Tag: 1992

Director: Ivan Passer
Stars: Robert Duvall, Julia Ormond, Maximilian Schell
Genre: Biography, Crime, Drama
Country: Russia | Hungary | USA

The life and career of the brutal Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin.

Director: Helmut Dietl
Stars: Götz George, Uwe Ochsenknecht, Christiane Hörbiger
Genre: Comedy
Country: Germany

The slightly fictionalized story of an art forger, a journalist desperate for a big story, and the biggest press scandal in German history: the Hitler Diaries.

Director: Ron Fricke
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA

A collection of expertly photographed scenes of human life and religion.

Director: Jean-Claude Lauzon
Stars: Maxime Collin, Ginette Reno, Gilbert Sicotte
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Canada | France

Young Leo Lauzon is torn between two worlds – the squalid Montreal tenement that he inhabits with his severely dysfunctional (and largely insane) family, and the imaginative world that he constructs for himself through his writings, where he’s Leolo Lozone, son of a Sicilian peasant (conceived in a bizarre act involving a tomato). And his experiences of growing up (especially his sexual development) affect his response to both these worlds…

Director: Claude Chabrol
Stars: Marie Trintignant, Stéphane Audran, Jean-François Garreaud
Genre: Drama
Country: France

A drunken self-destructive woman called Betty wanders through bars and meets a man that drives her to a restaurant outside Paris called Le Trou (The Hole). She meets the middle-aged alcoholic Laure from Lyon, who is the lover of the Le Trou’s owner Mario. Laure decides to take care of Betty and brings her to the room next-door in her hotel. Along the days, Betty tells the story of her bourgeois life and her unhappy marriage to Laure and also recalls moments of her promiscuous life.

Director: Stijn Coninx
Stars: Jan Decleir, Gérard Desarthe, Antje de Boeck
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: Belgium | France | Netherlands

In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He’s expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman’s rape; children die; prelates play billiards.

Director: Coline Serreau
Stars: Vincent Lindon, Patrick Timsit, Zabou Breitman
Genre: Comedy, Music
Country: Italy | France

When Victor finds out one morning that his wife had left him and that she had forgotten to at least buy milk for the Kids, he finds that things can only get worse. Having also been fired from his job on the very same day, he ends up searching through a list of friends and family for someone who will listen to his grief and give some advice. The only person who does give him attention is a rather clumsy and not too intelligent street pauper called Michou. Victor finds Michou irritating and only finally comes to see him in a positive light when he starts to realise that his insensitivity to those closest to him has been major reason for all his troubles.

Director: Louis Malle
Stars: Jeremy Irons, Juliette Binoche, Miranda Richardson
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: UK | France

A member of Parliament falls passionately in love with his son’s fiancée despite the dangers of discovery.

Director: Lucian Pintilie
Stars: Maia Morgenstern, Razvan Vasilescu, Victor Rebengiuc
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: France | Romania

A description of Romania before Ceausescu’s downfall, through the story of Nela. Daughter of a former colonel of the Securitate, the romanian political police. She refused to become as her sister, an agent of this Securitate, and lives with her father. After he died, she leaves Bucarest, and ends up in a little town, where she meets Mitica, a surgeon, another herself, laughing of everything.

Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Stars: Didier Bezace, Jean-Paul Comart, Charlotte Kady
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: France

This gritty police drama shows us the underbelly of the Parisian drug trade. Lulu is a tough streetwise narcotics cop who, like a Frank Serpico or a Dirty Harry Callahan, doesn’t play by the rules or kowtow to his weak and/or corrupt superiors. Lulu thrives in this violent world, where sheer guts can overcome his squad’s deficiencies of money and equipment. Despite the ruthless environment that he lives and works in every day, he still manages somehow to maintain his humanity.

Director: Darrell Roodt
Stars: Whoopi Goldberg, Leleti Khumalo, Miriam Makeba
Genre: Drama, Musical
Country: South Africa | UK | France | USA

South African teenagers fight against apartheid in the Soweto Uprising.

Director: John Sayles
Stars: Mary McDonnell, Alfre Woodard, Angela Bassett
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

After an accident leaves her a paraplegic, a former soap opera star struggles to recover both emotionally and mentally, until she meets her newest nurse, who has struggles of her own.

Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Stars: Jane March, Tony Ka Fai Leung, Frédérique Meininger
Genre: Biography, Drama, Romance
Country: France | UK | Vietnam

In 1929 French Indochina, a French teenage girl embarks on a reckless and forbidden romance with a wealthy, older Chinese man, each knowing that knowledge of their affair will bring drastic consequences to each other.

Director: Paul Turner
Stars: Huw Garmon, Catrin Fychan, Ceri Cunnington
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: UK

A young poet living in the North Wales countryside competes for the most coveted prize of all in Welsh Poetry – that of the chair of the National Eisteddfod, a tradition dating back a hundred years. Before the winner is announced Hedd Wyn gets sent to fight with the English in the trenches of the First World War.

Director: George Miller
Stars: Nick Nolte, Susan Sarandon, Peter Ustinov
Genre: Drama
Country: USA

A boy develops a disease so rare that nobody is working on a cure, so his father decides to learn all about it and tackle the problem himself.

Director: Mamoru Oshii
Stars: Shigeru Chiba, Tomoko Ishimura, Fumihiko Tachiki
Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Country: Japan

A revered director with an obscure style, Rei Maruwa, has gone missing during the production of his latest animated feature, Talking Head. With the deadline approaching and next to no progress made, the producer calls in a “shadow director” with the ability to mimic any director’s style. Arriving at the studio, he begins meeting with the eccentric crew members in order to understand the project, but soon they begin dying in the same order that he met up with them.

Director: Régis Wargnier
Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Perez, Linh Dan Pham
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: France

Eliane adopts Camille, whose Vietnamese parents were friends. In 1930, a French navy officer is interested in Eliane (owns 60km2 plantation) and later in Camille. There’s an uprising in Vietnam against French colonial power.

Director: Ousmane Sembene
Stars: Abou Camara, Marie Augustine Diatta, Mame Ndoumbé Diop
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Germany | Senegal | USA

Burial of a Christian political activist in a Muslim cemetary forces a conflict imbued with religious fervor. A satiric portrayal of religion and politics, sometimes humorous, sometimes deadly serious.

Director: Hal Hartley
Stars: Robert John Burke, Bill Sage, Martin Donovan
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: Italy | UK | USA

Bitter about being double-crossed by the women he loved, (and with the police after him to boot), Bill vows to seduce the next woman he sees, then throw her away. His brother Dennis, meanwhile, is equally determined to track down their long lost father, a revolutionary who has been in hiding for 20 years. For different reasons, both leave New York and head for Long Island, out of money, and short on ideas. D:”Long Island is a a terminal moraine.” B:”What’s that?” D:”It’s the material left behind when a glacier recedes.” D:”Gee, then what the hell are we waiting for?”

Director: Fernando Trueba
Stars: Fernando Fernán Gómez, Jorge Sanz, Penélope Cruz
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Spain | Portugal | France

A 1931 Spanish military deserter finds himself on a lonely farm until the farmer’s four daughters pay a visit and he falls for all of them.

Director: James Ivory
Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave
Genre: Drama, Romance
Country: UK | Japan | USA

A businessman thwarts his wife’s bequest of an estate to another woman.

Director: Aleksandr Sokurov
Stars: Pyotr Aleksandrov, Leonid Mozgovoy
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Country: Russia

A caretaker encounters Anton Chekov and spends a lonely night and day in his company.

Director: Jûzô Itami
Stars: Nobuko Miyamoto, Yasuo Daichi, Takehiro Murata
Genre: Comedy
Country: Japan

A grand old Japanese hotel is trying to get a prestigious contract as the site of a summit meeting of important foreign officials. Unfortunately, this hotel is quite popular with the Yakuza (Japanese gangsters) and is a favorite target of theirs for extortion. They employ a variety of schemes to con the hotel out of ‘hush-money.’ The hotel needs to rid itself of the Yakuza and finally begins to fight back by hiring Mahiru Inoue, a lawyer who is an expert at dealing with these criminals on their own terms. This film by Juzo Itami combines action with farce, as an all-out war ensues.

Director: Djibril Diop Mambéty
Stars: Mansour Diouf, Ami Diakhate, Faly Gueye
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Switzerland | France | Senegal | UK | Netherlands | Italy

Dramaan is the most popular man in Colobane, but when a woman from his past, now exorbitantly wealthy, returns to the town, things begin to change.

Director: Jacques Rivette
Stars: Michel Piccoli, Jane Birkin, Emmanuelle Béart
Genre: Drama
Country: France

More than just an abbreviated form of “La Belle Noiseuse”, Rivette re-cut his footage with some important differences in point of view – this one being more from Marianne’s point of view.

Director: Mike Newell
Stars: Gabriel Byrne, Ellen Barkin, Ciarán Fitzgerald
Genre: Adventure, Family, Fantasy
Country: Ireland | UK

Grandpa Ward gives a horse he found to his grandchildren, who keep it in their tower-block flat in Dublin. The horse is stolen from them, and the two young boys set out to find it and flee on it.

Director: Tim Robbins
Stars: Tim Robbins, Giancarlo Esposito, Alan Rickman
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA | UK

A conservative folk singer turns his hand to politics, running for the US Senate. He is not above dirty tricks and smear campaigns to gain an advantage over his opponent.

Director: Roman Polanski
Stars: Hugh Grant, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emmanuelle Seigner
Genre: Drama, Romance, Thriller
Country: France | UK

After hearing stories of her, a passenger on a cruise ship develops an irresistible infatuation with an eccentric paraplegic’s wife.

Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Stars: Shûichirô Moriyama, Tokiko Katô, Bunshi Katsura Vi
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy
Country: Japan

In 1930s Italy, a veteran World War I pilot is cursed to look like an anthropomorphic pig.

Director: Pawel Lozinski
Stars: Henryk Grynberg
Genre: Documentary
Country: Poland

After almost 50 years, Holocaust survivor Henryk Grynberg visits the village he grew up in. He was also hiding there during the Nazi occupation. Grynberg wants to know what happened to his father and younger brother during the war.

Director: Édouard Molinaro
Stars: Michel Piccoli, Claude Brasseur, Claude Rich
Genre: Drama, History
Country: France

France, 1815. After his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon heads for exile. Royalists occupy Paris and attempt to restore the monarchy. However, the battle doesn’t seem to be over. On July 6, Talleyrand, a shrewd politician of flexible convictions, invites chief of police and zealous revolutionary Fouché to supper and tries to convince him to serve the king. Over the meal they insult each other, accuse each other, and, at first sight, look like mortal enemies. But they definitely have one thing in common: they are both power-hungry.

Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Stars: Rie Miyazawa, Tatsuya Nakadai, Toshiya Nagasawa
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Japan

Chronicles the trials and tribulations of Oribe, the successor to tea-master Rikyu, Usu, his gardener, and Princess Goh, who attempt to balance artistic expression and duty amid political intrigue in feudal Japan.

Director: Raymond Lee, Siu-Tung Ching, Hark Tsui
Stars: Tony Ka Fai Leung, Brigitte Lin, Maggie Cheung
Genre: Action, Thriller
Country: Hong Kong

Set during the Ming Dynasty, this acclaimed production tells the story of a power hungry eunuch who employs an evil sect in his quest to rule China. An extravagant climax features dizzying acrobatics and masterful fight sequences.

Director: Agnieszka Holland
Stars: Brigitte Roüan, François Cluzet, Jean-François Stévenin
Genre: Drama
Country: France

Olivier, the nine-year-old son of Elisabeth and Serge, a country veterinarian, vanishes one afternoon on the way to his grandmother’s house. The emotional aftermath of his disappearance sends his father packing from France to Africa and nearly destroys his mother, who clings to her remaining child, Nadine, and her devoted neighbor, Marcel. Several years later, having relocated to the city, the police investigator who handled the case meets a Paris rent boy whom he believes to be the missing Olivier.

Director: Carl Franklin
Stars: Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Cynda Williams
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA

A small town police chief awaits the arrival of a gang of killers.

Director: Ebrahim Forouzesh
Stars: Behzad Khodaveisi, Fatemeh Azrah, Abbas Khavaninzadeh
Genre: Drama, Family
Country: Iran

In the yard of an Iranian village school stands in the shade of a tree a large stoneware jar from which all the pupils drink fresh water. On an unfortunate day, the jar starts leaking. The schoolmaster tries hard to get a new one but in vain. The only solution is to have it fixed…

Director: Viktor Kosakovskiy
Stars: Anna Fyodorovna Belova, Mikhail Fyodorovich Belov, Vasiliy Fyodorovich Belov
Genre: Documentary
Country: Russia

“Belovy (the Belovs)” is a breathtaking portrait of a troubled peasant family. It’s poetry in the form of a documentary that won many prizes. Beautifully shot in vintage black and white, the film tells the story of two times widow Anna Belova who lives together with her brother Mikhail. Blending the two personalities, Kosakovsky characterizes the true Russian soul: she is the rational worker, honest and strong – he is the drunken poet, the idealist, his philosophy fades into radical nonsense time after time.

Director: Jonathan Demme
Stars: Robert W. Castle, Jane Castle Moulton, Kate Castle
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: USA | Spain

A documentary about Director Jonathan Demme’s cousin, an Episcopalian minister in Harlem.

Director: Ingmar Bergman
Stars: Stina Ekblad, Anita Björk, Marie Richardson
Genre: History
Country: Sweden

Ingmar Bergman’s staging at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm. While the Marquis De Sade is in prison on charges of crimes of gross perversion, his faithful wife Renee awaits him. Despite all the horrors her husband has committed, she believes that his evil is sacred. Her mother however does everything possible to ensure that the Marquis stays in prison.

Director: Temur Babluani
Stars: Elguja Burduli, David Kazishvili, Lia Babluani
Genre: Drama, Crime
Country: Georgia

The Sun of the Sleepless. The film is about a doctor named Gela Bendeliani (Elgudzha Burduli) and his wealthless family in Tbilisi in Soviet Georgia. In the film Gela Bendeliani has an unlimited capacity for generosity and forgiveness.

Director: Cyril Collard
Stars: Cyril Collard, Romane Bohringer, Carlos López
Genre: Biography, Drama
Country: France | Italy

A bitter story of a young man’s crisis.

Director: Aki Kaurismäki
Stars: Matti Pellonpää, Evelyne Didi, André Wilms
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Finland | France | Sweden | Germany

Three struggling artists try to make passable livings in Paris despite knock backs and tragedies.

Director: Alexandre Rockwell
Stars: Steve Buscemi, Seymour Cassel, Jennifer Beals
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA | France | Germany | Japan | Italy | Spain

New Yorker Adolpho Rollo is your classic head-movie auteur. In his mind, he’s creating deathless classics of the screen. Back in the real world, he can’t pay the rent on the downtown grothole he calls home.

Director: Kaneto Shindô
Stars: Masahiko Tsugawa, Yuki Sumida, Kazuyo Asari
Genre: Drama
Country: Japan

The film tells the story of Japanese writer Kafu Nagai (1879-1959), a man about sixty with a huge reputation of seducer who falls madly in love for a young geisha named Oyuki. Meticulous and smartly dressed, Nagai patiently wrote in his diary his thoughts during many years. A melancholy reflection on the passage of time and a brilliant interpretive exercise.

Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA

An experimental short film of flashing images made by Stan Brakhage.

Director: Claude Miller
Stars: Richard Bohringer, Elena Safonova, Romane Bohringer
Genre: Drama, Music, Romance
Country: France

In Nazi-occupied Paris, a young accompanist named Sophie Vasseur gets a job with famed singer Irene Brice. As Irene’s husband Charles, a businessman collaborating with the Nazis, wrestles with his conscience, Sophie becomes obsessed with Irene, taking on the role of maid as well as accompanist, living life vicariously through Irene’s triumphs and affairs.

Director: Assi Dayan
Stars: Gila Almagor, Akram Tillawi, Smadar Kilchinsky
Genre: Drama
Country: Israel

The film takes place in Tel Aviv, much of it in a fictitious local pub called Barbie, a satirical nickname for a famous Israeli mental health institution. The pub’s name hints at the characters and the events which occur in the pub and which befall its owner (Daliah), the employees and customers. The plot unfolds with a streak of violence which takes a surprising turn.

Director: Barbara Trent
Stars: Elizabeth Montgomery, Carlos Cantú, Diviana Ingravallo
Genre: Documentary, History, War
Country: USA | UK

A film about the true reasons for the 1989 US invasion of Panama and big media complicity in these activities.

Director: Hal Hartley
Stars: Martin Donovan, Matt Malloy, Rebecca Nelson
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: USA

Jude, a college literature professor, falls for one of his students. She is more interested in the empirical experience of a relationship with a man whose life is ruled by the themes of the Russian Lit. he extolls in class. Jude shows an interesting side of the stigmas associated with transgenerational relationships and how to deal with the inevitable pain of a love doomed to failure.

Director: Gianni Amelio
Stars: Enrico Lo Verso, Valentina Scalici, Giuseppe Ieracitano
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy | France | Switzerland

Antonio, a policeman (carabiniere), has an order to take two children (Rosetta and her brother Luciano) from Milan to Sicily to an orphanage. Their mother has been arrested for forcing Rosetta (11 years old) to work as a prostitute. First the relation between Antonio and the children is tough, but it relaxes so they become temporary friends.

Director: Hark Tsui
Stars: Jet Li, Rosamund Kwan, Siu Chung Mok
Genre: Action, Adventure, Biography
Country: Hong Kong

Master Wong and his disciples enroll in the ‘Dancing Lion Competition’ to stop an assassination plot and to battle an arrogant, deceitful opponent.

Director: Srdjan Dragojevic
Stars: Nikola Kojo, Milena Pavlovic, Branka Katic
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Romance
Country: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

Angel and the devil fight for the soul of a Belgrade playboy who made a young girl pregnant.

Director: Michael Haneke
Stars: Arno Frisch, Angela Winkler, Ulrich Mühe
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Austria | Switzerland

A 14-year-old video enthusiast is so caught up in film fantasy that he can no longer relate to the real world, to such an extent that he commits murder and records an on-camera confession for his parents.

Director: Sam Raimi
Stars: Bruce Campbell, Embeth Davidtz, Marcus Gilbert
Genre: Comedy, Fantasy, Horror
Country: USA

A sardonic hardware store clerk is accidentally transported to 1300 A.D., where he must retrieve the Necronomicon and battle an army of the dead so he can return home.

Director: Daniel Bergman
Stars: Henrik Linnros, Thommy Berggren, Lena Endre
Genre: Adventure, Biography, Drama
Country: Sweden | Denmark | Finland | Iceland | Norway | France

The film switches back and forth between the adventures of Pu on a summer holiday in Norrland in Sweden and and the adult Pu visiting his father who lives in an old people’s home. Little Pu spends a summer in Norrland in the 1920s with all his relatives. He and his brother get to hear the story about the watchmaker who hung himself, learns to shoot with a bow and follow his father on a bicycle trip.

Director: Bille August
Stars: Samuel Fröler, Pernilla August, Max von Sydow
Genre: Biography, Drama, Romance
Country: Sweden | Denmark | Finland | France | Germany | UK | Italy | Norway | Iceland

In 1909, poor theology student Henrik falls in love with Anna, the intelligent daughter of a rich family in Uppsala. After marrying Henrik becomes a priest in northern Sweden. Urbane Anna hates living in the county, growing restless.

Director: Stephen Quay, Timothy Quay
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: UK

A tear falls from the eyes of a veiled face. A white ball whips around a heart-shaped paddle. A mournful voice sings, “Are we still married?” A child’s stuffed rabbit watches, sees someone’s legs hanging and shoes jiggling, and sees a girl holding a heart-shaped paddle. A hand seen through a door’s glass knocks incessantly; the lock jiggles, the child holds the heart-shaped object and leans against the wall, sometimes moving up and down on the toes of her shoes. The rabbit watches, plays with the ball, tries to keep the door shut. The child raises her face; we see a woman’s eyes.

Director: Rosa von Praunheim
Stars: Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, Jens Taschner, Ichgola Androgyn
Genre: Documentary, Biography, Drama
Country: Germany

The life story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf, born Lothar Berflede. Miss Charlotte survived the Nazi reign and the repression of the Communists as a transvestite and helped start the German gay liberation movement. Documentary with some dramatized scenes. Two actors play the young and middle aged Charlotte and she plays herself in the later years.

Director: Chris Hunt
Stars: Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, John Hammond
Genre: Documentary, Biography, Music
Country: UK

A UK television documentary film about the legendary Delta blues musician Robert Johnson.

Director: István Szabó
Stars: Johanna ter Steege, Enikö Börcsök, Péter Andorai
Genre: Drama
Country: Hungary | Germany

The story shows Emma’s and Böbe’s fight for survival, for keeping their position in society which they achieved with hard work in the previous regime. They don’t want to lose their place and become village girls again.

Director: Otar Iosseliani
Stars: Narda Blanchet, Pierette Pompom Bailhache, Aleksandr Cherkasov
Genre: Drama
Country: France | Italy | Germany

A noble family of France maintains dignity despite the onslaught of modernism and non-white immigrants.

Director: Adolfo Aristarain
Stars: José Sacristán, Federico Luppi, Leonor Benedetto
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina | Spain | Uruguay

Mario and Ana, in voluntary exile from Buenos Aires, live in a remote Argentine valley with their 12-year-old son Ernesto. Mario runs a school and a wool cooperative; Ana, a doctor, heads a clinic with Nelda, a progressive nun. Into this idealistic family comes Hans, a jaded Spanish geological engineer — surveying the land for the local patron, to see if it can be dammed for hydro-electric power, which would drive the peasants from the land into the cities.

Director: Jean Beaudin
Stars: Roy Dupuis, Jacques Godin, Jean-François Pichette
Genre: Crime, Drama, Romance
Country: Canada

Depicts the crime of one member of a gay male relationship and the desperate struggle for the lead character to make those around him understand the reason for his crime.

Director: Eliseo Subiela
Stars: Darío Grandinetti, Sandra Ballesteros, Nacha Guevara
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Drama
Country: Argentina | Canada

Oliveiro is a young poet living in Buenos Aires where sometimes he has to sell his ideas to an advertising agency to make a living or exchange his poems for a steak. In Montevideo, he meets a prostitute, Ana, with whom he falls in love. Back in Buenos Aires, he accepts a contract with a publicity agency to get the money for three days of love with her. Will he get what he’s searching for when his ideal of love’s pleasure is literally going in levitation while making love?

Director: Roeland Kerbosch
Stars: Maarten Smit, Andrew Kelley, Jeroen Krabbé
Genre: Drama, Romance, War
Country: Netherlands

Set in The Netherlands at the end of WW II, this touching story, told in flashbacks, explores the complex and romantic relationship between an adult soldier and a displaced, lonely adolescent boy.

Director: Nicolas Philibert
Stars: Jean-Claude Poulain, Abou Bakar, Anh Tuan
Genre: Documentary
Country: France | Italy | UK | Switzerland

With unerring curiousity and sensitivity, director Philbert portrays the difficulties and joys of being deaf, offering vivid portraits of people of all ages coping with and surmounting their challenges.

Director: David Markey
Stars: Sonic Youth, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo
Genre: Documentary, History, Music
Country: USA

David Markey’s documentary of life on the road with Sonic Youth and Nirvana during their tour of Europe in late 1991. Also featuring live performances by Dinosaur Jr, Babes In Toyland, The Ramones and Gumball.

Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Werner Herzog
Genre: Documentary, War
Country: France | UK | Germany

This film shows the disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames, with few interviews and no explanatory narration. Hell itself is presented in such beautiful sights and music that one has to be fascinated by it.

Director: Ming-liang Tsai
Stars: Chao-jung Chen, Chang-Bin Jen, Kang-sheng Lee
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Taiwan

Within the urban gloom of Taipei, four youths face alienation, loneliness, and moments of existential crisis amidst a series of minor crimes.

Director: Joshua Waletzky
Stars: Philip Bosco, Elmer Bernstein, Claudine Bouché
Genre: Documentary, Biography, Music
Country: USA | UK | France

This documentary is a good introduction to the genius that was Bernard Herrmann. It is a good overview of his turbulent personality as well as providing brief examples of his music.

Director: Robert Morin
Stars: Gildor Roy, Jean-Guy Bouchard, Brigitte Paquette
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Canada

The last three days in the life of a notorious criminal as seen through the eyes of eight different people.

Director: Tracy Atkinson, Joan Baran, Dave Flitton
Stars: Patrick Allen, Madjid Blavatsky, Rudolf Gorsleben
Genre: Documentary, History
Country: USA

Four volume documentary set (“Adolf Hitler”, “The SS Blood and Soil”, “The Enigma of the Swastika”, and “Himmler The Mystic”) containing mainly B&W as well as some color archival footage, with narration explaining the influences of alternative belief systems (occult, paganism, mysticism, etc) on the Nazi ideology and Hitler’s personal philosophy. Also documents the history and development of the ideas and symbols that would be used along with eugenicist racial politics to perpetrate the murder and oppression of millions during World War II.

Director: Aleksandr Petrov
Stars: Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy
Genre: Animation, Short, Drama
Country: Russia

Dostoevsky’s “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” tells the story of a desperate man disenchanted with the world and at the verge of committing suicide. But when a little girl comes his way asking for help, he changes his mind. Back at his home, he falls asleep and dreams about strange revealing things that somehow put everything into a new perspective. And then comes the questioning: the visions were just another dream or something real?

Director: Vera Chytilová
Stars: Bolek Polívka, Miroslav Donutil, Anna Pantuckova
Genre: Comedy
Country: Czech Republic

A hillbilly inherits millions and goes to the city, leaving his village to live a rich man’s life in post communist Czech Republic.

Director: Mark Achbar, Peter Wintonick
Stars: Noam Chomsky, Mark Achbar, Karin Aguilar-San Juan
Genre: Documentary, Biography, War
Country: Canada | Netherlands | Finland | Norway | Australia

A film about the noted American linguist/political dissident and his warning about corporate media’s role in modern propaganda.

Director: Gillian Armstrong
Stars: Lisa Harrow, Bruno Ganz, Kerry Fox
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: Australia

Vicki returns to her elder sister Beth’s house in Australia after an affair in Italy. Beth, with a teenage daughter, has become involved in something of a marriage of convenience with Frenchman J.P., and her rather prickly houseproud ways are causing frictions counterpointed by Vicki’s more laid-back and indolent air. When Beth goes off on vacation to the outback alone with her cantankerous father to see if they can finally get to know each other, relationships in the household start to shift.

Director: Hark Tsui
Stars: Jet Li, Rosamund Kwan, Siu Chung Mok
Genre: Action, Adventure, Biography
Country: Hong Kong

In the sequel to the Tsui Hark classic, Wong Fei-Hung faces The White Lotus society, a fanatical cult seeking to drive the Europeans out of China through violence, even attacking Chinese who follow Western ways. Wong must also defend Dr. Sun Yat Sen, a revolutionary, from the military. With his friends, loved ones, and the future of China itself at stake, Wong must once again use his martial arts skills to defend the innocent.

Director: Vincent Ward
Stars: Jason Scott Lee, Anne Parillaud, Patrick Bergin
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Romance
Country: Australia | UK | Canada | France

Arctic, 1965: Avik tells his story starting 1931. A mapmaker flies Avik, then a preteen Eskimo boy with TB, to a hospital in Montreal, where he meets Albertine. They meet again when Avik joins WWII in UK.

Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Stars: Michael Caine, Carol Burnett, Denholm Elliott
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA

A travelling theater group find so much action going on behind-the-scenes, they almost ruin the performances.

Director: Lynne Fernie, Aerlyn Weissman
Stars: Keely Moll, Stephanie Ozard, Ann Bannon
Genre: Documentary
Country: Canada

Ten women, most of them in Vancouver or Toronto, talk about being lesbian in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s: discovering the pulp fiction of the day about women in love, their own first affairs, the pain of breaking up, frequenting gay bars, facing police raids, men’s responses, and the etiquette of butch and femme roles. Interspersed among the interviews and archival footage are four dramatized chapters from a pulp novel, “Forbidden Love”: Laura leaves her hick town and heads for the city, where she meets Mitch in a bar. Sparks fly, and so do laughter and joy. Ann Bannon, one of the writers of those paperback novels about forbidden love, talks about the genre.

Director: Alex van Warmerdam
Stars: Jack Wouterse, Annet Malherbe, Rudolf Lucieer
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Netherlands

During the summer of 1960, the idiosyncratic residents of a one-street Dutch suburb collide in intertwining stories of desire and frustration.

Director: Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, Stuart Samuels
Stars: Conrad L. Hall, John Bailey, Vilmos Zsigmond
Genre: Documentary, History
Country: Japan | USA

Cameramen and women discuss the craft and art of cinematography and of the “DP” (the director of photography), illustrating their points with clips from 100 films, from Birth of a Nation to Do the Right Thing. Themes: the DP tells people where to look; changes in movies (the arrival of sound, color, and wide screens) required creative responses from DPs; and, these artisans constantly invent new equipment and try new things, with wonderful results. The narration takes us through the identifiable studio styles of the 30s, the emergence of noir, the New York look, and the impact of Europeans. Citizen Kane, The Conformist, and Gordon Willis get special attention.