Tag: 1979

Director: Alan Clarke
Stars: Ray Winstone, Mick Ford, Julian Firth
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: UK

An uncompromising story of life in a British juvenile offender institution in the 70’s.

Director: Robert Altman
Stars: Paul Newman, Vittorio Gassman, Fernando Rey
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Sci-Fi
Country: USA

During a future ice age, dying humanity occupies its remaining time by playing a board game called “Quintet.” For one small group, this obsession is not enough; they play the game with living pieces … and only the winner survives.

Director: Gillo Pontecorvo
Stars: Gian Maria Volontè, Ángela Molina, Saverio Marconi
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: Italy | Spain

As 1973 winds down, Francisco Franco is still governing Spain with an iron hand. Opposition parties are forbidden; labor movements are repressed; and Basque nationalists are mercilessly hunted down. The caudillo is aging, though, and the continuity of the régime is in question. One man has the trust of Franco, enough authority and experience to assume the leadership, and an impeccable track record as to dealing with enemies of the State: admiral Luis Carrero Blanco. For the embattled clandestine Basque organization ETA, Carrero Blanco must be brought down.

Director: Bertrand Blier
Stars: Gérard Depardieu, Bernard Blier, Jean Carmet
Genre: Crime, Comedy
Country: France

Black comedy about solitude and the dehumanization of the modern world, through the adventures of three men. First introduced is Alphonse Tram, an unemployed young man. His only neighbour is the police chief-inspector Morvandieu. Then a third man appears: he is Alphonse’s wife’s murderer… Bizarre and unreal.

Director: Alain Tanner
Stars: Clémentine Amouroux, Catherine Rétoré, Franziskus Abgottspon
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Switzerland | France

Two young women from very different backgrounds journey into the countryside seeking respite from unsatisfactory lives and relationships, but ultimately find that there is no way back to the world they once knew.

Director: Richard Pearce
Stars: Rip Torn, Conchata Ferrell, Barry Primus
Genre: Western, Drama
Country: USA

A widow with a young daughter travels to a ranch in Wyoming to manage the household of a rancher. After a while the man and woman develop a relationship that leads to a marriage. But life in the harsh place takes its toll.

Director: Suzan Pitt
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: USA

An animated, surreal, visually stunning as well as rather uniquely imaginative candy-colored nightmare from indie artist Suzan Pitt.

Director: Doru Nastase
Stars: Stefan Sileanu, Ernest Maftei, Emanoil Petrut
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Romania

Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler and Dracula, fights the Ottoman Turks on the battlefield and the Hungarian Boyars in his court.

Director: Giulio Paradisi
Stars: Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Lance Henriksen
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi
Country: Italy

The soul of a young girl with telekinetic powers becomes the prize in a fight between forces of God and the Devil.

Director: Héctor Olivera
Stars: Pepe Soriano, Juan Carlos Altavista, Osvaldo Terranova
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Argentina

The story about a family that must maintain a insatiable grandmother.

Director: Haile Gerima
Stars: Barbarao, Johnny Weathers, Susan Williams
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

It details the life of Dorothy who is a poor black woman. Her husband is put in jail for observable reason and she is pregnant with a second child. The government threatens to take away her welfare if she does not get an abortion.

Director: Alain Corneau
Stars: Patrick Dewaere, Myriam Boyer, Marie Trintignant
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: France

Franck Poupart is a slightly neurotic door-to-door salesman in a sinister part of Paris’ suburbs. He meets Mona, a teenager, who’s been made a prostitute by her own aunt. Franck would like to change his life and also save Mona from her aunt. Murder is the only solution he finds to achieve his goal… A very gloomy movie, exuding dispair and uneasiness, with pathetic characters.

Director: D.A. Pennebaker
Stars: David Bowie, Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: UK

The July 3rd, 1973 historic concert of the ‘leper Messiah’. This was to be David Bowie’s last concert with the Ziggy persona and the Spiders from Mars. A great medley of ‘Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud’/’All The Young Dudes’/’Oh! You Pretty Things’, a Lou Reed cover, and a Rolling Stones cover are but some of the highlights.

Director: Joseph Losey
Stars: Ruggero Raimondi, John Macurdy, Edda Moser
Genre: Drama, Music
Country: France | Italy | West Germany

Mozart’s opera in lush sets: Don Giovanni, the infamous womanizer, kills Donna Anna’s father. He is then chased by Donna Anna’s fiancé, Don Ottavio, as well as Donna Elvira, one of his former conquests. But the real threat lies elsewhere.

Director: Stefan Jarl
Stars: Kenneth ‘Kenta’ Gustafsson, Gustav ‘Stoffe’ Svensson, Eva Blondin
Genre: Documentary
Country: Sweden

About a couple of friends in Stockholms drug world.

Director: Derek Jarman
Stars: Peter Bull, David Meyer, Neil Cunningham
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Country: UK

Banished to a forsaken island, the Right Duke of Milan and Sorcerer Prospero gets the chance to take his revenge on the King of Naples with the assistance of his airy spirit-servant, Ariel.

Director: Henri Verneuil
Stars: Yves Montand, Michel Albertini, Roland Amstutz
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Country: France

Conspiracy thriller inspired by the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of JFK. After a fictional president is assassinated, a determined, tough prosecutor investigates the emerging conspiracy behind it.

Director: Borislav Sharaliev
Stars: Ivan Ivanov, Yanina Kasheva, Valcho Kamarashev
Genre: Drama
Country: Bulgaria

A boy from a poor Sofia neighborhood – Rado who is orphan and has committed several petty crimes – is sent to a borstal, or, to put it otherwise becomes a juvenile prisoner. Unfortunately, however, he cannot reconcile his uncomplicated pride, sense of justice with the kind of education provided by people who are more often than not deprived of sensibility and human warmth. The order there is repulsive, the boy is seeking for freedom and often makes escapes. During one of the escapes he meets the love of his lifetime. Suddenly Rado falls in love with Benny, a student, the daughter of well educated and sophisticated family (at least, this is the first impression) and this intensify his desire for freedom and independence. Naturally, conflict is not slow to appear. The parents of Benny are panic-stricken when getting aware of the fact. They are resolved to separate the couple. Their parental love is sincere but the reality is phony and cruel.

Director: Wojciech Marczewski
Stars: Piotr Lysak, Tomasz Hudziec, Hanna Skarzanka
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland

The life and times of a sensitive, poetic Polish boy who watches his country strive towards the liberation movement.

Director: Carlos Saura
Stars: Geraldine Chaplin, Amparo Muñoz, Fernando Fernán Gómez
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Spain | France

Ana is alive and married with Antonio; they arrive in the manor in the countryside of Spain where she worked as a nanny many years ago, for the centennial birthday of the matriarch. In their reunion, she finds that Jose died three years ago; Juan left his wife Luchy; Fernando is still living with his mother and unsuccessfully trying to fly a hang glider; and the three little girls are grown-up. Further, she discovers that the dysfunctional family is completely broken, and Luchy in embezzling mother’s money. When Juan arrives for the celebration, he plots with Fernando and Luchy to kill the mother to get the inheritance. Meanwhile, Antonio has a brief affair with Natalia.

Director: Jonathan Kaplan
Stars: Matt Dillon, Michael Eric Kramer, Pamela Ludwig
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: USA

A group of bored teenagers rebel against authority in the community of New Granada after the death of one of their own.

Director: Tim Burton, Jerry Rees
Stars: Brad Bird, Chris Buck, Tim Burton
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: USA

The Doctor of Doom unleashes a monster designed to destroy all things beautiful.

Director: George Cukor
Stars: Katharine Hepburn, Ian Saynor, Bill Fraser
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

A strong-willed teacher, determined to educate the poor and illiterate youth of an impoverished Welsh village, discovers one student whom she believes to have the seeds of genius in him.

Director: Costa-Gavras
Stars: Yves Montand, Romy Schneider, Romolo Valli
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Italy | West Germany

Two strangers help each other survive a night of great loss.

Director: Andrzej Wajda
Stars: Daniel Olbrychski, Anna Seniuk, Maja Komorowska
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: Poland | France

Set in the late ’20s. A thirtyish young man, who heads a small factory, faints at the funeral of a close friend. He decides to go home to his aunt and uncle for a while, but gets involved with a family of five women who had been in love with him at one time though he had apparently loved only one, who, unknown to him, has died since his departure. The women are mainly disillusioned with life or estranged from husbands while the youngest has a crush on him.

Director: Jeff Stein
Stars: Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Keith Moon
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: UK

From the early black and white days to their colourful hedonistic era, you will Rock! See them at their most creative, and destructive, and experience The Who: Here!

Director: Don Coscarelli
Stars: A. Michael Baldwin, Bill Thornbury, Reggie Bannister
Genre: Horror, Sci-Fi
Country: USA

A teenage boy and his friends face off against a mysterious grave robber known only as the Tall Man, who keeps a lethal arsenal of terrible weapons with him.

Director: Hollis Frampton
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short, Drama
Country: USA

An experimental short film by Hollis Frampton in which colors, periods of darkness, and images are used.

Director: Agnieszka Holland
Stars: Halina Labonarska, Tadeusz Huk, Iwona Biernacka
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Poland

The film is set in a small town near Warsaw, to which a young and coming director comes to produce a classic play (Wyspianski “Wyzwolenie”) with a modern vein. Everyone in the production gets his usual stereotypical role, but the aging idol of the ensemble senses opportunity to give the performance of his life. For young director everything is already set. The leading man, however, is not giving up and is trying to restore the role according to his view. His wife listens to his fears, complaints and frustrations, while resigning herself to a fading career in a puppet theatre.

Director: Gary Weis
Stars: Louis Gigante
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

Depicts the daily life of gangs within the context of the South Bronx. Deals primarily with two African American and Puerto Rican gangs known as the “Savage Skulls” and the “Savage Nomads”.

Director: Francesco Rosi
Stars: Gian Maria Volontè, Paolo Bonacelli, Alain Cuny
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy | France

A doctor in Fascist Italy is exiled to a remote village for his political views.

Director: Grigori Kromanov
Stars: Uldis Pucitis, Jüri Järvet, Lembit Peterson
Genre: Crime, Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: Soviet Union

Police gets a call-out to a lonely hotel in the Alps. When an officer gets to the hotel everything seems to be alright. Suddenly an avalanche cuts them out from the rest of the world and strange things are going to happen.

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Stars: Jerzy Stuhr, Malgorzata Zabkowska, Ewa Pokas
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Poland

Filip buys an eight-millimetre movie camera when his first child is born. Because it’s the first camera in town, he’s named official photographer by the local Party boss. His horizons widen when he is sent to regional film festivals with his first works but his focus on movie-making also leads to domestic strife and philosophical dilemmas.

Director: Franc Roddam
Stars: Phil Daniels, Leslie Ash, Phil Davis
Genre: Drama, Music
Country: UK

Jimmy loathes his job and parents. He seeks solace with his mod clique, scooter riding and drugs, only to be disappointed.

Director: Paul Vecchiali
Stars: Nicolas Silberg, Béatrice Bruno, Louis Lyonnet
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: France

Pierrot, a mechanic in Paris, falls madly for an older woman, a chemist, who at first refuses his love. Finally she accepts his love when she discovers she is affected by a deadly illness. In the background we see everyday stories of a community of Pierrot’s younger and older friends.

Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Stars: Mehdi Azadbakht, Mohammadreza Barati, Hedayat Matin Daftari
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Country: Iran

While the teacher is faced towards the blackboard, one of the students makes some funny noises. The teacher can’t find the person who did that, so he decides to dismiss a group of students for one week or until one of them tells him who was the one that made the noises. In the first case after some days, one of the dismissed students tells teacher the truth. In the second case, no one tells teacher the truth and the period of punishment finishes. Kiarostami asks some of the most famous people in Iran about their views on these two cases.

Director: Tim Burton
Stars: Ralph Votrian
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: USA

What are the devilish goals of this mad doctor?

Director: Satyajit Ray
Stars: Soumitra Chatterjee, Parinita Banerjee, Haradhan Bannerjee
Genre: Family, Adventure, Crime
Country: India

This is the second film about the detective Feluda (Soumitra Chatterjee) set in the holy city of Benares, where he (along with his cousin, Topshe and friend, Lalmohan Ganguly) goes for a holiday. But the theft of a priceless deity of Lord Ganesh (the Elephant God) from a local household forces him to start investigation. Feluda comes in direct confrontation with Maganlal Meghraj (Utpal Dutt), a ruthless trader. Maganlal makes the mild-mannered Lalmohan a knife-thrower’s target and threatens Felu to stop investigation. But there are several other suspects as an innocent artisan is brutally murdered, a shady ‘holy man’ holds court on the banks of the Ganges and an adventure-loving little boy (and his grand-father), brought up on crime thrillers.

Director: Sergiu Nicolaescu
Stars: Amza Pellea, Draga Olteanu Matei, Jean Constantin
Genre: Comedy
Country: Romania

A Romanian peasant, visiting a friend who is working at a hotel on the Black Sea Riviera, is mistaken for a look-alike rich American businessman.

Director: André Téchiné
Stars: Isabelle Adjani, Marie-France Pisier, Isabelle Huppert
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: France

In a small presbytery in Yorkshire, living under the watchful eyes of their aunt and father, a strict Anglican pastor, the Bronte sisters write their first works and quickly become literary sensations.

Director: Philip Kaufman
Stars: Ken Wahl, Karen Allen, John Friedrich
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

The Wanderers is a teenage, Italian gang in Bronx, NYC, 1963. They have their confrontations with other gangs. Drugs and weapons are uncool. Adult life awaits them.

Director: Don Siegel
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Patrick McGoohan, Roberts Blossom
Genre: Action, Biography, Crime
Country: USA

Alcatraz is the most secure prison of its time. It is believed that no one can ever escape from it, until three daring men make a possible successful attempt at escaping from one of the most infamous prisons in the world.

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: Poland

Each day of the week is represented by a ballerina beginning with a young child and ending with an older ballet teacher.

Director: Edward Zebrowski
Stars: Piotr Dejmek, Jerzy Binczycki, Henryk Bista
Genre: Drama
Country: Poland

The film is set in 1943 in a mental asylum in the country. But this is an unusual hospital: there are several incurable schizophrenic cases, staff is bit strange and a writer has voluntarily entered the clinic because he is “peculiar” and a drug addict. Then the German Gestapo arrives. The commandant asks for the list of patients, sorts out the “Aryan” doctors from the others on a return trip, and herds everyone into trucks for evacuation to the extermination camps. A young doctor momentarily escapes by covering himself under a pile of laundry in the basement, and then escapes to the woods just as the Nazi soldiers appear.

Director: Nikos Nikolaidis
Stars: Alkis Panagiotidis, Konstantinos Tzoumas, Rita Bensousan
Genre: Adventure, Crime, Drama
Country: Greece

Five friends (representatives of the Fifties generation) now in their forties, get together after many years of silence. One shows up from jail, where he has been entering and exiting for years, the other comes from a series of “accidental” murders, another leaves his wife and kids, the fourth one is a wonderer, and the last one, the girl of the gang, comes from a lunatic asylum where she has been hiding for years… All of them are outcasts, tortured from barren love affairs, wounded from the deaths of their beloved friends and betrayed by the politics of their times. They hopelessly try to reconstruct the gang of their puberty, but the revolution is lost…

Director: Margarethe von Trotta
Stars: Jutta Lampe, Gudrun Gabriel, Jessica Früh
Genre: Drama
Country: West Germany

Sisters Maria and Anna live together. Maria is a most proficient executive secretary, encouraging Anna to finish her studies and start a career. Anna broods, threatens to quit university, takes pills, and keeps a diary. When Maria’s relationship with Maurice, the son of her boss, starts to lead to love, Anna takes a selfish and drastic step that plummets Maria into solitude. No longer able to connect with Maurice, Maria does establish a relationship with Miriam, a typist at her office who becomes a surrogate younger sister. But Maria is intrusive as well as helpful. Can this or any relationship work out for this talented woman whose past seems to choke her soul?

Director: John Mackenzie
Stars: David Hayman, Jake D’Arcy, Sean Scanlan
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: UK

The life and imprisonment of Glasgow hard man and gangster Jimmy Boyle.

Director: Youssef Chahine
Stars: Naglaa Fathi, Ahmed Zaki, Farid Shawqi
Genre: Drama
Country: Egypt | Algeria

“Yahia”, a young man living in the cosmopolitan Alexandria during World War II. Between his dreams, which up to Hollywood, and constraints of his life in the middle class, trying to be a new Hamlet with his uprising dreams wondering where all new meaning to life amid the horrors of war and life pain.

Director: Patrice Leconte
Stars: Josiane Balasko, Michel Blanc, Marie-Anne Chazel
Genre: Comedy
Country: France

Eight tourists who met in a holiday camp on the Ivory Coast are reunited for a skiing holiday.

Director: Patrick Montgomery
Stars: Edward Binns, Paul Kohner, Marcel Dalio
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA | UK | West Germany

Erich von Stroheim was an director of silent movies, as well as an actor in both silents and talkies. Uncompromising and rigid, he battled the studio system for control over his pictures’ content, and his career had many ups and downs as a result. Through interviews, photos, and archival footage, The Man You Loved to Hate explores von Stroheim’s career. The title refers to von Stroheim’s frequent casting as a German villain in films of the early 1940s. Von Stroheim’s last famous acting role was in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd.

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Stars: Marian Osuch
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: Poland

A factory night watchman, who is a fanatic of total control, shares his opinions on various topics.

Director: Peter Greenaway
Stars: Colin Cantlie, Jean Williams
Genre: Short
Country: UK

An anonymous narrator outlines a bizarre journey taken through “H”, aided by a series of extraordinary maps, and his previous dealings with the mysterious Tulse Luper and the keeper of the bird house at the Amsterdam Zoo.

Director: David Munro
Stars: John Pilger, Henry Kissinger, Richard Nixon
Genre: Documentary, History, War
Country: UK

Disturbing documentary, shot on site less than a year after the Khmer Rouge downfall, depicting the shocking situation and recent history of Cambodia.

Director: Milton Katselas
Stars: Bette Davis, Gena Rowlands, Ford Rainey
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

A woman who left home 20 years ago under acrimonious circumstances finds out that she is terminally ill. She returns home and tries to rebuild her relationship with her embittered mother before she dies.

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Stars: Eddie Constantine, Hanna Schygulla, Volker Spengler
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: West Germany

A mogul merrily funds terrorists to boost his computer sales, by panicking West German government and industry c. 1980, as the third generation of Western European left-wing activists forms, after crippling of the violent Red Army Faction. Released in 1979, largely unavailable until 2004. International kapitalist PJ Lurz’s secretary is a gang member, while her Polizeikommissar father-in-law/lover hired Lurz’ corporate security force.

Director: Bill Forsyth
Stars: Tom Mannion, Eddie Burt, Richard Demarco
Genre: Comedy, Crime
Country: UK

Ronnie, Wal, Andy and Vic are four bored, unemployed teens in dreary, rainy Glasgow. Ronnie comes up with a great idea. He has noticed that stainless steel sinks are worth a lot of money and comes up with a complicated scheme: to steal sinks from a warehouse dressed as girls and using a stop-motion potion.

Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Stars: Yasuo Yamada, Eiko Masuyama, Kiyoshi Kobayashi
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Family
Country: Japan

A dashing thief, his gang of desperadoes and an intrepid policeman struggle to free a princess from an evil count’s clutches, and learn the hidden secret to a fabulous treasure that she holds part of a key to.

Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes, Wolfgang Reichmann
Genre: Drama
Country: West Germany

Franz Woyzeck is a hapless, hopeless soldier, alone and powerless in society, assaulted from all sides by forces he can not control.

Director: Arthur Hiller
Stars: Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, Richard Libertini
Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy
Country: USA

On the eve of their children’s marriage, NYC in-laws Sheldon Kornpett and Vince Ricardo embark on a series of misadventures involving the CIA, the Treasury Department and Central American dictators.

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Stars: Ingmar Bergman, Irene Broman, Per Broman
Genre: Documentary
Country: Sweden

Fårö Document 1979 is the ten-year followup to the first documentary Bergman made about his adopted home, Fårö, where he filmed many of his best works and lived until the end of his life.

Director: John Huston
Stars: Brad Dourif, John Huston, Dan Shor
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA

A Southerner–young, poor, ambitious but uneducated–determines to become something in the world. He decides that the best way to do that is to become a preacher and start up his own church.

Director: Philippe Garrel
Stars: Anne Wiazemsky, Henri de Maublanc, Xuan Lindenmeyer
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: France

Four chapters based on the birth of a ‘secret child’, or a film, with chapter titles: “La séction Césarienne” (Caesarian section: a descriptive detail introducing the mother); “Le dernier guerrier” (the last warrior: how the father sees himself); “Le cercle ophydique” (the serpent’s closed circle: the couple reunites at the psychiatric ward); “Les forêts désenchantées” (unfairy forests: the film in the making).

Director: Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub
Stars: Olimpia Carlisi, Guido Lombardi, Gino Felici
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy | West Germany | UK | France

Two segments. The first one arranges six stories from Cesare Pavese’s “Dialoghi con Leucò”, taken from classical mythology. The second segment is taken from Pavese’s novel “La luna e i falò”: after WWII the emigrant ‘The Bastard’ comes back to his village in the Langhe (northern Italy) to find that everyone he knew has died and the war has deeply changed relationships between people.