Mr. Freedom (1969)
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Buenos Aires movie director, very fond of the legend of the King of Patagonia and Araucania, decides to make a movie about it. Despite of financial troubles, technical problems, misfortune and desertions, he undertakes the journey to Patagonia for the film with a second-rate actor company. Neglected by the producer and shortly after by the company, he will make the movie alone, in a surreal landscape like mad.
The first of what Luis Buñuel later proclaimed a trilogy (along with The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Phantom of Liberty) about âthe search for truth,â The Milky Way (La voie lactee) daringly deconstructs contemporary and traditional views on Catholicism with ribald, rambunctious surreality. Two French beggars, present-day pilgrims en route to Spainâs holy city of Santiago de Compostela, serve as Buñuelâs narrators for an anticlerical history of heresy, told with absurdity and filled with images that rank among Buñuelâs most memorable (stigmatic children, crucified nuns) and hilarious (Jesus considering a good shave). A diabolically entertaining look at the mysteries of fanaticism, The Milky Way remains a hotly debated work from cinemaâs greatest skeptic.
The story of a middle-aged bookshop owner, who becomes embroiled in a surreal swirl of romance and family secrets of infidelity, her energy levels registering in bursts of electrical interference - causing lightbulbs, traffic lights, toasters and computers to spontaneously spark and malfunction.
Beat Takeshi lives the busy and sometimes surreal life of a showbiz celebrity. One day he meets his blond lookalike named Kitano, a shy convenience store cashier, who, still an unknown actor, is waiting for his big break. After their paths cross, Kitano seems to begin hallucinating about becoming Beat.
Frustrated, because he is forced to produce bad TV-shows, a manager of a TV-station, enters the station and manipulates the ratings, to initiate a TV-revolution.
Mock documentary about an upstart candidate for the U.S. Senate written and directed by actor Tim Robbins. Bob Roberts is a folksinger with a difference: He offers tunes that protest welfare chiselers, liberal whining, and the like. As the filmmakers follow his campaign, Robbins gives needle-sharp insight into the way candidates manipulate the media.
Amy and David are two underachievers from suburbia. Amy has had a rough life raised by her neglectful drug addicted single mother. David has been raised in a more conventional family, but his lack of motivation has driven his father crazy. When Amy meets David it seems they both find what they are looking for. But when Amy gets pregnant, both Amy and David go through a personal and surreal crisis in making choices. Which leads them to decide if they should do it the right way or the wrong way?
Phometrica tells the story of a couple, Stefania (Joanna Ignaczewska) and Jose (Tom Woodward). When Stefania falls pregnant, Jose becomes suspicious about the nature of the clearing work she's undertaking to help support the family. Paranoid that she's keeping something from him, he follows her. However, rather than reveal Stefania's secrets, Jose steps into his own nightmares and finds himself exploring his own guilt. Meanwhile as Stefania seeks to pull their life into some kind of order, the couple find themselves separated by the growing chaos, and are unable to escape their hopeless indulgence in their own suffering. Featuring Arthur Brown as cult leader Deacon Tavalouris, the film plays out in a series of fractured sketches that range from the comedic to the surreal.
A young man's peculiar upbringing renders him unable to competently cope with the struggle of growing up.
A story about a simple man from the mountains, Guaguasi, who falls in love with a beautiful chorus girl, Marina, during the Cuban Revolution. Guaguasi joins the rebels and arrives in Havana at the end of Batista's dictatorship, and, in the midst of political turmoil, is swept off his feet by the mesmerising Marina. The story celebrates the vitality and lunacy of the Revolution period with surrealism, humor and sensuality and is a compassionate metaphor about the human condition.
Between surrealism, unusual characters, art and magic tricks, Swim Little Fish Swim is a dreamlike journey from childhood to adulthood.
During the Battle of the Bulge, an anachronistic count shelters a ragtag squad of Americans in his isolated castle hoping they will defend it against the advancing Germans.
An "underground" cartoonist contends with life in the inner city, where various unsavory characters serve as inspiration for his artwork.
Two actresses fall prey to the supernatural manipulations of a nightclub magician.
Young and disenchanted Sam meets a mysterious and beautiful woman who's swimming in his building's pool one night. When she suddenly vanishes the next morning, Sam embarks on a surreal quest across Los Angeles to decode the secret behind her disappearance, leading him into the murkiest depths of mystery, scandal and conspiracy.
Film producer Sy Lerner makes a bet with a fellow film executive that he can turn any nobody into a star at the Cannes Film Festival. A New York cab driver who is visiting the festival is chosen as the test subject to settle the bet and Sy uses his skills of hype and manipulation to try and turn the cab driver named Frank into the talk of the town. Many celebrities make cameos throughout the film.
A year in the life of a small Italian coastal town in the nineteen-thirties, as is recalled by a director with a superstar's access to the resources of the Italian film industry and a piper's command over our imaginations.
Two former geeks become 1980s punks, then party and go to concerts while deciding what to do with their lives.
Charles Price may have grown up with his father in the family shoe business, but he never thought that he would take his father's place. Yet, the untimely death of his father places him in that position, only to learn that Price & Sons Shoes is failing. While in despair at his failed attempts to save the business, Charles has a chance encounter with the flamboyant drag queen cabaret singer, Lola. Her complaints about the inadequate footwear for her work combined with one of Charles' ex-employees, Lauren, leads to a suggestion to change the product to create a desperate chance to save the business: make men's fetish footwear. Lola is convinced to be their footwear designer and the transition begins. Now this disparate lot must struggle at this unorthodox idea while dealing both the prejudice of the staff, Lola's discomfort in the small town and the selfish manipulation of Charles' greedy fiancée who cannot see the greater good in Charles' dream.
A dense film that cuts up footage of a primary plot of two young Yugoslavian girls, one a politico and the other a sexpot, and an affair with a visiting Russian skater. Mixing metaphors of Russia's relationship with Yugoslavia, intercut with footage and interviews with Wilhelm Reich and Al Goldstein of Screw magazine. The film applies Reich's theories of Orgone energy and analogies of Stalinism as a form of Freudian sexual repression. Also known as W.R. The Mysteries of the Organism in English subtitled version. Was banned in Yugoslavia shortly after it was made.
The bizarre story of Elliot "White Lightning" Scott, who plans on becoming Canada's first action hero with his low-budget karate epic, Blood Fight. This surreal documentary captures two years in the lives of a passionate amateur filmmaker, his supportive partner Linda Lum, and their cast and crew of outrageous dreamers - all striving to achieve success.
During the 1980s, uptight Ted Boynton is a salesman working in the Barcelona office of a Chicago-based company. He receives an unexpected visit from his cousin Fred, a naval officer who has come to Spain on a public relations mission for a U.S. fleet. Not exactly friends in the past, Ted and Fred strike up relationships with women in the Spanish city and experience conflicts -- Ted with his employer, and Fred with the Barcelona community.
Lillian is a 21-year-old drifter engaged to a philandering loser and locked in her room with a strange man. She lives next to a failed violinist who won't stop playing his instrument. He lives next to a New Age fanatic who's into colonic treatments; she lives next to two drug addicts who mess with the wrong prostitutes and end up answering to a pimp named Mr. Tangerine. In a barrage of head-spinning vignettes, we are sucked into a surreal motel fantasy-land where society's riffraff dwell in that awkward place between freedom and desperation.
A surreal comedy depicting a diverse cast of characters and the changes they undergo as the German tourist Jasmin interacts with each of them at a remote truck stop in the middle of the Mojave desert.
During World War II, Italian villagers hide their wine from the German army.
It's Halloween and Tru Holliwood is having a party, but nothing is what it seems as murder, musical numbers, nightmares, and a Fairy Godmother become part of Tru's surreal celebration.
THE ACID HOUSE is a surreal triptych adapted by "Trainspotting" author Irvine Welsh from his acclaimed collection of short stories.
Combining a vicious sense of humor with hard-talking drama, the film reaches into the hearts and minds of the chemical generation, casting a dark and unholy light into the hidden corners of the human psyche.
Directed by Paul McGuigan, the film dramatises three stories from the book: 1- The Granton Star Cause, 2- A Soft Touch & 3- The Acid House.
The life of Danny Wright, a salesman forever on the road, veers into dangerous and surreal territory when he wanders into a Mexican bar and meets a mysterious stranger, Julian, who's very likely a hit man. Their meeting sets off a chain of events that will change their lives forever, as Wright is suddenly thrust into a far-from-mundane existence that he takes to surprisingly well ⦠once he gets acclimated to it.
A bipolar bigoted junkie cop, manipulates and hallucinates his way through the festive season in a bid to secure promotion and win back his wife and daughter.
Vampires terrorize a city in Norrbotten, Sweden.
Quitters tells the story of the Raymans, a wealthy Jewish family that's falling apart. The son, Clark, is a bright and curious high schooler with a talent for manipulation. As his mother May enters treatment for a pill addiction, and he and his father Roger stop getting along, Clark thinks about running away from home. He just needs to decide where to go.
A young man is hired as the executioner at a prison where his brother sits on death row. Things get more surreal when he falls in love with his brother's ex-girlfriend -- who's imprisoned herself.
Middle-aged cinephile and film projectionist Pera still lives with his mother - and best friend - Mara, in Belgrade. It's 1999 and when NATO bombs start raining down on Serbia, the two of them become refugees. After a surreal journey, they end up in New York, where Pera realizes that he can no longer do the old job he loved so much. While he and Mara were struggling to survive, the new age of digital projection was born. Then Pera stumbles upon some discarded projectors and his new mission in life becomes clear: he will travel around and show people the magic of Real Cinema - the magic that can only be created by celluoid, mechanical projectors, the silver screen and flickering light.
Vlado, an intelligent boy living in a small village, has fantasies that take him away from his humdrum life. But as the Nazi occupation begins to encroach on the townsfolk his fantasies and reality begin to merge.
The beginning shows Hungary devastated by the war and the postwar reconstruction with its communist government. Our hero (played first by Dániel Erdély and later, as a young man, by András Bálint) is clearly determined to find out what he can about his father who died young. All he knows is that he was a doctor and perhaps he was an honored victim of fascism. He never really finds out but his relationship with his mother, his friends and his Jewish girlfriend will make him totally independent of this need to find all about Apa or Father.
A man wanders into a seemingly deserted town with his young son in search of work. But after a bit of bad luck, he joins the town's population of lost souls.
At the end of WW II the Dutch resistance kills a German officer in front of the house of a Dutch family. Years after the war the young boy who witnessed the killing runs into the members of the resistance who committed the killing.
Raja is a nineteen year old orphan literally and figuratively scarred by life. Fred is an emotionally bankrupt westerner living amid his plush gardens and palm trees. Set against the backdrop of contemporary Marrakech, Raja is a cross-cultural drama about a wealthy middle-aged Frenchman's complex relationship with this poor local girl. Fred's attempts to seduce Raja, and their mutual attempts at manipulation, are fractured by their gross disparity of income, age and cultural sophistication.
After many years working in the streets of Roma, the middle-age whore Mamma Roma (Anna Magnani) saves money to buy an upper class apartment, a fruit stand and retires from the prostitution. She brings her teenage son Ettore (Ettore Garofolo), who was raised alone in the country, to live with her, and Ettore becomes her pride and joy. However, the boy that does not want to study or work, joins to idle friends, has a crush on a bitch, and Mamma Roma uses her best but limited efforts to straight Ettore and make him an honest man. However, her past haunts her with tragic consequences.
In PARTNER, Bernardo Bertolucci conflated his interests in psychoanalysis, nonlinear narrative, and Godard to create a uniquely avant-garde work unlike anything in his ouevre. The film is loosely based on Dostoyevsky's novel THE DOUBLE and concerns an alienated, puckish young man named Jacob (Pierre Clementi) who confronts his own double. Jacob allows his doppelganger to take over his life; the second Jacob commandeers his predecessor's theater class in the hopes of creating living theater--as a violent act of social revolution. The idea of students wreaking havoc was not an unfamiliar one in 1968, and Bertolucci refuses to take Jacob's dangerous intellectual posturing lightly. The second Jacob is a handsome killer, the first a handsome weakling who must find the courage to resist his baser self. Bertolucci matches inspired plot points with arresting images, including visual film references and the bright color schemes that would later become his trademark.
Night after night, not long before dawn, two young adults, Patricia and Emile, meet on a sound stage to discuss learning, discourse, and the path to revolution. Scenes of Paris's student revolt, the Vietnam War, and other events of the late 1960s, along with posters, photographs, and cartoons, are backdrops to their words. Words themselves are often Patricia and Emile's subject, as are images, sounds, and juxtapositions.
The film Kushti is the story of a small village in Northern India where wrestling is a popular sport and an important wrestling match is held every year. Ever year rivals Avtar Singh (Sharat Saxena) and Jiten Singh (Om Puri) try to beat each other in the wrestling match and gain the trusteeship of the village. Rama (Rajpal Yadav) plays the role of a village simpleton and a post-master. It filled with misunderstandings and misconceptions, of hidden identities and secret love-affairs and the outcome is simply hilarious. The movie begins to take a turn when a certain someone delivers a secret package in the wrong hands. Especially someone, who is bound to take advantage and manipulate the real owner of the package.
While cleaning offices at night, Zsolt Kovà cs learns a lot about his invisible employers by examining what they leave behind, carefully choosing his targets, often disillusioned women whom he seduces, methodically taking their money. An artist of manipulation, with a generous dose of humor and the ability to assume different personalities, Zsolt begins to work in a psychologist's practice, where he meets Hanna, a 30 year-old dancer who is physically incapacitated and the daughter of a millionaire. The ideal victim if love doesn't get in the way.
A school teacher discusses types of government with his class. His students find it too boring to repeatedly go over national socialism and believe that dictatorship cannot be established in modern Germany. He starts an experiment to show how easily the masses can become manipulated.
Disheartened when his story about Canadian snipers possibly mutilating corpses in Afghanistan is buried, Luke (Nick Stahl) quits his job but is even more determined to return to Afghanistan to get the real story. With his offbeat buddy, Tom (Nicolas Wright), tagging along, Luke returns to Afghanistan and intends to gather enough evidence to get his old story into print. But he soon finds that the country is an even more dangerous place than when he left. To make matters worse, his old friend and fixer, Mateen (Stephen Lobo) has been hired away by Luke's journalistic nemesis, Imran Sahar (Vik Sahay). Soon the trip for Luke and Tom in Afghanistan turns into a surreal and perilous adventure, a journey into an alternate reality, filtered through a haze of gun smoke.
JULIA covers the 1930s when Lillian attained fame with the production of her play "The Childrens' Hour" on Broadway. It centers on Lillian's relationship with her friend, Julia. It's a relationship that goes beyond mere acquaintance and one for which the word "love" seems appropriate. While Julia attends the University in Vienna, Lillian suffers through revisions of her play with her mentor and sometimes lover Dashiel Hammett. After becoming a celebrated playwright, Lillian is invited to a writers conference in Russia. Julia, having taken up the battle against fascism, enlists Lillian en route to smuggle money through Nazi Germany which will assist in the Anti-Fascist cause. During a brief meeting with Julia on this trip, Lillian learns that Julia has had a child which is called Lilly.
The movie narrates the story of David Carr, an unemployed worker and member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. In 1936 he decides to fight for the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, an anti-fascist coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists. Similar to George Orwell's experiences documented in Homage to Catalonia, he joins the POUM worker militia and witnesses first hand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by the Stalinists, loyal only to the dictat of Moscow.
Keen young Raymold Avila joins the Internal Affairs Department of the Los Angeles police. He and partner Amy Wallace are soon looking closely at the activities of cop Dennis Peck whose financial holdings start to suggest something shady. Indeed Peck is involved in any number of dubious or downright criminal activities. He is also devious, a womaniser, and a clever manipulator, and he starts to turn his attention on Avila.
Director Mauro Bolognini inserts this story in Fascist Italy, with careful attention to details. The couple formed by Matteo Zannoni (Bruno Cirino) and Libera Valente (Cardinale) can't bear fascism. They move constantly between cities, settling down in Modena, where Libera quickly collides with the fascist political commissar Franco Testa (Philippe Leroy). Libera has to suffer awful moments due to her attachment to the resistance, and to the political and sexual harassment from Testa.
Stephen is a brilliant young boy who lives in England, in what appears to be the 1920sâbut nothing in Stephenâs life is quite as it seems. His world is turned upside down upon meeting a charismatic and inspirational professor at a garden party, who demonstrates to Stephen and his friends what life would be like if they themselves were merely one, or two, dimensional beings. He then proceeds to explain that by manipulating other dimensions, time travel may actually be possible. As Stephenâs life unfolds, events lead him to dedicate himself to turning the Professorâs theories of time travel into reality. Jealousy, love, obsession, temptation and greed surround him, influencing his fragile mind and the direction of his work.
In Jan NÄmecâs surreal fable, a picnic is rudely transformed into a lesson in political hierarchy when a handful of mysterious authority figures show up. This allegory about oppression and conformity was banned in its home country but became an international success after it premiered at the New York Film Festival.
Seeking a brighter future in megacity Manila, Oscar Ramirez and his family flee their impoverished life in the rice fields of the northern Philippines. But the sweltering capital's bustling intensity quickly overwhelms them, and they fall prey to the rampant manipulations of its hardened locals. Oscar catches a lucky break when he's offered steady work for an armored truck company and gregarious senior officer Ong takes him under his wing. Soon, though, the reality of his work's mortality rate and the murky motives of his new partner force Oscar to confront the perils he faces in his new job and life.
Yukie, the well-bred daughter of a university professor, is shocked when her father is relieved of his post for his political teachings, and even more so when her lover, one of her father's students, is arrested, then executed as a spy. She decides to leave Kyoto to live with the boy's parents in their peasant village. But life still has many lessons for her...
Ariel, un jeune Juif français, décide de quitter sa famille pour partir en Israël et devenir un agent du Mossad, les services secrets israéliens. En participant à des missions à Paris, Tel Aviv et Washington, il sera initié à l'art délicat de la manipulation.
Matsu, known to the prisoners as Scorpion, is locked away in the bowels of the prison as revenge for disrupting the smooth operation of the prison and for her disfiguring attack on the warden. Granted a one day reprieve due to the visit of a dignitary, she takes advantage and attacks the warden again. This leads to more brutal punishment and humiliation. But the punishment gives her an oppurtunity to escape along with six other female prisoners. Their surreal flight from prison pits the convicts against the guards, the warden and each other.
Algeria region of the high flatlands. As Islamist groups continue to spread terror, Rashid, a young Jihadist, leaves the mountains to return to his village. In keeping with the law « of pardon and national harmony », he has to surrender to the police and give up his weapon. He thus receives amnesty and becomes a « repenti ». But the law cannot erase his crimes and for Rachid it's the beginning of a one-way journey of violence, secrets and manipulation.
A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.
Slaking a thirst for dangerous games, Kathryn challenges her stepbrother, Sebastian, to deflower their headmaster's daughter before the summer ends. If he succeeds, the prize is the chance to bed Kathryn. But if he loses, Kathryn will claim his most prized possession.
Set in Bertolucci's ancestral region of Emilia, the film chronicles the lives of two men during the political turmoils that took place in Italy in the first half on the 20th century.
A production company begins casting for its next feature, and an up-and-coming actress named Rose tries to manipulate her filmmaker boyfriend, Alex, into giving her a screen test. Alex's wife, Emma, knows about the affair and is considering divorce, while Rose's girlfriend secretly spies on her and attempts to sabotage the relationship. The four storylines in the film were each shot in one take and are shown simultaneously, each taking up a quarter of the screen.
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