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Jet Generation 1968
It's a Blow-Up inspired mystery. In the first act, Jet Generation comes across as charmingly amateurish, colorful, fun and mod. The stakes are low with a generic missing person plot, a fantastic setting (a Swinging Munich), and plenty of fashion. But at just over 90 minutes, it somehow manages to go off the rails and become a chore. The biggest problem is that newcomer Eckhart Schmidt gambles everything on making an Antonioni film, and he is just no Antonioni. The…
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Ballerina 1937
The story goes that Jean Benoit-Levy wanted his friend, and former employee, Jean Epstein to return to his film company as he was making the move from educational films & documentaries to commercial cinema. But when Levy was unable to lure the more famous Epstein back, he settled instead for the director's closest collaborator, and sister, Marie. That was a blessing he scarcely recognized. She brought the Epstein touch, and transformed his moral didactic films into lyrical treasures; in return, he…
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Videograms of a Revolution 1992
Chris Marker was fond of saying, "you never know what you're filming." The focus of the camera's attention is often swept aside by details of the image, by context and history. Harun Farocki's film, compiled from hundreds of hours of amateur video and TV broadcasts made during the 1989 Romanian Revolution, takes that interrogation of the image to an even further extent. Film almost seems meant to capture history... but, conversely, is history now made for film?
This is an…
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Occult Bolshevism 2018
This is probably a love it or hate it film. Personally, I was very impressed. The film draws upon two threads of Japanese cinema: the contemporary J-Horror genre (of which director Takahashi helped formulate), and the New Left cinema of the New Wave, or rather the contemporary re-imaginings of it. It has some echoes of Wakamatsu's United Red Army.
It is highly experimental with improvisational elements. The drama takes place entirely in an abandoned factory, where ominous portraits of Lenin…
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