Category: Arthouse

February 9, 2022 / Arthouse

GOHATTO (1999) AKA TABOO

——UPGRADED——

The young and handsome Kano Sozaburo is admitted to the Shinsengumi, an elite samurai group that seeks to defend the Tokugawa shogunate against reformist forces. Kano is a skilled swordsman, but his physical beauty leads the members of the strictly male group to compete for his affections, generating tensions that threaten to become lethal. In Gohatto, Nagisa Oshima explores the ambiguous forms of masculinity that the samurai code concealed, with a terrific cast including Ryuhei Matsuda, Takeshi Kitano and Tadanobu Asano subtly capturing the dangers of repressed homoerotic desire.

WATCH HERE

February 9, 2022 / Arthouse

DORIAN GRAY IM SPIEGEL DER BOULEVARDPRESSE (1984) AKA THE IMAGE OF DORIAN GRAY IN THE YELLOW PRESS

In Ulrike Ottinger’s contemporary reinvention of the famous morality tale, fin de siècle dandy Dorian Gray is reimagined as a drag role, played without comment on the switch by Veruschka von Lehndorff in the male lead. Ottinger’s collision of Oscar Wilde and Fritz Lang features Delphine Seyrig as one “Dr. Mabuse,” the head of a sinister multinational newspaper agency that conspires to create, control, and destroy celebrity figure Dorian Gray. The film is an odyssey through eye-popping tableaux, including a trip to an unforgettable underworld.

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February 6, 2022 / Arthouse

O PAGADOR DE PROMESSAS (1962) AKA THE GIVEN WORD

Zé is a very poor man from the Brazilian countryside. His most prized possession is his donkey. When his donkey falls terminally ill, Zé makes a promise to Saint Bárbara: If his donkey recovers, he will carry a cross – like Jesus – all the way from his city to Saint Bárbara’s church in the state capital. Upon the recover of his donkey, Zé leaves on his journey. He makes it to the church, but the priest refuses to accept the cross once he came to know the context of Zé’s promise.

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February 6, 2022 / Arthouse

SAN MICHELE AVEVA UN GALLO (1972) AKA ST. MICHAEL HAD A ROOSTER

Sentenced to life imprisonment for illegal activities, Italian International member Giulio Manieri holds on to his political ideals while struggling against madness in the loneliness of his prison cell.

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January 24, 2022 / Arthouse

DIE GLÜCKLICHEN MINUTEN DES GEORG HAUSER (1974) AKA THE HAPPY MINUTES OF GEORG HAUSER

After a series of events, Georg Hauser, an established middle-class man, is at odds with the world, in which he himself used to work so well. He wants out. He wants to live. In a moment of his very own clarity, he destroys his car, but whoever destroys his property is an enemy of the state.

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January 24, 2022 / Arthouse

DIE ERSTEN TAGE (1971) AKA THE FIRST DAYS

In this end-of-the-life scenario, which is designed as an expressive silent film with subtitles, a group of adolescents and scattered loners move through a destroyed landscape. One of the leaders is poisoned by his girlfriend, who now takes his place and demonstrates her power to a newcomer. However, he in turn passes the test of courage, puts himself in the place of the head of the group and leads the ever-growing community into an uncertain future.

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January 21, 2022 / Arthouse

THE SLOW BUSINESS OF GOING (2000)

Petra Going is a migrant cyborg, an agent of the Global Nomad Project: an international “Experience Data Agency” which sends hundreds of “receivers” like her to wander the globe and record a succession of random encounters. Periodically, they return to agency headquarters where they deposit their accumulated memories into an archive. This archive is available to users who then vicariously and virtually inhabit the ready-made landscapes of touristic consciousness. The motto of the GNP: “Nostalgia For Rent.”

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January 11, 2022 / Arthouse

I KNOW THE WAY TO THE HOFBRAEUHAUS (1992)

Comedy shot without a script on Super-8mm as a silent film, with intertitles later inserted between scenes. What unfolds is a familiar Achternbusch tale in which the protagonist (here his alter-ego, Hick) is driven by a mad longing and becomes irretrievably lost. Unable to meet the demands of the workaday world, Hick wanders alone through the city and, as in many of Achternbusch’s films, enters an intermediate realm in which the dead interact with the living: he encounters and falls in love with a mummy, searches for an Egyptian queen, and stalks the inner regions of the hereafter, which lie in the middle of Munich.

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