take 54: 30.10.2013

Finally!

Doors open 20h 

 

20h20, Italy 1968, 90min.

 

(Also known as Death laid an egg)
A love triangle develops between three people who run a high tech chicken farm. It involves Anna (who owns the farm), her husband Marco (who kills prostitutes in his spare time) and Gabriella (the very beautiful secretary). Marco continues to kill as jealousy becomes more prevalent on the farm.

Widely regarded as the best Giallo ever done.

22h:USA 1977, 81min.




Wizards is notable for being the first fantasy film made by Bakshi, who was previously known only for urban films such as Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, and Coonskin. It grossed $9 million theatrically from a $1.2 million budget, and has since become a cult classic.

In a post apocalyptic future that appears as a blend of World War II Europe and J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, a pint-size wizard named Avatar must save the world from a band of fascist mutants controlled by his evil twin brother, Blackwolf, who likes to confuse enemy armies by projecting films of Adolf Hitler speeches during attacks. Painted live-action footage of advancing Nazi armies contrasts with Saturday-morning-cartoon-style animation of fairies and elves as Avatar travels through various magical and radioactive realms on his quest. Aiding him are a sexually promiscuous fairy queen, a hot-blooded warrior elf and Peace, a misunderstood robot rebelling against his Blackwolf-controlled programming. A bizarre and psychedelic meditation on magic vs. technology, this ultimate futuristic fantastic epic cult film still finds an audience on college campuses and will prove quite rewarding to viewers in the right frame of mind.

Audio clips from the film have been sampled by Toxik on the album Think This,Cypress Hill on the albums IV and Skull & Bones,and Vanilla Ice on Platinum Underground and 65daysofstatic on B-Sides and Rarities album Volume 1: Then We Take Japan.         

take 53: 23.10.2013

NO POLITICS!

Door open 20h

20h30:Italy 1982, 100 min.

 

With Argento's trademark visual style, linked with one of his more coherent plots, Tenebrae follows a writer who arrives to Rome only to find somebody is using his novels as the inspiration (and, occasionally, the means) of committing murder. As the death toll mounts the police are ever baffled, and the writer becomes more closely linked to the case than is comfortable.

 

 

 

 

22h20: Philippines 1985, 90 min

Warriors of the Apocalypse has everything you could possibly want in a post-apocalyptic action move; a band of unkempt guys in overly elaborate leather outfits, guns that will kill you even if the bullet strikes a tree four feet away, Polynesian warriors, immortal pygmies in King Diamond makeup, a village populated almost exclusively by women in fur bikinis, a telepathic jungle princess in jewels and high heels with a rocket launcher-equipped throne, a hydroelectric plant masquerading as a nuclear reactor operated by hideous, radiation scarred mutants, and a plot with absolutely no point whatsoever’

take 52:16.10.2013

the future is bright

Door open 19h45

20h15:Czechoslovakia 1969, 78min. english subtitles

 

 

Slovak director Juraj Jakubisko is often described as the Fellini of Eastern Europe. After the 1968 film The Deserter and the Nomads, he was put in exile in Czechoslovakia after the soviet invasion. With cooperation from a Paris film studio he made this film. Birds Orphans and Fools is a brilliant, surreal and underrated tragic comedy that not many people seem to know about. The story is about three orphans who have lost their families in war. Although the two men Andrej and Yurick and the lady Marta are adults, they act foolish like children trying to live life to the fullest. They resort with their landlord and other orphans in an bombed out church that is distorted with various shelves, cupboards and animals scattered about. But the main characters can't block out the pain of living in a war torn country, and after Yurick is put in prison and returns a year later, things will never be the same. Towards the end the climax becomes maybe one of the most tragic in cinema history. This was the first film in Jakubisko's trilogy of Happiness. If you enjoyed Truffaut's "Jules and Jim", Jodorowsky's "Fando & Lis" or Vera Chytilova's "Daisies", you have to see this film. The birds in the film are symbolic of the souls of the dead. 

21h30: Soviet Union 1982, 116min. english subtitles

 Neeya is a striking-looking anthropoid found barely alive in an abandoned space craft...

Brought to earth by the Russian space crew, she is nursed back to health and memory of her planet Dessa and its ecological collapse. When Neeya's benefactor Sergey joins the crew of an environmental rescue mission, she sneaks on board and convinces Sergey to change course.

Once they have landed on the planet of Dessa, they begin improving the atmosphere and water while simultaneously struggling against the supporters of an evil dwarf Turan and a creepy biomass that has escaped the laboratory...

take 51:8.10.2013

INSANITY '88!

A NIGHT IN MADNESS.

Door open 20h.

20h15:Soviet Union 1988, 110min. english subs

  

Mournful Unconcern (Russian: Скорбное бесчувствие, translit. Skorbnoye beschuvstviye) is the third produced film by Alexander Sokurov, completed in 1983, but the fourth released one, as it was banned by Soviet authorities until perestroika in 1987. The film, set during World War I, is inspired by Bernard Shaw's play Heartbreak House. Professional actors (Zamansky, Osipenko, Sokolova and others) were used alongside amateur actors, like in most early Sokurov films, and many of the trademarks of his cinematographic style were already apparent.

In the title of this film we have the diagnosis of a mental illness. The title of George Bernard Shaw's play Heartbreak House is a formula-symbol introduced by the great British wit in order to describe Europe before the First World War. The Russian filmmaker discerned and brilliantly developed Russian Chekhovian roots of the play in his saturated with associations cinematographic composition. This was a feast of Sokurov's imagination and an anthology of almost all of his devises to be subsequently developed. Here one could find a model of a set, closely imitating the real surrounding, documentary shots juxtaposed to the deformed image, a mask of Shaw himself, and non-professional performers next to the celebrated Georgian actor Ramaz Tchkhickvadze.
The film had scandalized the powers that be as early as during the process of production which had been several times interrupted and banned by various structures of officialdom — until the film was eventually released in the beginning of Perestroika, in 1987. Perhaps nowadays one of the most important for the director themes — the defenselessness of man, hiding in the house as in a cocoon in the attempt to evade the horrors of history and the problems of existence — sounds more articulately than ever. And the defense — science, technic, culture — civilization — may crash any time and crush 'proud' humankind.
The film took part in the competition program of the XXXVII International Cinema Festival in Western Berlin in 1988 and got FIPRESSI award at the XV International Festival in Moscow and Special award in the memory of Andrei Tarkovsky (1987).

22h15: Taiwan 1988, 86min. english subs

 

 Three-Head Monster/ Ginseng King/ San tou mo wang 

A boy tries to rescue the Ginseng King from an evil 3 headed king to save his mother, who has been bitten by a Nazi zombie. 

.Jaw-droppingly bizarre and psychedelic fantasy horror directed by Ru-Tar Rotar and filled with enough weirdness to make my head spin.There are nearly half dozen or so creatures,a Nazi zombie and a myriad of animated lightning bolts and laser beams.