Previous Films

A wildly melodramatic tale of a kabuki onnagata (a male actor who plays female roles), who exacts a long-delayed retribution on the men who drove his parents to suicide. When he discovers that the mastermind behind those crimes has come to see him act onstage, he begins in earnest to plot his revenge. With the help of a renowned thief named Yamitaro, he makes out his first target: the daughter of the man who orchestrated his parents’ demise. Kazuo Hasegawa plays the dual role of the actor and the thief in a film which celebrated his 300th screen appearance. A heady mixture of swooning romanticism and stylised action, with a soundtrack that ranges from traditional Japanese music to lush Hollywood strings and cocktail jazz: An Actor’s Revenge is a cinematic tour de force.

Set in Argentina a year before the military coup of 1976 that turned the country upside down, this is a searing portrait of the middle-class complacency that the Junta later relied upon. A successful lawyer in Argentina has his life unravel when a private detective arrives in town and starts asking tough questions about the secrets of the past which now threaten his present.

Alma is a 20-year-old girl and adores her grandfather, a man who has not spoken for years. When the elderly man also refuses to eat, the girl decides to recover the thousand-year-old olive tree that the family has sold against his will. In order to succeed, she needs to count on her uncle, her friend Rafa and the whole town to help her. The problem though is to find out where in Europe the olive tree has gone …

Souleymane Cissé’s extraordinarily beautiful and mesmerising fantasy is set in the ancient Bambara culture of Mali (formerly French Sudan) long before it was invaded by Morocco in the 16th century. A young man (Issiaka Kane) sets out to discover the mysteries of nature (or komo, the science of the gods) with the help of his mother and uncle, but his jealous and spiteful father contrives to prevent him from deciphering the elements of the Bambara sacred rites and tries to kill him. Apart from creating a dense and exciting universe that should make George Lucas green with envy, Cissé shot breathtaking images in Fujicolor and accompanied his story with a spare, hypnotic, percussive score.

When 77-year-old Daya, wakes up from a strange dream, he knows his time is up and he must get to Varanasi immediately in hope of dying there to attain salvation. His dutiful son, Rajiv, is left with no choice but to drop everything and make the journey with his stubborn father, leaving behind his wife and daughter. The two of them check into Mukti Bhawan, a hotel devoted to people hoping to spend their last days by the banks of the Ganges. Rajiv finds himself having to take care of his father for the first time in his life. While Rajiv struggles to juggle his responsibilities back home, Daya starts to bloom as he finds a sense of community in the hotel, and a companion in the 75-year old Vimla. As the days go by and Daya shows no sign of dying, Rajiv is faced with the dilemma of whether to remain there with his father or fulfil his duty back home.

A 1965 American western comedy film starring Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin, who won an Academy Award for Best Actor. The story involves a woman who hires a notorious gunman to protect her father’s ranch, and later to avenge his murder, only to find that the gunman is not what she expected. The supporting cast features Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye, who together perform the film’s theme song, and who appear throughout the film in the form of travelling minstrels as a kind of musical Greek chorus and framing device. The film references many classic Western films, notably Shane and was selected by the American Film Institute as the 10th greatest Western of all time.

An entertaining, genre-bending adventure of a band of misfits who help a noodle-shop owner in her quest for the perfect recipe to make ramen (noodles). Many elements of the film closely and knowingly parallel classic Westerns – a ‘spaghetti Eastern’ no less with nods to Clint Eastwood and Luis Buñuel along the way. A mysterious stranger rides into town and saves the pretty widow from being harassed by bad men. Interspersed with the erotic exploits of a gastronome gangster, a crazy lady who squeezes all the fruit in a shop and the glimpses of food culture both high and low, the sweet, sexy and surreal Tampopo (Dandelion) is a lavishly inclusive paean to the sensual joys of nourishment and one of the most mouthwatering examples of food on film ever made.

Halla, a choir conductor and eco-activist, plans to disrupt the operations of a Rio Tinto aluminium plant in the Icelandic highlands, purposely damaging electricity pylons and wires to cut their power supply. One day, a long-forgotten application to adopt an orphan child from Ukraine is approved. At the same time, the government ramps up police and propaganda efforts in order to catch and discredit her. The film revolves around her attempts to reconcile her dangerous and illegal activism with the upcoming adoption. All the while, the film’s soundtrack players, consisting of a three-man band and Ukrainian traditional singers, interact with the plot and characters.

Two women, Janis and Ana, meet in a hospital room where they are going to give birth. Both are single and have become pregnant by accident. Janis, middle-aged, doesn’t regret it and she is exultant. The other, Ana, an adolescent, is scared, repentant and traumatised. Janis tries to encourage her while they move like sleepwalkers along the hospital corridors. The few words they exchange in these hours will create a very close link between the two, which by chance develops, complicates and changes their lives in a decisive way.

Shot in black-and-white and without dialogue, Gunda chronicles the unfiltered lives of a mother pig, some chickens and a herd of cows with masterful intimacy. Using transcendent cinematography and the farm’s ambient soundtrack, director Kossakovsky invites the audience to slow down and experience life as his subjects do, taking in their world with a magical patience and an other worldly perspective. What is not shown, what is not said, is as much a part of this film as any character. The human presence is so prevalent, in terms of how the sequences were filmed, but more importantly in the lives of the animals who live on farms and who have been specifically bred and raised by and for humans. Gunda asks us to meditate on the mystery of animal consciousness, and the role played by humanity.