Cinema of the World

Description: "In São Paulo, the worker Tião (Carlos Alberto Riccelli) is the son of the idealistic Otávio (Gianfrancesco Guarnieri), who tries to organize the workers with his friend Bráulio (Milton Gonçalves) against the exploitation of the employers. Tião's girlfriend, the also worker Maria (Bete Mendes), got pregnant and he decides to get married with her in a hurry. Tião was raised in the repressive period of the Brazilian dictatorship and is very afraid of losing his job, while his father has a totally different political position. Tião believes that the struggle between classes never changes, while his father has an opposite opinion, having confidence in better days. His mother Romana (Fernanda Montenegro) is the balance of their family. The dramatic story is not conclusive, portraying a period in Brazilian history when the workers were trying to organize the strikes and other movements against the employer, after a long period of dictatorship. Having a magnificent interpretation of an outstanding cast, this movie was awarded with the Golden Lion – Special Jury Prize - in Cannes Festival (1981), and also awarded in minor international festivals in Cuba (1981), France (1981) and Colombia (1983), besides winning four prizes in a national festival (Air France)." - Claudio Carvalho at IMDB

Description: Kieslowski's later film Dworzec (Station, 1980) portrays the atmosphere at Central Station in Warsaw after the rush hour. It opens with the main television news at 7:30PM, providing information about the communist party leader, Edward Gierek. The recurrent image, Orwellian in spirit, of security cameras watching people, organises the film. In the last scene the camera moves inside the surveillance room and presents various images of the station on multiple screens. Its political, Orwellian touches aside, Station is chiefly admired for its attention to detail, its portrayal of tired, almost inanimate faces, "people looking for something", the reality that has nothing to do with the optimism of the television news.

Description: Yuya Uchida stars in this pseudo-documentary about George, a washed-up middle-aged rocker, divorcing his wife and living with his girlfriend, a soap massage parlor worker. Another great roman porno from Kumashiro.

Description: In southeast Sicily, a team of archaeologists investigate the ruins of a crypt where heretic nuns had been stoned and crucified by the village people in the 16th century. Soon strange things begin to happen, and Liza, one of the team members, starts to have surreal dreams about the nuns. Then the graphic violence begins, starting with a decapitation! The answers lie in the ancient crypt of the nun

Description: Everett McGill stars as a 19th Century sailor whose bizarre facial deformity earns him the name "Iguana." Beaten and tortured by his shipmates, he escapes to a deserted island where he declares war on all of mankind. Soon, a group of shipwrecked sailors and one kidnapped young maiden are made prisoners of Iguana's brutal slave empire. In a kingdom ruled by savagery and lust, can these survivors face the greatest evil of all?

Description: A young Italian noblewoman plots with her lover and her family to murder her abusive father leading to an uproar in the community and the Roman Catholic church set in 16th Century Italy.

About a depraved priest who lures innocent suburban girls into sexual slavery.

Description: There are many versions of this film. This one strated without prison prologue. Boss Huller, circus artist, one day meets the young, beatiful orphan Berta-Marie, and falls under her spell. He leaves his wife and young son behind, and makes Berta-Marie his partner in a new trapeze number. Another famous trapeze artist Artinelli takes note of them and engages them for his trapeze show in Berlin, where their salto mortale becomes an immediate sensation. But Artinelli seduces Berta-Marie, and after that trapeze number becames mortally dangerous for all three participants. Full of tension and suspense classic melodrama with extraordinary cinematography by Karl Freund and great (as usually) performance by Jannings.

Description: Editor Hinchecliffe wants to boost circulation for his "New York Gazette" and city editor Randall puts his top reporter on a 20-year-old murder case in which Nancy Vorhees shot her lover. As she is now a happy wife and mother, she pleads with Randall to drop it. When he won't, she poisons herself. More trouble ensues. Written by Ed Stephan {stephan@cc.wwu.edu} (IMDB).

Description: Primary follows the campaigns of Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey and upstart Massachusetts senator John Kennedy as they vie for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960. The contrasts between the two are stark: Humphrey is an old-school politician attempting to appeal to Wisconsin voters’ agricultural roots at the expense of the “eastern elite”, portraying himself as a champion of the common man. Kennedy, on the other hand, can be perceived as a celebrity adored by urban voters and youth, a rock star before that term was used in politics. The real stars of the film, though, are the voters of Wisconsin, whose views are surprisingly diverse. And even though we know how it ends, Drew’s filmmaking prowess makes it a nail-biting finish.

Description: In the annals of action movies few can compare with Mad Max 2, a full-throttle epic of speed and carnage that rockets you into a dreamlike landscape where the post-nuclear future meets the mythological past. More simply, it's also one of the most mind-blowing stunt movies ever made.

Before he took aim in four Lethal Weapons and starred in Maverick, Mel Gibson had already made his mark on movie history as Max, the heroic loner who drives the roads of outback Australia in an unending search for gasoline. Arrayed against him and the other scraggly defenders of a fuel-depot encampment are the bizarre warriors commanded by The Humungus, notorious for never taking prisoners when they can pulverize them instead.

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The third and longest part of Syberberg's extraordinary trilogy on German culture, history and nationalism (the two earlier films were Ludwig - Requiem for a Virgin King and Karl May), best described as a high camp, heavy-duty analysis of both history and historical analysis itself. The chosen method is to single out, act out, alter, and finally comment on the lives of a handful of 'awkward' German historical figures, from Ludwig of Bavaria through fantasy author Karl May to Hitler, the 'madman'. Behind aesthetic complexity lies a simple purpose: to show up the sort of historical contradictions solved by Marxists with bare economic models, and by others with suspect reference to the 'greatness' or 'madness' of the figures involved. Visually lyrical, the style is eclectic to the point of hysteria; and the tone oscillates between the operatic (Wagner figures large) and the colloquial (Hitler in conversation with his projectionist) without ever quite coming unstuck. Humour mixes with mythology and analysis in the attempt to reunite art, history and ideology. It's a quite remarkable film, with a sense of metaphor equal to its intellectual courage.

Description: Shihata (Youssef Wahby) is a poor clerk working at a rich woman corporation. When the husband of this women divorced her for the third time - Which mean in the isamic religious law that he can't marry her again unless she married another man and got divorced from him - She asks Shihata to marry her then divorce her, So she can return to her previous husband.

Description: excerpt from Midnight Eye review by Michael Arnold:

Halfway through the 15-year war in China, the Japanese War Ministry enlisted Toho Studios' Culture Film section to produce a movie documenting the Japanese military operation in Wuhan. Toho chose Fumio Kamei, fresh from his work as editor on Toho's 1938 propaganda film Shanghai, to direct the new work. Kamei was shipped off to the front with a small crew including cameraman Shigeru Miki (known for his work on Mizoguchi's 1933 White Threads of the Waterfall / Taki No Shiraito), and the resulting footage was used to great effect, but to the dismay of the producers the completed film featured limp and listless soldiers on a desolated landscape where it should have been boosting morale and exalting the Japanese war effort.

A Bob Dylan fan who goes by the name Mr. Tambourine passes his time in the Brazilian countryside by looking at photographs and movies on the Internet that seem to feature the same mysterious woman.

This film looks at an unfamiliar side of Brazil, far removed from the caricatures, the favelas, crime and samba music. The story is set in the south of the country, in the mist. It could be a North American state. It’s a about international youth and a teenage Bob Dylan fan’s desire to become an adult. Surfing the Internet, he wants to go out and experience the world and feels a little ill at ease in his teenage phase, his family and his village.

Description: A story of two Thai girls nicknamed Cherry and Noon who plan to backpack to Europe for a year. They took off for reasons totally understandable for most teenagers, but unfathomable to adults.
“One is suspended from university while another one is heart broken.” Their plan was very simple: get a student visa to take an English course, but their true motivation is to save money, travel, and experience the world. The destinations were the ‘Big Three’ of Europe – London, Paris, and Rome. Before they took this trip, they swore: #1. No matter what happens, not to leave each other. #2. To never break rule #1 However, as we all know never say “never” when it comes to life being that you will “never” know what might happen.

From moria.co.nz:

The young canine princess Mona feels lonely living in the castle by the seashore that is her home. But then the young female unicorn U appears and she and Mona become inseparable friends. However Mona’s grandmother, the rat Goomi, disapproves of U. Mona begins to grow up. In the woods U befriends the lizard Lazare and then the travelling musicians known as The Yeah-Yeahs. As Goomi plots to drive The Yeah-Yeahs out of the woods, Mona begins a tentative romance with one of the group, the young cat musician Kulka.

From: moviephone.com
In this dark, foreboding sea story, a veteran sea captain abducts his niece for what he believes is his last chance at love. As the sad demon of the ocean Klabautermanden watches the passing of doomed ships, the niece awakens in her uncle's cabin. She makes him marry her but never allows the tyrannical captain to ever touch her. For eight years, the ship never docks as the malnourished crew wishes for death. The woman has a child by another man and the captain watches in horror as she makes friends easily while he is reviled by his superstitious crew. - Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Independent filmmaker Carmelo Bene makes his debut in this feature that concerns the murder of the Saracens in the city of Otranto centuries ago. Our Lady appears at various time in the film, symbolic of the carnal desires and spiritual dreams of all men. Flashbacks and avant garde cinematic techniques provide passages of erotica and black humor on occasion. The story was taken from Bene's own novel as the author oversees all aspects of writing, production and direction in this experimental and provocative film.

Description: A mentally challenged girl is defended by a young man who takes care of pigs. He gets into a fight with the local saloon keeper promting the man to get the boy drunk and bribe a priest into marrying the boy to the unfortunate girl. A female teacher arrives in town to teach women how to paint. She uses the young boy as a model and then as a toy for her pleasure. The teacher subsequently takes another lover and abandons the young man, claiming that she was unaware of his marriage. The young boy eventually kills his wife, but his father takes the blame for the crime and confesses his sins before he dies in prison. As a conclusion to this sad movie, the townspeople punish the young boy for what he has done.

An erotic drama about complicated love affairs and blackmailing. Dina, the young wife of elderly manager Gantar meets attractive student Luka and falls in love with him. All her further activity is submitted to one and only goal: to get Luka for herself.

Description: The birth of the motion picture epic is generally dated to the 1908 Italian film The Last Days of Pompeii, based on one of a standard set of 19th century religious novels that would be made and remade over the next half of the 20th century. Pompeii launched a steady stream of Italian epics set in ancient Rome, Babylon, Carthage, Nineveh — ever longer films on ever larger sets with ever more extras, leading the film industry worldwide until World War I. One of several specialists in the genre, Enrico Guazzoni filmed this second version Quo Vadis?, the prime exemplar of a subsidiary genre to "Life of Christ" films, one that might be called the "Christ vs. Caesar" genre. The title of this film means "Where are you going?" and the question is posed by the Ascended Christ to Peter in a vision as the latter departs Rome on the eve of an Imperial persecution. The main story, however, focuses on a Roman commander, Vinicius, who falls for a Christian girl, Lygia, and is so drawn into the underground Christian community, experiencing a personal transformation along the way.

Description: By the Bluest of Seas is a musical, codirected by S. Mardanov, that's even more intensely physical than Okraina. Even though warfare is a passing offscreen issue, this film is as much about peace as Okraina is about war -- a view of paradise to complement the previous glimpse of hell.

Sean Thornton has returned from America to reclaim his homestead and escape his past. Sean's eye is caught by Mary Kate Danaher, a beautiful but poor maiden, and younger sister of ill-tempered "Red" Will Danaher. The riotous relationship that forms between Sean and Mary Kate, punctuated by Will's pugnacious attempts to keep them apart, form the main plot, with Sean's past as the dark undercurrent.

In 1998, SVT made a documentary about Leila K's claim for stardom called Fuck You, Fuck You Very Much. The event focuses on an incident that happened during the 1996 Swedish Grammis awards. In 2000, she appeared on Daisy Dee's "Open Sesame" video, a cover of her own 1991 hit. Daisy Dee was the presenter of the show "Viva Club Rotation" at the time. In 2003, Swedish media reported that Leila K was living on the streets, stealing her food.

2009 the rock documentary Fuck You, Fuck You Very Much was released May 2009 in Sweden.

According to this documentary, East Germans have twice as much sex, start much younger, have more partners, are more experimental and are more satisfied then their capitalist counterparts. When the Iron Curtain came down, 40 years of division left its mark in many places - including the beds of the German people. At the end of World War II, the starting point was the same on both sides of the wall. Germans shared the same culture, the same lifestyle, the same morals, but four decades on everything has changed. Why? Was it the lack of church and easy availability of divorce and abortion? Filmmaker André Meier uses archive material such as state education films, locally produced porn magazines and East German home videos to compare both systems based on their dealings with sex. Meier discovers which Germans are cooler, more advanced, less inhibited and less prudish in the bedroom.