The sdqis Back

Tri - Aleksandar Petrovic (1965) "In this episodic WW II drama, a Yugoslavian youth attempts to escape from German soldiers. In the first scene, he stands amongst a group of refugees waiting for a train. One man, with no identification papers is accused of a petty crime and the crowd insists that three soldiers arrest him. The youth tries to stop them all, but he fails and the man is executed. Soon afterward, his wife shows up and proves that he was indeed innocent. In the second episode, the youth participates in a resistance raid and ends up pursued into a swamp where he meets another fugitive. This man ends up sacrificing his life so that the youth can escape. The final story begins as the war ends. The youth has become an officer in the Yugoslav army and is being forced to deliver an order to execute all citizens who collaborated with the Germans. One of the traitors is a woman he cares for, but this doesn't stop him from obeying his commands."

Tri; Three; Aleksandar Petrovic The sdqis Back

Recordações da Casa Amarela -- João César Monteiro (1989) "This quirky Portuguese comedy won a silver lion at the 1989 Venice Film Festival. The story concerns the irrepressible Joao de Deus (played by the director, Joao Cesar Monteiro), an ill-kempt, lusty and none-too-honest resident of Violeta's boarding house, which happens to have yellow walls. Joao, who has no visible means of support, is in his fifties, and is not above cadging money from his 70 year old mother, who still works as a cleaning lady. He has a wistful sort of lust for the young ladies in the boarding house, and gets a kind of thrill when he is permitted to take a bath in their used water. He strikes up a friendship with a slightly stupid girl who is a mite promiscuous, and even has a brief sexual encounter with her himself. Many slightly "off" encounters occur during the remainder of the film, but despite Joao's potentially defeating setback near the end, it appears that it won't be long before he's back in action."

Recollections of the Yellow House; Recordações da Casa Amarela; João César Monteiro sdqis Back

Nocturno 29 -- Pere Portabella (1968) "Portabella's first feature, co-scripted by poet Joan Brossa, became one of the most influential works of the Barcelona avant-garde, although like all his early films, it circulated only in an underground fashion. Eschewing dialogue, the director constructs a non-narrative story in fragments that reveal the daily lives of an adulterous couple interspersed with a cryptic stream of unrelated imagery. The title of this homage to directors including Eisenstein, Antonioni, Bergman, and Buñuel refers to the 29 "black years" of the Franco dictatorship." —chicago.cervantes.es "Nocturno 29 begins where "Don't Count on your Fingers" left off: facing a blank screen and the materialness of the projection. It goes in depth into the future Eisenstein-like structure of Portabella's films which do not advance through a lineal narrative, but rather by a succesion of semi-autonomous scenes and almost always unexpected links. "A series or suite of situations that, although apparently unconnected, always turn about a thematic development that gives body and unity to the story without resorting to the use of an anecdote for plot continuity" (Portabella 1968). Antonioni, Bergman or Buñuel come to mind in this, Portabella's most "anti-bourgeois" film."

Nocturno 29; Pere Portabella The sdqis Back

The Danube Exodus - Péter Forgács (1998) Péter Forgács is primarily interested in the way in which these films seem to depict only happy moments, but on closer consideration they also appear to tell a hidden history, which can be brought back to the surface by the recycling filmmaker. In the travelogue The Danube Exodus, he documents the Jewish exodus from Slovakia just before the beginning of World War II. In two boats, a group of nine hundred Slovak, Austrian Jews tried to reach the Black Sea via the river Danube, in order to get to Palestine from there. Forgács based his film on the amateur films of Captain Nándor Andrásovits, the captain of one of the boats. He filmed his passengers while they prayed, slept and even got married. At the end of this journey, it is clear that the boat will not return empty: a reverse exodus takes place, this time of repatriating Bessarabian Germans, fleeing to the Third Reich because of the Soviet invasion of Bessarabia.

The Danube Exodus; Péter Forgács sdqis Back

Dablova past - Frantisek Vlacil (1962) Set in the 18h century when the Inquistion was still in force. A small town is one day visited by a priest who is there on a secret mission. He is a member of the Inquisition sent to investigate the activities of a local miller. The miller and his son are the descendants of an old family whose ancestral home burned down a century ago, but was rebuilt from scratch. The miller inherited much of his knowledge about the land, water, and a building's stability from generations of family experience. His reputation for finding water and predicting when a structure might collapse have come to the attention of the Inquisition -surely he must be in league with the Devil. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide One of the earliest films of the Czech New Wave with typically ingenious music by Zdenek Liska, great camera and other elements typical for the CNW.

The Devil's Trap; Dablova past; Frantisek Vlacil sdqis Back

Dablova past - Frantisek Vlacil (1962) Set in the 18h century when the Inquistion was still in force. A small town is one day visited by a priest who is there on a secret mission. He is a member of the Inquisition sent to investigate the activities of a local miller. The miller and his son are the descendants of an old family whose ancestral home burned down a century ago, but was rebuilt from scratch. The miller inherited much of his knowledge about the land, water, and a building's stability from generations of family experience. His reputation for finding water and predicting when a structure might collapse have come to the attention of the Inquisition -surely he must be in league with the Devil. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide One of the earliest films of the Czech New Wave with typically ingenious music by Zdenek Liska, great camera and other elements typical for the CNW.

The Devil's Trap; Dablova past; Frantisek Vlacil sdqis Back

À Flor do Mar -- João César Monteiro (1986) "When Laura Rossellini suddenly decided to leave for Rome, taking her children with her. she must have been convinced that she would never return to Portugal, a country she had left behind her for ever, "a dead country". However, after almost a year had passed, Laura returned to the house overlooking the bay and, in a realxed holiday atmosphere, finds what remains of the family and, by chance, something unexpected..." "A lot can be said about Portuguese director João César Monteiro and his films which are different from one another.One great thing about his works is that they have the ability to impress viewers by making them appreciate the value of a mature story which develops slowly.This is the reason why a lot of patience is required to truly assess the greatness of his films.João César Monteiro is one of the few directors whose films are not for pop corn munching audiences who excel in inane bigotry.As far as this film is concerned one should not be misled by what is written as synopsis."À Flor do Mar" is something more than few words which have been written as a condensed statement.The truth is that there is hardly any story in the film.What we really see are numerous moods and mood swings of various characters which have no bearing on this film's beginning,middle or end.By showing an isolated house,a beach and a seashore Joao Cesar Monteiro has revealed some of the most precious hidden talents of Portuguese actress Teresa <b>...</b>

By the Seaside; Flor do Mar; João César Monteiro sdqis Back

Dablova past - Frantisek Vlacil (1962) Set in the 18h century when the Inquistion was still in force. A small town is one day visited by a priest who is there on a secret mission. He is a member of the Inquisition sent to investigate the activities of a local miller. The miller and his son are the descendants of an old family whose ancestral home burned down a century ago, but was rebuilt from scratch. The miller inherited much of his knowledge about the land, water, and a building's stability from generations of family experience. His reputation for finding water and predicting when a structure might collapse have come to the attention of the Inquisition -surely he must be in league with the Devil. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide One of the earliest films of the Czech New Wave with typically ingenious music by Zdenek Liska, great camera and other elements typical for the CNW.

The Devil's Trap; Dablova past; Frantisek Vlacil sdqis Back

Robinson Crusoe -- Luis Buñuel (1954) "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was both Luis Buñuel's first color film and his only film written entirely in English. Fulfilling his father's prophecy of disaster, Robinson Crusoe (Dan O'Herlihy, in an Oscar-nominated performance) is stranded on a deserted island along with his cat Sam and his dog Felix while on a trip to purchase African slaves. His curiosity is unending and his recycling of the land's resources highly economical (he protects himself from wild beasts and savages using the pilfered remains of his now-sunken ship). More so than any other dramatization of Daniel Dafoe's classic novel, Buñuel's Robinson Crusoe is both morally ambitious and spiritually daring. Crusoe's surreal encounter with his father's spirit reveals the castaway's complex view of religion, forgiveness and guilt. He turns to a copy of the Holy Bible not long after Sam gives birth to a litter of kittens (Buñuel, though, is careful not to call too much attention to the feline's immaculate conception). It's easy to see the wheat grain Crusoe discovers outside his makeshift shelter as a gift from God (indeed, the scruffy O'Herlihy stands atop the island's highest mountain like Moses waiting for his people's manna) yet Buñuel never suggests that Crusoe is in conflict with a Christian deity. Instead, the director posits a more existential relationship between Crusoe and nature. O'Herlihy's narration is redundant ("I learned to master everything but myself <b>...</b>

Robinson Crusoe; Luis Bunuel The sdqis Back

Cuadecuc, vampir -- Pere Portabella (1970) Vampir-Cuadecuc (1970, 35mm) is a dreamlike combination of documentary, narrative, experimental, and essay film styles and is one of the key films of contemporary Spanish cinema. Shot on the set of Jesus Franco's Italian horror film Count Dracula, and featuring the star of that film, Christopher Lee, Vampir is both a sly political allegory about generalissimo Francisco Franco, a gentle homage to early films about the vampire legend, particularly Dreyer's Vampyr and Murnau's Nosferatu, and a work of subtle beauty and great richness. Review by Jonathan Rosenbaum: The first word in the title of Pere Portabella's ravishing 1970 underground masterpiece, made in Spain while General Francisco Franco was still in power and shown clandestinely, means both "worm's tail" and the unexposed footage at the end of film reels. The film is a silent black-and-white documentary about the shooting of Jesus Franco's Count Dracula, with Christopher Lee, that becomes much more: the lush, high-contrast cinematography evokes deteriorating prints of Nosferatu and Vampyr, and the extraordinary soundtrack by composer Carles Santos intersperses the sounds of jet planes, drills, syrupy Muzak, and sinister electronic music, all of which ingeniously locate Dracula and our perceptions of him in the contemporary world. Moving back and forth between Franco's film (with Dracula as an implicit stand-in for the generalissimo) and poetic production details, Portabella <b>...</b>

Cuadecuc vampir; Pere Portabella The sdqis Back

Historias extraordinarias -- Mariano Llinás (2008) Historias extraordinarias tells the adventures of three men known only as H (Agustin Mendilaharzu, doubling as cinematographer), X (director Mariano Llinás) and Z (Walter Jakob). These adventures come across as self-conscious constructions and journeys happening in the here and now. But though the strongest literary influences on Llinás' fascinating screenplay are fiction writer Jorge Luis Borges and disciple Adolfo Bioy-Casares, it would be wrong to label Historias extraordinarias as literary per se: Instead, a viewer would have to stretch back to the grand serial silents of Louis Feuillade for something as ambitious as Llinás' detailed telling of the three separate, intertwined tales, all involving men on quests in situations that force them to question who they really are. Llinás jumps between the storylines over 18 episodes, usually devoting no more than about 15 minutes at a time to any single one. The governing concept uniting the tales is how each man begins with a specific task, and then veers away from the straight-and-narrow, bringing the job's purpose into question. While the film was made on a low budget even by Argentine standards, the final impact is one of a big movie nearly bursting at the seams. This film also issues a riposte to recent Argentine minimalism, and specifically Carlos Sorin's three-tale film set in Patagonia, Historias mínimas (2002). (Robert Koehler)

Historias extraordinarias; Mariano Llinás The sdqis Back

Prekursor -- Grzegorz Krolikiewicz (1988) Film about profesor Marian Mazur, world famous cybernetics expert, and his character theory.

Prekursor; Grzegorz Krolikiewicz The sdqis Back

Kinoglaz -- Dziga Vertov (1924) "Dziga Vertov, whose renegade approach to cinema is best remembered in the legendary Man With a Movie Camera and his series of Kino-Pravda newsreels, demonstrates his mastery of montage in this 1924 feature previously unseen in the US An outspoken critic of the purely plot-driven motion picture, Vertov challenged other filmmakers to rebel against the Western story-oriented cinema. Vertov argued that filmmakers should use their camera to capture "the chaos of visual phenomena filling the universe" and through clever editing, develop these random images into a more honest, more genuine record of the Soviet experience. Central to Kino-Eye are the activities of the Young Pioneers, a group of Soviet adolescents committed to serving the needy. These scenes of teen philanthropy are interwoven with playful cinematic experiments, as when Vertov charts the evolution of hamburger and bread by following its trail back to the farms and wheatfields from whence it came, and a ballet of high-diving that is eerily similar to the famous sequence in Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia. Kino-Eye is thus a fascinating film, not just for its aesthetic beauty and political significance, but for honestly documenting a society fresh from revolution, buoyed by idealism, ready to face the challenges of a difficult future. The final reel of Kino-Eye no longer exists, but has been approximated by the use of carefully selected outtake footage."

Kino-Eye; Kinoglaz; Dziga Vertov The sdqis Back

Ta kourelia tragoudane akoma... - Nikos Nikolaidis (1979) Four friends between the ages of 40 and 50 meet after 20 years for a reunion in this drama with sex and violence added for exploitation value. Christos is a family man who makes a living as an actor. Constantine is a vagabond with a cynical outlook on life. Alkis is an aspiring poet who longs for the ideal woman and has fantasies about killing little girls. Rita has just emerged from an insane asylum and is obviously not cured after her stay. The principle characters manage to add humor to the potentially grim scenario.

The Wretches Are Still Singing; Ta kourelia tragoudane akoma; Nikos Nikolaidis sdqis Back

Dym bramborove nat'e - Frantisek Vlacil (1976) A measured, evenly paced, extremely controlled, psychologically mesmerizing film about a doctor's split with his wife, and his subsequent return to his Communist homeland, brilliantly underplayed by Rudolf Hrusinsky, a man in real life who was blacklisted in Czechoslovakia for his anti-Communist leanings, and only the slightest movement in his face could ever be detected. But he was superb in this role, his dignity challenged at every turn, but always remaining intact. He is introduced to a countryside clinic by the local Communist lackey, his quarters are spare and without possessions. Immediately, as the outsider, he is the object of the entire town's suspicion, represented in a single scene where he is smoking potatoes, something he must have learned as a child, in a small attempt to gather some semblance of himself. Yet across the landscape a cry is heard for him to put out the fire; that's not allowed; what is he, crazy? Every attempt to help someone is met with whispers behind his back and with the town's scorn. The psychological pressure to allow so little to be shown, always holding everything inside, as who knows, someone near could, and would use any piece of information against you. This film reminded me of some of the early Kieslowski films, such as the rarely seen CURRICULUM VITAE, where in that film the Communist Party pressure is relentless to obtain confessions from your neighbors for the most ordinary actions <b>...</b>

Smoke on the Potato Fields; Dym bramborove nat'e; Frantisek Vlacil sdqis Back

Die Stille vor Bach -- Pere Portabella (2007) "The jingling piano, the humming traffic and the prancing horse tap out separate if connecting songs in the beguiling nonnarrative film "The Silence Before Bach," from the septuagenarian Spanish auteur Pere Portabella. You could say that these three make beautiful music together, though this observation doesn't capture the contrapuntal complexity of the film, which unfolds note against note, scene against scene.(...)I didn't find "The Silence Before Bach" immediately accessible, though this is far from a complaint. The film demands engagement and a kind of surrender, a willingness to enter into a work shaped by correlation, metaphor and metonymy, by beautiful images and fragments of ideas, a work that locates the music in the twitching of a dog's ears, in the curve of a woman's belly, a child's song and an adult's reverie. Like the music it celebrates, this is a film made in glory of the world." (Manohla Dargis - NY Times) "I could not possibly think of a more apt title for Pere Portabella's new film The Silence Before Bach. As idiosyncratic and inspired in its own approach to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach as was Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968), Portabella's title is inspired by a poem that rhetorically asks what the world—God, musical instruments, European society—was like before Bach's music came to uplift them. But rather than pursue a history of religious music in <b>...</b>

The Silence Before Bach; Die Stille vor Pere Portabella sdqis Back

Historias extraordinarias -- Mariano Llinás (2008) Historias extraordinarias tells the adventures of three men known only as H (Agustin Mendilaharzu, doubling as cinematographer), X (director Mariano Llinás) and Z (Walter Jakob). These adventures come across as self-conscious constructions and journeys happening in the here and now. But though the strongest literary influences on Llinás' fascinating screenplay are fiction writer Jorge Luis Borges and disciple Adolfo Bioy-Casares, it would be wrong to label Historias extraordinarias as literary per se: Instead, a viewer would have to stretch back to the grand serial silents of Louis Feuillade for something as ambitious as Llinás' detailed telling of the three separate, intertwined tales, all involving men on quests in situations that force them to question who they really are. Llinás jumps between the storylines over 18 episodes, usually devoting no more than about 15 minutes at a time to any single one. The governing concept uniting the tales is how each man begins with a specific task, and then veers away from the straight-and-narrow, bringing the job's purpose into question. While the film was made on a low budget even by Argentine standards, the final impact is one of a big movie nearly bursting at the seams. This film also issues a riposte to recent Argentine minimalism, and specifically Carlos Sorin's three-tale film set in Patagonia, Historias mínimas (2002). (Robert Koehler)

Historias extraordinarias; Mariano Llinás The sdqis Back

Aien kyo -- Kenji Mizoguchi (1937) The most complex film of this period is perhaps the least known: The Straits of Love and Hate (1937), loosely inspired by Tolstoy's much-filmed Resurrection, which had been one of the staples of Japanese film adaptation in the silent era. Here the balance between distance and involvement is perfectly achieved -- one sympathises profoundly with the ill-treated heroine while remaining aware of the social conditions which create her plight. In fact, of all Mizoguchi's prewar films, this is the most positive in its feminism: his heroine is not doomed, but permitted to rebel successfully against the cruel patriarch who seeks to separate her from her child. By comparison the rather better known Story of the Late Chrysanthemums (1939), for all its staggering formal beauty, is a little monotonous emotionally. Another story of a woman who sacrifices herself so that the man she loves -- a kabuki actor -- can achieve professional fulfillment, it is as affecting as any film Mizoguchi made, but the emotional complexities which give The Straits of Love and Hate, Five Women Around Utamaro (1946) or A Woman of Rumour (1954), amongst others, their enduring fascination, are less visible. Mizoguchi compensates with one of his most astonishing exercises in mise-en-scène: a stylistic mastery which is admittedly a little less closely bound up with the experiences and feelings of his characters than was generally the case in his work. Even so, his style in <b>...</b>

Aien kyo; Straits of Love and Hate; Kenji Mizoguchi The sdqis Back

Dym bramborove nat'e - Frantisek Vlacil (1976) A measured, evenly paced, extremely controlled, psychologically mesmerizing film about a doctor's split with his wife, and his subsequent return to his Communist homeland, brilliantly underplayed by Rudolf Hrusinsky, a man in real life who was blacklisted in Czechoslovakia for his anti-Communist leanings, and only the slightest movement in his face could ever be detected. But he was superb in this role, his dignity challenged at every turn, but always remaining intact. He is introduced to a countryside clinic by the local Communist lackey, his quarters are spare and without possessions. Immediately, as the outsider, he is the object of the entire town's suspicion, represented in a single scene where he is smoking potatoes, something he must have learned as a child, in a small attempt to gather some semblance of himself. Yet across the landscape a cry is heard for him to put out the fire; that's not allowed; what is he, crazy? Every attempt to help someone is met with whispers behind his back and with the town's scorn. The psychological pressure to allow so little to be shown, always holding everything inside, as who knows, someone near could, and would use any piece of information against you. This film reminded me of some of the early Kieslowski films, such as the rarely seen CURRICULUM VITAE, where in that film the Communist Party pressure is relentless to obtain confessions from your neighbors for the most ordinary actions <b>...</b>

Smoke on the Potato Fields; Dym bramborove nat'e; Frantisek Vlacil sdqis Back

Dablova past - Frantisek Vlacil (1962) Set in the 18h century when the Inquistion was still in force. A small town is one day visited by a priest who is there on a secret mission. He is a member of the Inquisition sent to investigate the activities of a local miller. The miller and his son are the descendants of an old family whose ancestral home burned down a century ago, but was rebuilt from scratch. The miller inherited much of his knowledge about the land, water, and a building's stability from generations of family experience. His reputation for finding water and predicting when a structure might collapse have come to the attention of the Inquisition -surely he must be in league with the Devil. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide One of the earliest films of the Czech New Wave with typically ingenious music by Zdenek Liska, great camera and other elements typical for the CNW.

The Devil's Trap; Dablova past; Frantisek Vlacil sdqis Back

Dym bramborove nat'e - Frantisek Vlacil (1976) A measured, evenly paced, extremely controlled, psychologically mesmerizing film about a doctor's split with his wife, and his subsequent return to his Communist homeland, brilliantly underplayed by Rudolf Hrusinsky, a man in real life who was blacklisted in Czechoslovakia for his anti-Communist leanings, and only the slightest movement in his face could ever be detected. But he was superb in this role, his dignity challenged at every turn, but always remaining intact. He is introduced to a countryside clinic by the local Communist lackey, his quarters are spare and without possessions. Immediately, as the outsider, he is the object of the entire town's suspicion, represented in a single scene where he is smoking potatoes, something he must have learned as a child, in a small attempt to gather some semblance of himself. Yet across the landscape a cry is heard for him to put out the fire; that's not allowed; what is he, crazy? Every attempt to help someone is met with whispers behind his back and with the town's scorn. The psychological pressure to allow so little to be shown, always holding everything inside, as who knows, someone near could, and would use any piece of information against you. This film reminded me of some of the early Kieslowski films, such as the rarely seen CURRICULUM VITAE, where in that film the Communist Party pressure is relentless to obtain confessions from your neighbors for the most ordinary actions <b>...</b>

Smoke on the Potato Fields; Dym bramborove nat'e; Frantisek Vlacil sdqis Back

Dym bramborove nat'e - Frantisek Vlacil (1976) A measured, evenly paced, extremely controlled, psychologically mesmerizing film about a doctor's split with his wife, and his subsequent return to his Communist homeland, brilliantly underplayed by Rudolf Hrusinsky, a man in real life who was blacklisted in Czechoslovakia for his anti-Communist leanings, and only the slightest movement in his face could ever be detected. But he was superb in this role, his dignity challenged at every turn, but always remaining intact. He is introduced to a countryside clinic by the local Communist lackey, his quarters are spare and without possessions. Immediately, as the outsider, he is the object of the entire town's suspicion, represented in a single scene where he is smoking potatoes, something he must have learned as a child, in a small attempt to gather some semblance of himself. Yet across the landscape a cry is heard for him to put out the fire; that's not allowed; what is he, crazy? Every attempt to help someone is met with whispers behind his back and with the town's scorn. The psychological pressure to allow so little to be shown, always holding everything inside, as who knows, someone near could, and would use any piece of information against you. This film reminded me of some of the early Kieslowski films, such as the rarely seen CURRICULUM VITAE, where in that film the Communist Party pressure is relentless to obtain confessions from your neighbors for the most ordinary actions <b>...</b>

Smoke on the Potato Fields; Dym bramborove nat'e; Frantisek Vlacil sdqis Back