Sunday, April 28, 2013

The True Story of Killing Pablo (TV 2002)


The True Story of Killing Pablo (TV 2002)
TV Movie  -  Documentary
Director: David Keane
Writer: David Keane
Stars: David Jeremiah, Mark Bowden, Morris Busby
Country: USA
Language: English

Documentary about the life and dreadful career of notorious drug bigwig Pablo Escobar. The man who challenged Colombian law and judiciary for years. Prominent leader of Medellin Drug Cartel, born in 1949 amidst the Colombian political turmoils of 50's. He came to power by exploiting the Drug affinity of USA in 1970's starting as a Marijuana dealer and then to a cocaine trafficker.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The Lift (1983)


The Lift (1983)
"De lift"
95 min

Director: Dick Maas
Writer: Dick Maas
Stars: Huub Stapel, Willeke van Ammelrooy, Josine van Dalsum

Country: Netherlands
Language: Dutch

A lift begins displaying some erratic behavior, like trapping some party goers and nearly suffocating them, and decapitating a security guard. Felix, the technician from the lift company, can't find anything wrong with the circuitry. When he and a nosy reporter begin asking questions of the lift company's electronics partner (Rising Sun Electronics) his boss puts him on a leave of absence. A subsequent visit to a professor leads them to believe that some evil experiments are being conducted with MICROCHIPS. Written by Ed Sutton <esutton@mindspring.com>(imdb)

Monday, April 22, 2013

Flor Garduño Photography

Flor Garduño Photography

Flor Garduño is renowned as one of the most outstanding representatives of Latin American photography.Linked to a tradition of photopoets , she focuses on the Mexican popular lifestyle, packed with an artistic sensitivy that has carried her beyond her country to be transformed into one of the most salient exponents of contemporary photography.
Beyond doubt, Flor Garduño’s photography is autobiographically ingrained. She becomes a model of herself and what the observer lastly sees are extensions of her own self. “It is my   own artistic quest, a search of the different persons that exist in my dreams” she said.  She has the gift to show in her pictures how life reveals itself and faces her. And part of that life is the native American culture in which myth and rituals stay alive.

Ofrenda (Inner Light)- Mexico-2000

Venus Terrae (Inner Light)- Suiza-2001
Pera (Inner Light)-Suiza-1998
Ocelote Azul (Inner Light)-Mexico-1998
Eden (Inner Light)-Suiza-2001
Canasta de luz (Witnesses of time)-Sumpango-Guatemala-1989
Anónimo (Magia del juego eterno)-Michoacán, Mexico-1981
La pavo real (2008)

Klimt (2006)


Klimt (2006)
131 min

Director: Raoul Ruiz
Writers: Raoul Ruiz, Gilbert Adair (translation: English)
Stars: John Malkovich, Veronica Ferres, Stephen Dillane
A portrait of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt (Malkovich) whose lavish, sexual paintings came to symbolize the art nouveau style of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Klimt's life-story unfolds in the artist's mind as he lies dying of pneumonia in a Viennese hospital where he is visited by his friend, Egon Schiele (Nikolai Kinski). Themes within the film include Klimt's platonic friendship with Emilie Floege (Veronica Ferres). Much of the film is centred on Klimt's relationship with Lea de Castro (Saffron Burrows), a dancer to whom he is introduced by the film pioneer Georges Méliès.(Wikipedia)

Friday, April 12, 2013

The Blue Villa (1995)


The Blue Villa (1995)
"Un bruit qui rend fou" (original title)
100 min

Country: France | Belgium | Switzerland
Language: Greek | French

Directors: Dimitri de Clercq, Alain Robbe-Grillet
Writers: Alain Robbe-Grillet (dialogue), Alain Robbe-Grillet (screenplay)
Stars: Fred Ward, Arielle Dombasle, Charles Tordjman


"The Blue Villa" -- whose French title is "Un Bruit Qui Rend Fou" (A Noise Which Makes Mad") -- is an intellectual detective story with a hauntingly lyrical surface, tortured or sinister characters, perverse beauty and intriguing riddles. It also has a highly talented cast: actors whose absorption in their bizarre roles (Fred Ward as the enigmatic wanderer Frank, Charles Tordjman as the guilt-racked screenwriter Nord) or dazzling beauty (Arielle Dombasle as bordello-madame Sarah-la-Blonde) make them fascinating to watch.

Unlike previous Robbe-Grillet movies, like 1966's "Trans-Europ- Express" or 1983's "La Belle Captive," this one doesn't strike you as an often-sterile intellectual exercise tarted up with cold, chic eroticism and fancy game-playing. The old elements may be there, but they're humanized, poeticized.

Like almost every movie Robbe-Grillet has made, "The Blue Villa" suggests an intricate puzzle or maze. But, as in "Last Year at Marienbad," "Villa" has images that grip you. Perhaps that's because, once again, novelist Robbe-Grillet has strong visual collaborators. Director Alain Resnais and cinematographer Sacha Vierny (who now works for Peter Greenaway) were responsible for the stunning surfaces of "Marienbad." Robbe-Grillet's co-director Dimitri de Clercq and cinematographer Hans Meier perform similar, if not as spectacular, roles here.

"Villa" is set on a mysterious Mediterranean island that gleams gold during the day and bluish-black at night, full of streets that suggest the Surrealist paintings of Giorgio de Chirico. The tale reconstructs the apparent murder (or disappearance) of a young girl named Santa, and the reappearance of her lover and suspected killer, Frank (Ward). We learn their fates, initially, from Santa's stepfather, Nord (Charles Tordjman), a seedy and tormented figure who is dictating the events, in the form of a screenplay, into a tape recorder.

But Nord, we soon discover, may be lying about everything. In the eyes of gruff inspector Thieu (Dimitri Poulikakos), he is the prime suspect. And Santa may not be dead, Frank not the apparition he seems (though he has returned, ominously, on a ship with crimson sails). The clues to most of these puzzles lie in the local bordello of Sarah-la-Blonde, where an endless mah-jongg game among the customers reminds us of the famous pick-up-the-matchsticks game in "Marienbad."

The inspirations for "The Blue Villa" are bizarre and diverse: Richard Wagner's opera "The Flying Dutchman," the great Oriental movie melodramas of Josef Von Sternberg and Michelangelo Antonioni's '60s and '70s art films.

Both Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film classic "Rashomon" and Robbe- Grillet's own literary experiments, in his novels and films, lie behind the movie's strange structure. As in "Rashomon," we are constantly being shown opposing viewpoints on the same events. As in "L'Homme Qui Vent," we cannot trust the scriptwriter who begins narrating the movie we watch.(Chicagotribune)


Friday, April 5, 2013

Fabricated (2013)


Fabricated (2013)
Directed by K.P. Sasi
Country:India
Runtime: 90 Minutes

 A 90 Minutes Documentary Film on the Fabricated Cases on Abdul Nasar Maudany & Others.

This is a story of the post Independent India. Every year when this country celebrates freedom, there are thousands of innocent prisoners in Indian jails, waiting for justice without even a trial. Abdul Nasar Maudany is one such victim. As a Muslim spiritual leader, he reacted strongly against the demolition of Babari Masjid in 1992. His house was attacked and he spent nine and a half years in jail. All the charges against him were proven false and even the judgement makes it clear that the case was fabricated. He was released without any compensation. No trial on those who were responsible for such fabrication was conducted. But soon, Maudany was framed for another series of charges and he is still waiting for justice in Bangalore Parappana Agrahara jail. The documentary film shows that this is not an isolated case, but several Muslims, dalits, adivasis and activists from people's movements go through similar experiences. The question raised by the film is `why is a person spending so many years in jail in without being proven guilty?' This documentary film portrays the inner dynamics of the manner in which the present institutions of the democratic system functions, so that a large number of innocent people can be framed and fabricated with false cases and dumped in jails for long periods, without the provision of basic human rights as per the requirements of Indian Constitution.