Trailer de "Tres colores: Rojo" (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994)
Dumisani Phakathi
Dumisani Phakathi was born in Soweto twenty six years ago. Having matriculated in 1993 at Phafogang High School in Soweto, he went to work at Die Beeld, a leading Afrikaans newspaper.
In 1995, Dumi joined TV production company - Urban Brew -as a trainee director. A year later he conceptualized his own youth actuality programme called The Electric Workshop which went on for five years with the same company.
1996 marked a move into theater as he enrolled for a training programme at the Market Theater Laboratory, deciding to try his hand at acting. Whilst there he worked on numerous plays, one of his favorites being Gomorrah, which went on to tour throughout Europe. This was the beginning of his work in drama....
Theo Eshetu
Filmography: Rites of Passage, Thunder and Lighting, Another Time Another Place, My Better Half, La morte i diretta, Back to Zero, That's Life...
Alain Gomis
Filsm: Caramels and Chocolates, Tout le monde peut se tromper, Whirlwinds, L'Afrance, Small Light
Mahamat Saleh Haroun
Our Father: Aka: Abouna An unsentimental depiction of everyday life in modern Africa. Set in Chad, this visually assured story of two boys' search for their father is told with a pleasing narrative economy. The cinematography is impressive and it's backed by a haunting score by Ali Farka Toure.
Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda
BALUFU BAKUPA-KANYINDA, Democratic Rep. of Congo
:: Afro@Digital & The Draughtsmen Clash ::
Roger Gnoan M'Bala
This historic drama is about an African whose village is captured and its inhabitants forced into slavery by the African collaborator Adanggaman (Rasmane Ouedraogo). Traitorous and arbitrary, Adanggaman has a round face that constantly calls out for the rum the Dutch traders ply him with. The film's Ivory Coast-born director, Roger Gnoan M'Bala — who wrote the screenplay with Jean-Marie Adlaffi and Bertin Akaffou — blends truth and fiction, and the storytelling is so simple that its directness feels fresh and rousing. The scenes of Africans marching in chains and stocks, monitored by other Africans, are a shock and linger in your mind for days afterward.
Opening Scenes from Black Girl (LA NOIRE DE...1966)
Directed by: Ousmane Sembène
Moolaade by Ousmane Sembene
'Four girls -- refusing to have their bodies 'cut' -- flee to a strong willed woman who had protected her daughter from circumcision.
As the other villagers -- including relatives -- try to force the rebel to part with the girls, she invokes the time-honoured custom of 'moolade' that offers inviolable sanctuary. Even as her daughter's marriage is imperiled by her bold stance, the mother stands her ground.
In the buoyant, witty and colourful film Moolaade, which does not obscure the terror the young girls face, a strong Oscar contender for foreign films has emerged.
It was a big favourite at the Toronto International Film Festival. Critic Roger Ebert, who loved the film, is already predicting an Oscar for it'.--Arthur J. Pais: Toronto
Ousmane Sembene
Born in 1923 in Casamance, southern Senegal, where his fisherman father had migrated from Dakar, Ousmane Sembene, or just Sembene, as many critics call him, has been hailed as one of the most prolific African writers and "the father of African film.
Filmography: Ousmane Sembene
The first film director from an African country to achieve international recognition, Ousmane Sembene remains the major figure in the rise of an independent post-colonial African cinema. Sembene's roots were not, as might be expected, in the educated élite.
Nelly's Bodega
Drama 1999: Director: Omonike Akinyemi: Length: 50 minutes
Filmography: Chieck Oumar Sissoko
I never choose to make a film about a subject. It is a political and social situation that makes me handle a story. Up to the present I have followed this law of the needs of African societies and their emergencies.
This is how I came to make Sécheresse et exode rural in 1984, a documentary o the tragedy of man and the land. Do you remember? Sub-Saharan Africa was experiencing for the second time in ten years a drought, the terrifying consequences of which were wrongly presented as inevitable.
Wanjiru Kinyanjui
"I’m sure I wouldn’t have gotten involved in film if I had stayed here, but I studied German literature abroad, met a few filmmakers, and I actually got to see many African films there in Berlin. That got me really interested. I had always been interested in drama, you know, right from primary school. We used to organize ourselves and do skits every end of term on Parent’s Day. All that came back at university. I was in the drama club, small roles, because I wanted direct. I had some film school friends. I was actually teaching some of them Swahili. I told them, I think I’d like to go into film. They said, okay! There¹s a good film school in Berlin and you can apply."WK
The Battle of the Sacred Tree
This delightful Kenyan comedy tells the story of a free-spirited, strong-willed feminist who defies social convention and leaves her abusive husband. Mumbi was purchased by her husband Mwangi.
Idrissa Ouedraogo
Filmography: 'I don't represent my continent as such, but if I win the Palme d'Or, I know that young people in Africa will be proud in the same way that they're proud of a footballer like George Weah or a musician like Youssou N'Dour.' Idrissa Ouedraogo is talking about his new feature, Kini & Adams, which follows his 1990 Grand Jury Prize winner, Tilai, into competition at Cannes. A small-scale ($2 million), English-language story about a pair of irrepressible dreamers who yearn to escape the rural backwaters of their home village and head for the bright lights of the city, it is both a celebration of friendship and a trenchant little allegory about the destructive effects of ambition. Its key symbol is the battered old car which Kini and Adams decide to renovate. They lavish attention on the upholstery, but somehow they never get round to making the vehicle actually work.
The Blue Eyes of Yonta by Flora Gomes
(The Blue Eyes of Yonta) is one of the few recent African films to make the disillusionment of the revolutionary generation its primary subject.
Waiting for Happiness: By Abderrahmane Sissako
Abderrahmane Sissako's Heremakono (Waiting for Happiness ) is an elegiac portrait of a transit city on the West African coast struggling against foreign influences. Abdallah (Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamed) returns to his homeland for an indeterminate amount of time. Now a stranger to his own community and language, the young man tries to absorb as much local color (literally and figuratively) before embarking for Europe.
Biography of Gaston Kabore
Kabore started out as a history student at the Centre d'Etudes Superieures d'Histoire d'Ouagadougou and continued his studies in Paris where he received an MA. During his studies he became interested in how Africa was portrayed abroad, which then led him, in 1974, to study cinematography at the Ecole Superieure d'Etudes Cinematographiques. Further inspiration came upon viewing Ousmane Sembene's Xala, which he saw as an example of how film could be used to express African culture. After returning to Africa, Kabore was made director of the Centre National du Cinema and taught at the Institut African d'Education Cinematographique. Along with students under his direction there he made his first film, 'Je Reviens De Bokin' (I Come From Bokin).
Kwaw Ansah
Kwaw Ansah is highly appreciated in Ghana, where he is a mentor to many young artists, and has received a number of Ghanaian awards. In 1998 he was awarded the Acrag Prize, the Living Legend Award for Contribution to the Arts of Ghana.
Heritage Africa
The film is a riveting exploration of the impact of colonialism in the Gold Coast (the colonial name for present-day Ghana) through its central character, a man named Kwesi ("Sunday-born") Atta ("a twin") Bosomefi ("an illustrious ancestor has been reborn"), who prefers to be called Quincy Arthur Bosomfield. The perfect product of colonial education, Bosomfield embraces English culture in all forms, rising within the colonial administration to become an African district commissioner (a rarity) and member of the black educated "elite." In the process, he abandons his African heritage and all that has real meaning to him. Only after a series of humiliating encounters, peppered with vivid recollections of his past and a frightening and revealing dream, does he reclaim his true identity and heritage.
La Vie est Belle
La Vie est Belle takes us inside the vibrant music scene of Kinshasha, Zaire's exhilarating and exasperating capital whose back alleys and clubs pulsate to the beat of some of the most influential music in the world. The film, starring World Beat music legend, Papa Wemba, tells the "rags to riches" story of a poor country musician who seeks fame in the city's vibrant music industry. This lively farce illustrates Zairians' faith in Systeme-D or debrouillardise, fending for yourself to survive in the face of overwhelming obstacles. If there is a commercial cinema in Africa's future, then La Vie est Belle may be one of its precursors.
Life is Rosy: La vie est belle
Mweze Ngangura’s first feature, La Vie est Belle (Life is Beautiful), released in 1987, remains to this day one of the most accessible and entertaining African films ever made. Starring soukous super star, Papa Wemba, it uses the rags to riches story of a Congolese musician to demonstrate that ordinary Africans are capable of joy and that Africa has its own vibrant contemporary popular culture.
Mossane
In this Sengalese melodrama, a beautiful village girl finds herself torn between tradition and modern values. Mossane is only 14 but is considered by the villagers to be an extraordinary beauty.
Thunderbolt by Tunde Kelani
The first half of the film is in a sense a retelling of the Othello story - except the protagonists are not Abyssinian and Venetian but Yoruba and Ibo. Yinka and Ngozi met in the National Youth Service Corps; Ngozi is finishing her stint as a teacher in a village while Yinka already works as a construction engineer in a nearby city. The seeds of jealousy are planted when a friend of Yinka, like Iago in the Shakespeare play, suggests that Ngozi is having a secret affair because "Ibo are untrustworthy." Adding to Yinka's suspicions, Ngozi has recently inherited some money and so is a financially independent woman. In this half, as in the Shakespeare play or any standard Western melodrama, the action is propelled entirely by psychological motivations.
Moussa Sene Absa
The Director:
Moussa Sene Absa overflows with creativity. He is an artist, writer, and musician, as well as a film director. He made his debut as an actor, then moved to directing with the production of his own stage play, La Légende de Ruba. In cinema, he wrote the screenplay for Les Enfants de Dieu which was honoured at the Francophone film festival.
Mobolaji is an American of Jamaican and Nigerian parentage with 8 years of production experience. He has directed several award winning short films including: Candlelight Dinner and Who Killed America? Which were recognized in the 1999 and 2001 National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) Prized Pieces Film Festival respectively, and The Visit which received a Directors Guild of America student director award. Olambiwonnu holds a BA from UCLA in communications theory and an MFA in directing from the American Film Institute.
When Rick Famuyiwa graduated from the University of Southern California film school in 1996 he discovered that a film school degree does not guarantee a job in the industry. Some grads are lucky to have a job on the fringes, but Famuyiwa was as far away from working in Hollywood as anyone could get because his job was selling apparel at Niketown.
Fortunately for Famuyiwa, his dead end situation was about to end since his 12 minute student short, Blacktop Lingo, got into Sundance and Michelle Satter, the director of the Sundance Filmmaker's Lab, was tracking him down to invite him to develop his first feature at the Lab. In 1998, two years after graduating, Famuyiwa was directing his feature debut The Wood. The critically acclaimed film was a box-office success, which made it possible for him to write and direct his latest, Brown Sugar. The son of Nigerian immigrants.
Conversations with Rick Famuyiwa
SM: You made your feature debut, The Wood, in 1998, which was two years after you graduated so you were ahead of schedule.
RF: At the time you're going through it and you don't know whether things are going to work out. It seemed difficult, but again it was the same kind of thing that I think I dealt with in the application process at the film school. I think once I had my film in Sundance I was convinced that I had made it.
Pan African Film Festival
Established in 1992, The Pan African Film Festival (PAFF) is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the promotion of cultural and racial tolerance and understanding through the exhibition of film, art and creative expression. It is PAFF's goal to present and showcase the broad spectrum of Black creative works, particularly those that reinforce positive images and help to destroy negative stereotypes.
Panafrican Film and Television
Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) is the largest African film festival.The next edition will be held from 26th February to 5th March 2005
African Films and Filmmakers
This document was created for the 1998 Carter Lectures on Africa on the theme of Africa on Film and Video. It is a guide to searching LUIS for relevant materials, and contains a reading list and some Web sites that may be useful to anyone interested in African film.
Lost in Translation: Interview with Sofia Coppola
Sofia Coppola's "Lost In Translation" has proven itself to be a sophomore smash, with mostly rave reviews, a lucrative debut at the box office, and even early Oscar talk for star Bill Murray. The film follows the unlikely, increasingly intimate friendship between two Americans stuck in Tokyo: Bob (Bill Murray) is an aging movie star making some quick cash by appearing in whiskey ads, and Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) is a recent college grad confused about her life plan and mostly ignored by her photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi ), who is in town on business. Jetlagged, confused, and lonely, Bob and Charlotte meet in the bar of the hotel where they're staying, Tokyo's stylish Park Hyatt. Soon, they are bonding over cultural differences, running off to karaoke bars with Charlotte's hipster Japanese pals, and falling for each other. Though their relationship can definitely be described as "intimate," there's no sex involved. In addition to being an atypical romance and a cultural snapshot of Tokyo, "Lost in Translation" is also a laugh-out-loud comedy, thanks to Bill Murray's impeccable performance.
The Human Stain
Anthony Hopkins portrays Coleman Silk, a classics professor whose university position is threatened when he is sued for making a racist remark about several of his black students. It turns out that Coleman himself is a light-skinned black man passing for a white Jewish academic.
African Filmmakers
African Filmmakers -Alphabetical Listing
The films included in this list have been identified primarily by reading African newspapers and magazines and articles on and programs of film festivals held in Africa, Europe and North America. Since the first list in this series was complied, more attention is being given to television films and video production both in the African press and at some film festivals.
African Film Festival: New York
The African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF) is a New York non-profit 501-C3 arts organization. The organization, established in 1990, began as an ad hoc committee of African and American artists and scholars.
Films from Africa and the African Diaspora
Welcome to the ArtMattan Productions' web site. We distribute films that focus on the human experience of black people in Africa, the Caribbean, North and South America and Europe
California Newsreel
California Newsreel is the site for educational videos on African American life and history, race relations and diversity training, African cinema, Media and Society, labor studies, campus life and much more.
Krzysztof Kieslowski
Krzystof Kieslowski
Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski ended his glorious career with a trilogy of intimate dramas exploring the three ideals of the French Revolution, using the three colors of the French flag.
Blue, White, & Red
Trilogy: Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski.
In Kieslowski's interpretation, blue, white, and red represent liberty, equality, and fraternity.
His films tackle these ideals, not head-on, but obliquely. In Kieslowski's view, liberty is not all it's cracked up to be, revenge can stand for equality, and fraternity is another word for love.
Strictly Film School
Strictly Film School is a dynamic, evolving personal homage journal dedicated to the analysis of landmark world cinema from an academic perspective: universal themes, symbols and imagery, historic context and artistic genres.
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo
From her complex and enduring relationship with her mentor and husband, Diego Rivera, to her illicit and controversial affair with Leon Trotsky. Frida Kahlo lived a bold and uncompromising life as a political, artistic and sexual revolutionary.
Foreign Films: Reviewers: Ebert et al.
Shall We Dance
Since ballroom dancing isn't something to brag about in Japan, a shy timid man decides to reach out to an instructor he has an interest in and proceeds to take lessons.
Artemisia
Rome, 1610. The church's influence is all-pervasive. Particularly women are forbidden to do lots of things. But the 17-year-old Artemisia follows her own principles. Her father, the jobbing artist Orazio Gentilechi recognises his daughter's artistic talent and tries to have her accepted at the art academy.
The Pianist
A brilliant Polish pianist, a Jew, is confined in the Warsaw ghetto where he experiences suffering and humiliation. He escapes deportation and hides in the ruins of the city. A German officer comes to his aid and helps him to survive.
Talk To Her
Pedro Almodóvar returns with the follow-up to his Oscar-winning hit All About My Mother. With a hospital waiting room as its nexus, an intricate drama-part soap opera, part morality tale-unfolds.
Central Station
The key to the power of "Central Station" is in the way that word echoes down through most of the film. This is not a heartwarming movie about a woman trying to help a pathetic orphan, but a hard-edged film about a woman who thinks only of her own needs. After various attempts to rid herself of young Josue (Vincius de Oliveira), she finally sells him to an adoption agency and uses the money to buy herself a new TV set.
81/2 Weeks
Fellini made '8 1/2' fresh on the rebound from the international success of his 'La Dolce Vita'.
Cinema Paradiso
Giuseppe Tornatore's "Cinema Paradiso," takes place in Sicily in the final years before television. It has two chief characters: old Alfredo (Philippe Noiret), who rules the projection booth, and young Salvatore (Salvatore Cascio), who makes the booth his home away from an indifferent home.
Belle De Jour
`Belle de Jour'' (1967), the story of a respectable young wife who secretly works in a brothel one or two afternoons a week.
Seven Samurai
Akira Kurosawa's ''The Seven Samurai'' (1954) is not only a great film in its own right, but the source of a genre that would flow through the rest of the century.
The Accompanist
Richard Bohringer (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover) stars with his award-winning daughter Romane Bohringer (Savage Nights) and Elena Safonova in this critically-acclaimed story of love, loss and compromise.
La Dolce Vita
Fellini shot the movie in 1959 on the Via Veneto, the Roman street of nightclubs, sidewalk cafes and the parade of the night. His hero is a gossip columnist, Marcello, who chronicles ``the sweet life'' of fading aristocrats, second-rate movie stars, aging playboys and women of commerce.
The Postman
Mario (Massimo Troisi) lives on a quiet island where little changes and new ideas arrive slowly, if at all. Then one day the postmaster enlists him to bicycle out to the house of a new arrival. Pablo Neruda (played by Philippe Noiret), the famous poet, has been exiled from his native Chile for political reasons, and has come here to live.
Belle Epoque
The movie takes place in a sunny rural district of Spain, in 1931, between the end of the monarchy and the rise of fascism - just as the Spanish Republic was having its brief moment in the sun. The title refers to the period between the end of the Franco-Prussian war in 1871 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914; Spain's belle epoque was shorter, Trueba suggests, but no less belle.
Raise the Red Lantern
The fourth wife of the rich old man comes to live in his house against her will. She has been educated, and thinks herself ready for the wider world, but her mother betrays her, selling her as a concubine, and soon her world is no larger than the millionaire's vast house.
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
The thief, Albert Spica, (Gambon) is a gangster, repugnant and boorish, who holds court at the same table in his opulent restaurant every night surrounded by his lackeys (Tim Roth and the late Ian Dury included). When his cultured and repressed wife Georgina (Mirren) becomes magnetically attracted to a solitary diner in the restaurant, the two begin a secret affair under the nose of her dangerous husband.
8 Women
Here it is at last, the first Agatha Christie musical. Eight women are isolated in a snowbound cottage, there is a corpse with a knife in his back, all of the women are potential suspects, plus six song and dance numbers. The cast is a roll call of French legends.
Camille Claudel
The emotionally passionate biography of sculptress/mistress Camille Claudel. Camille is a burgioning sculptress who becomes the pupil of reknowned sculpter, Auguste Rodin. She becomes Rodin's mistress, and in the following 15 years plumets into a neverending spiral of artistic brilliance/emotional insanity. Spends the last thirty years of her life insane.
Live Flesh
From critically acclaimed, erotically candid writer/director Pedro Almodóvar (Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) comes a raw, seductive tale "trimming with lust, betrayal and murder" (Rolling Stone). Based on a novel by British mystery writer Ruth Rendell, Live Flesh is "superbly acted, strikingly photographed and just plain terrific" (USA Today).
Farewell My Concubine
Follow the lives of two young boys as they are raised in an opera school at the end of the imperialist goverentment. Their lives become intertwined and woven into stardom at a time when comunism rose to crush the ancient culture and attack its people as they battle each other over the lines of friendship, love and loyalty
Ju Dou
They were destined, if not doomed, to be together. She was the mill owner's battered bride; he was his overworked nephew. Out of their plight grew a profound and powerful secret love. Their hearts were free, but only murder could free the lovers from the tyranny of the mill owner. Or could it?
Fengyue
Chen Kaige's ``Temptress Moon'' opens like one of those 19th century novels with a cast of characters on the first page. In a helpful sequence added by Miramax, the film's U.S. distributor, we are introduced to the three central characters, first as children, then as adults, with their names printed on the screen under their faces. There is also a prologue, which scrolls up the screen as it is read aloud.
Jing ke ci qin wang
Ying Zheng, the King of Qin, has one driving ambition: to unify China's seven kingdoms into one magnificant empire. But when Ying Zheng's lust for power is fueled by a devastating discovery about his lineage, his lover, Lady Zhao (Gong Li), must turn against him, hiring the infamous assassin, Jing Ke, to take up arms against Ying Zheng's tyranny.
Qiu Ju da Guansi
Chinese star Gong Li is unforgettable in this enchanting comedy about a woman’s comic quest for justice after her husband is kicked by a village elder.
Yao a Yao Yao dao Waipo Qiao
The charms of an alluring prostitute are used as bait between feuding ganglords in 1930s Shanghai.
Paoda Shuang Deng
Set against the close of the Ching Dynasty at the turn of the century, this tale of forbidden love and loyalty ignites the screen with passion. With no male heirs to run their fireworks factory, the Chai family's beautiful daughter has been groomed for the role of master. Renounced of her femininity, she is clothed like a man and forbidden to marry, a role which she dutifully accepts until a rebellious young artist becomes employed at the factory. He unleashes in her an unbridled passion that challenges her loyalty to her ancestral heritage and threatens the tradition that has bound her family with the people of the factory, leading to an explosive climax that will change their lives forever.
Eat Drink Man Woman
A spicy, well-written comedy about family, food and independence, ``Eat Drink Man Woman'' (now available on home video) stars Sihung Lung as Chu, the finest culinary master in all of Taiwan. Widowed for 16 years, Chu devotes his life to raising three daughters.
Place Vendome
S he is an elegant beauty and a drunk. "The clinic is her second home," they whisper. "She's brought out for special occasions." Her husband owns one of the most famous jewelry shops in the world on Place Vendome in Paris, across from the Ritz. His secret is that the business is bankrupt. On one of the rare nights when she's at home instead of in rehab, he shows her where he has hidden five superb diamonds. Then he drives his car into the side of a lumber truck and kills himself.
Une Liaison Pornographique
She places an ad in a sex paper. There is something she has always wanted to do with a man, and now, in her 40s, she has decided it will never happen unless she acts boldly. He answers the ad. They meet in a cafe. They are presentable and ordinary--nice people, we sense. "An Affair of Love" is a story about "He" and "She," two adults who have a strong desire, and act on it. It is about the desiring itself, not about what they desire.
Goya
Lushly photographed and grandly conceived, Carlos Saura's "Goya in Bordeaux" never comes alive. It is an homage to the great Spanish painter, but we must come to the film already fascinated by Francisco de Goya; if we do not, the film will not convince us. It is too much a study and an exercise, not enough a living thing.
All About My Mother
Pedro Almodovar's films are a struggle between real and fake heartbreak--between tragedy and soap opera. They're usually funny, too, which increases the tension. You don't know where to position yourself while you're watching a film like ``All About My Mother,'' and that's part of the appeal:
Amelie
J ean-Pierre Jeunet's "Amelie" is a delicious pastry of a movie, a lighthearted fantasy in which a winsome heroine overcomes a sad childhood and grows up to bring cheer to the needful and joy to herself. You see it, and later when you think about it, you smile. Audrey Tautou, a fresh-faced waif who looks like she knows a secret and can't keep it, plays the title role, as a little girl who grows up starving for affection.
Persona
"Persona" (1966) is a film we return to over the years, for the beauty of its images and because we hope to understand its mysteries. It is apparently not a difficult film: Everything that happens is perfectly clear, and even the dream sequences are clear--as dreams. But it suggests buried truths, and we despair of finding them. "Persona" was one of the first movies I reviewed, in 1967. I did not think I understood it. A third of a century later I know most of what I am ever likely to know about films, and I think I understand that the best approach to "Persona" is a literal one'. Roger Ebert.
The Hairdresser's Husband
Based upon the hopes and dreams of one man, The Hairdresser's Husband evokes the joy of love without ever becoming sentimental. As Antoine (Jean Rochefort) sits in a barbers chair, alone, the bitter-sweet memories of his past bubble up.
Horseman On The Roof
`The Horseman on the Roof'' is a rousing romantic epic about beautiful people having thrilling adventures in breathtaking landscapes. Hollywood is too sophisticated (or too jaded) to make movies like this anymore; it comes from France, billed as the most expensive movie in French history.
The Mystery of Rampo
An affectionate, if macabre, love letter to the works of the famous and controversial Japanese author Edogawa Rampo, The Mystery of Rampo is an extraordinary picture that also manages to celebrate the rich legacy of the Japanese cinema. It recalls everything from the lyrical surrealism of Masaki Kobayashi to the delirious eroticism of Koji Wakamatsu (who, by the way, appears in a cameo) -- without ever seeming anything less than completely original. The plot finds the writer's most recently banned story incapable of suppression, as its events and characters come spilling out of Rampo's imagination and into his own reality.
The Red Violin
An epic adventure of mystery and obsession unfolds when Charles Morritz (Samuel L. Jackson), an appraiser of rare musical instruments, discovers a one-of-a-kind, blood-red violin at a prestigious Montreal auction house. Convinced he's found an authentic long-lost masterpiece, Morritz uncovers the spectacular journey of the priceless violin, how it changed hands and the lives of all who touched it. When the violin's shocking secret is finally revealed, Morritz must wrestle with his own demons and choose between burying the truth and risking everything.
Scent of Green Papaya
A love story of exquisite beauty and originality about a shy Vietnamese peasant girl who falls for her upper-class master.
Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios
The wildly hysterical international box office hit, Women On The Verge Of A Nervous Breakdown , introduces us to Pepa (Carmen Maura) who has just been jilted by an answering machine. The love of her life, Ivan, (Fernando Guillén) has just ended their relationship and she is heartbroken.
!Atame!
From the acclaimed director of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown comes this wickedly funny send-up of the romantic ties that bind. Determined to create an ideal family for himself, an orphaned mental patient kidnaps a recovering drug addict/porn star in an irrationally inspired bid for love. Convinced that if she only knew him, she would love him, the lunatic Ricky (Antonio Banderas, Law of Desire) is as much captive as captor, imprisoned by his desire for the beautiful actress (Victoria Abril). Director Pedro Almodovar, a master of modern farce, offers his most daring comedy yet, showing us that those who long for love are longing to be tied down - one way or another.
Passion, en
Ingmar Bergman's 1970 film about the impossibility of purity and consistency in a world where to live is to contradict yourself. The passion of the title is not sexual, but the ability to live with the contradictions of life and to bear them without resignation. A tentative, plotless film that pulses with the rhythms of life rather than the rhythms of drama.
My Life as a Dog
"Few movies come this close to perfection. This is an intelligent and moving story of a boy who must come to terms with abandonment, loss and the casual betrayal of adults. Extremely well acted on all sides, with a bold script that dares to ask the important questions. Ingemar must try to find some balance in his life, as he is tossed from one "home" to another, like a stray dog... or, like the Soviet space-dog Laika, who was sent into space only to starve to death in orbit. "They never intended to bring her back"
Chaos
Coline Serreau's "Chaos" defies categorization. It is an exciting film--part thriller, comedy, revenge tale, and feminist drama, blended together with compelling finesse.
Lucia, Lucia
A wry comedy unfolds when Lucia’s (Cecilia Roth) husband mysteriously disappears leaving her to discover that her life is not what it seems. In the search for her husband, Lucía finds two new friends who help her on her quest: Adrián (Kuno Becker), a charismatic 25-year-old; and Félix (Carlos Alvarez-Novoa), a seasoned veteran. Together they discover the value of friendship and passion while Lucía reinvents her life, finding a world she had forgotten, her ability to smile and her freedom.
Trolosa
Marianne is happily married to Markus, a successful conductor. They have a nine-year old daughter, Isabelle. Markus' best friend is David. Twice divorced, David is often at Marianne and Markus' apartment, and he is Isabelle's favourite storyteller. One night, while Markus is away, David visits the flat as usual. But something changes and what was once a safe, platonic friendship between Marianne and David is suddenly altered. Marianne now sees him in a different light, and finds him both sexually and emotionally attractive…
Rabbit-Proof Fence
Based on the true story of three young Aboriginal girls Molly, Gracie, Daisy (Evelyn Sampi, Laura Monaghan, Tianna Sansbury): in 1931 they were forcibly removed from their families at Jigalong WA and taken to a camp 1500 miles away at Moore River to be trained as domestic servants, all part of official Government policy. Molly leads her younger sister and cousin on a daring escape and in a bid to find her way home, following –on foot - the rabbit proof fence that cuts across the Gibson Desert and towards Jigalong. But WA’s Chief protector of Aborigines, A.O. Neville (Kenneth Branagh) does his [misguided] best to recapture them, with help from black tracker David Moodoo (David Gulpilil).
Y Tu Mamá También
"Y Tu Mama Tambien" is described on its Web site as a "teen drama," which is like describing "Moulin Rouge" as a musical. The description is technically true but sidesteps all of the reasons to see the movie. Yes, it's about two teenage boys and an impulsive journey with an older woman that involves sexual discoveries. But it is also about the two Mexicos. And it is about the fragility of life and the finality of death. Beneath the carefree road movie that the movie is happy to advertise is a more serious level--and below that, a dead serious level.
El Hijo de la Novia
At age 42, Rafael Belvedere (Ricardo Darín) is having a crisis. He's overwhelmed by his numerous responsibilities and just isn't having any fun. He has spent most of his life frantically trying to run the restaurant his father, Nino (Héctor Alterio) founded. He has achieved success, but nevertheless, continues to live in the old man's shadow. He rarely visits his aging mother, Nora (Norma Aleandro), who is slowly losing her memory, because he resents her inability to appreciate his accomplishments. His ex-wife is bitter towards him because he never takes the time to play a role in their daughter's life. And finally, Rafael is too self-involved to make a commitment to his beautiful girlfriend, Nati (Natalia Verbeke).
Piano Teacher
In Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher," which won three awards at Cannes 2001 (best actress, actor and film), she plays a bold woman with a secret wound. She is Erika Kohut, 40ish, a respected instructor at a conservatory of music in Vienna. Demanding, severe, distant, unsmiling, she leads a secret life of self-mutilation. That she sleeps in the same bed with her domineering mother is no doubt a clue--but to what?
Lantana
"Lantana" opens with a camera tracking through dense Australian shrubbery to discover the limbs of a dead woman. We are reminded of the opening of "Blue Velvet," which pushed into lawn grass to suggest dark places hidden just out of view. Much of the movie will concern the identity of the dead woman, and how she died, but when the mystery is solved, it turns out to be less an answer than a catalyst--the event that caused several lives to interlock.
The Dancer Upstairs
Marking an assured directorial debut for actor John Malkovich, The Dancer Upstairs is a tense, nerve-jangling political thriller that values adult storytelling and emotional depth over cheap thrills. It's a challenge for those accustomed to the frantic pace of Hollywood thrillers, but attentive viewers will be richly rewarded by Malkovich's slow-burn approach to the film's terrorist plot, adapted by Nicholas Shakespeare from his own novel , based on the "Shining Path" movement that terrorized Peru in the 1980s. The plot unfolds in an unnamed Latin American capital, where a lawyer-turned-police detective named Rejas (Javier Bardem) leads an investigation to locate Ezequiel, a terrorist whose followers have left a trail of fear, death and destruction across the city. Rejas falls in love with his daughter's ballet teacher (Laura Morante), but the film's ultimate revelation--a coincidence that Malkovich handles with credible delicacy--throws this simmering drama into stark relief, bringing Bardem's character (and his subtle performance) to a greater awareness of his own personal and political humanity.
The Sea is Watching
To film lovers around the world, The Sea Is Watching is a welcome parting gift from Akira Kurosawa, who wrote the screenplay based on two short stories by one of his favorite authors, Syugoro Yamamoto, but was unable to make the film prior to his death in 1998. Kurosawa left detailed storyboards and production notes, entrusting veteran director Kei Kumai to bring his vision to the screen. The results are both glorious and rather mild, by Kurosawa standards, but this gentle melodrama about love, loss, and survival retains much of the peaceful optimism that informed Kurosawa's final films. Set in the 19th century Edo period, the story focuses on the prostitutes of a seaside village brothel, where the vulnerable geisha O-Shin (Nagiko Tohno) endures one heartbreaking love and a potential second, while the more cynical Kikuno (Misa Shimizu) combats misery with harmless fantasies that bolster her spirits. Nature plays a role, and a climactic typhoon has a cleansing effect, offering hope in the wake of destruction, as if the sea had been watching all along. And like the sea itself, Kurosawa's spirit washes over this beautiful film, compromised only by music that's more sentimental than Kurosawa would have allowed.
Sex and Lucia
Sex and Lucia engages mind and body with its time-bending narrative and images of beautiful Spaniards having vibrant sex. The story shifts between past and present, fact and fiction, so a plot summary won't capture it, but… A young writer named Lorenzo falls into a passionate relationship with a waitress named Lucía. But he also finds himself drawn to a young nanny taking care of a child who just might be the result of an anonymous fling Lorenzo had with a woman he met on an island the year before. Lorenzo fantasizes about the lives of all of these women until a horrific event sends him into a suicidal depression. This may sound obscure or flat, but Sex and Lucía unfolds clearly and beautifully, featuring stunning visual images of both nature and flesh, and weaving a poetic spell much like the director's previous film, The Lovers of the Arctic Circle.
L'Auberge Espagnole
The movie has Xavier (Romain Duris) say goodbye for a year to his French girlfriend (Audrey Tautou, of "Amelie") and fly to Spain on an odyssey which he narrates, not very helpfully (much dialogue along the lines of, "My story starts here ... no, not here, but ... "). In Barcelona he shares an apartment with six other students, plus a revolving roster of lovers, most straight, one gay. Imagine the American students in "The Real Cancun" as if they were literate, cosmopolitan and not substance abusers, and you've got it.
Girl With a Pearl Earring
Not a lot is known about 17th-century painter Johannes Vermeer, except that he died in early middle age, leaving 11 surviving children and 35 paintings that have survived into the 21st century. One of those paintings, "Girl with a Pearl Earring," was only re-discovered in 1882 and its origins remain a mystery. Inspired by a reproduction of the portrait on her wall, author Tracy Chevalier attempted to solve the enigma in novel form. It is Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring that now inspires Peter Webber's drama of the same name, a portrait of artist and model as well drawn as anything painted by Vermeer himself.
Festival in Cannes
Plunging deeply into the flamboyant madness of the world's premiere film event, Mr. Jaglom uses
that luxurious gathering as a backdrop against which to tell his story, taking us into the heart of the desperate, needy, funny, alternately glamorous and sleazy world of the international movie business. "FESTIVAL IN CANNES" introduces us to the obsessed lives of the actors, actresses, writers, directors, producers, executives, movie stars, agents, managers, and wannabes - all of whom are drawn together for two weeks each May in this ultra-romantic setting.
Last Summer in the Hamptons
Filmed on location in East Hampton, Long Island, "LAST SUMMER IN THE HAMPTONS" concerns three generations of a large and brilliant theatrical family spending the last weekend of their last summer together at the decades-old family retreat which economic circumstances have finally forced them to put on the market.
Deja Vu
"DÉJÀ VU" is a film about the powerful pull that strangers can feel toward one another, how one's orderly life-plans can be suddenly and totally disrupted by mysterious feelings of connection and belonging that seem to defy all logic and circumstance. Ultimately Dana - and we - must confront the question: Does one have choices to freely make or does fate invariably and irrevocably determine our destiny?
City of God
A kid born and raised in Cidade de Deus, one of the most violents of Rio de Janeiro, is too sensitive to be a criminal, in spite of the increasing violence which surrounds him, and discovers he can watch reality from a different point of view through art. While his friends turn to drug traffic dealers in this place, he finds his redemption in photography.
Remember Me, My Love
REMEMBER ME, MY LOVE, Muccino’s bittersweet drama delves into the lives and loves of a modern Italian family whose individual aspirations pull at the seams of their increasingly fragile unit.
The Five Obstructions
With THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS, notoriously mischievous director Lars von Trier performs yet another cinematic experiment. This time around, the Danish prankster tries to outwit his mentor, director Jorgen Leth, forcing him to remake his classic 1967 short, "The Perfect Human," five different times, with a series of increasingly outlandish guidelines. His goal is to break down the abnormally stable Leth, teaching him a valuable life lesson in the process.
Monsieur Ibrahim
Some crowded Parisian atmosphere and the burnished presence of Omar Sharif make this coming-of-age tale a pleasure. It's the early 1960s, and an adolescent Jewish boy (Pierre Boulanger), mostly left to his own devices by an ineffectual father, makes friends with the worldly wise Persian man (Sharif) who runs a small neighborhood grocery. The kid's fumbling experiences with sexual curiosity are the reliable stuff of many a French movie, but the unlikely friendship of young Jew and old Muslim make for an offbeat through-line. Francois Dupeyron's film shifts gears in its final section, moving from its flavorful location and into the wide-open spaces, and it goes on too long with too many pieces of advice. But overall this is a warm and winning experience, with Omar Sharif holding an instructive class in the power of understated movie-star charisma. --Robert Horton
Sideways
A wine tasting road trip to salute Jack’s (Thomas Haden Church) final days as a bachelor careens woefully sideways as he and Miles (Paul Giamatti) hit the gas en route to mid-life crises.
Closer
If you believe in love at first sight, you never stop looking.
House of Flying Daggers
"House of Flying Daggers" is set in the year is 859AD as China's once flourishing Tang Dynasty is in decline. Unrest is raging throughout the land, and the corrupt government is locked in battle with rebel armies that are forming in protest. The largest, and most prestigious of these is the "House of Flying Daggers", which is growing ever more powerful under a mysterious new leader.
The movie is based on Shakespeare's classic play of a rich merchant (Bassanio) in 16th century Venice who borrows money from a Jewish moneylender (Shylock) to help a friend woo a beautiful heiress (Portia). But the merchant faces mortal peril when he can't repay the debt.
The Sea Inside
Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 2004, The Sea Inside is a life-affirming film about a man who wishes to die. That may seem like a massive contradiction, but in the hands of director Alejandro Amenábar (Open Your Eyes, The Others) and actor Javier Bardem (Before Night Falls ), this fact-based Spanish drama concerns the final days of Ramón Sampedro, the quadriplegic poet who waged a controversial campaign for his right to die.
YES
YES is the story of a passionate love affair between an American woman (Joan Allen) and a Middle-Eastern man (Simon Abkarian) in which they confront some of the greatest conflicts of our generation - religious, political and sexual.
Saraband
Marianne and Johan meet again after thirty years without contact, when Marianne suddenly feels a need to see her ex-husband again. She decides to visit Johan at his old summer house in the western province of Dalarna. And so, one beautiful autumn day, there she is, beside his reclining chair, waking him with a light kiss. Also living at the summer house are Johan's son Henrik and Henrik's daughter Karin. Henrik is giving his daughter cello lessons and already sees her future as staked out. Relations between father and son are very strained, but both are protective of Karin. They are all still mourning Anna, Henrik's much-loved wife, who died two years ago, yet who, in many ways, remains present among them. Marianne soon realizes that things are not all as they should be, and she finds herself unwillingly drawn into a complicated and upsetting power struggle.
Capote
Bennett Miller's CAPOTE is a finely crafted biopic that recounts a historic chapter in American history and, in the process, captures the unraveling of a truly gifted mind. Starring an extraordinary Philip Seymour Hoffman as the legendary Truman Capote, the film concentrates on the seven-year period during which Capote wrote his groundbreaking nonfiction novel, IN COLD BLOOD. One morning in 1959, Capote learned of a horrific family killing in Holcomb, Kansas. With the intention of writing an article for the New Yorker, he traveled to the Midwest with his good friend Nell Harper Lee (Catherine Keener), who was about to publish her own masterwork, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Somehow, the soft-spoken, eccentric writer managed to earn the trust of local authorities--most notably, reserved K.B.I. agent Alvin Dewey (Chris Cooper). But when the two killers were caught and returned to Kansas to await trial, Capote began to form an intense emotional bond with one of them, Perry Smith (Clifton Collins, Jr.). The pressure of this connection threatened to push an already fragile Capote into the darkest recesses of himself. His only hope was to finish the book that he was convinced would shock the nation and change the course of writing forever.
Osama
The first movie produced by Afghanistan filmmakers after the fall of the Taliban, Osama is a searing portrait of life under the oppressive fundamentalist regime. Because women are not allowed to work, a widow disguises her young daughter (Marina Golbahari) as a boy so they won't starve to death. Simply walking the streets is frightening enough, but when the disguised girl is rounded up with all the boys in the town for religious training, her peril becomes absolutely harrowing. Golbahari's face--beautiful but taut with terror--is riveting. The movie captures both her plight and the miseries of daily life in spare, vivid images. At one point, her mother is nearly killed for exposing her feet while riding on the back of a bicycle; for the entire scene, the camera shows only her feet, with the spokes of the wheel radiating out behind as she lowers her burka over them. --Bret Fetzer
Roger Gnoan M'Bala
Adanggaman: 2001 by Roger Gnoan M'Bala
This historic drama is about an African whose village is captured and its inhabitants forced into slavery by the African collaborator Adanggaman (Rasmane Ouedraogo). Traitorous and arbitrary, Adanggaman has a round face that constantly calls out for the rum the Dutch traders ply him with. The film's Ivory Coast-born director, Roger Gnoan M'Bala — who wrote the screenplay with Jean-Marie Adlaffi and Bertin Akaffou — blends truth and fiction, and the storytelling is so simple that its directness feels fresh and rousing. The scenes of Africans marching in chains and stocks, monitored by other Africans, are a shock and linger in your mind for days afterward.
Films
