Dorothy Arzner’s “The Wild Party” was a Clara Bow star vehicle and Paramount’s very first talking movie. Set in an all-girls’ school, the film has a routine, all-too familiar scenario, but it was fun to watch because of its leading lady.
Clara Bows plays Stella, a headstrong college girl who forms a society called the “hardboiled maidens,” that’s regarded with considerable distrust by the college authorities. The club’s activities include arranging all-night parties and raiding nearby men’s colleges and speak-easies. Bow, at her most sexual, gives the impression that going to college was a lark. Her flirtatious relationship with her older professor (played by Fredric March) is the kind of stuff teenagers dream of.
The Playbill of Paramount Publix advertised the film as: “The ‘It’ girl’s all-talking sensation. She listens like she looks in this all-dialogue hit. You’ve had an eyeful of ‘It’—now get an earful!”
The film opened at the Rialto Theater in New York on March 30, 1929
Neurosia is the autobiography of the director Rosa von Praunheim. The movie begins with Rosa presenting his autobiography in a movie theater. Before the film begins, he is shot. But – his body gets lost. A female journalist from a TV station begins researching the life of Rosa. In the course of the movie she speaks to lots of aquaintances, shows short clips from Rosas old movies. Her main aim is to provide sensational and shocking details from Rosas life. It turns out that nearly everybody had some reason to kill Rosa. At the end of the movie, she discovers Rosa at a boat where he is kept prisoner by some of his old enemies. She frees him, and the movie ends.
Quote: In the palm-shaded oasis of West Hollywood, we meet Dennis, a promising photographer. As he prepares to celebrate his twenty-eighth birthday, he laments, ‘ I can’t decide if my friends are the best or worst thing that ever happened to me.’ The gang includes Benji, the punkish innocent with a penchant for gym bodies; Howie, the psychology grad student who thinks too much and lives too little; Cole, the charismatic actor who accidentally keeps stealing everybody’s guy; Patrick, the cynical quipster, and Taylor, resident drama queen, who, until recently, prided himself on his long-term relationship. Providing sage advice and steady work is Jack, the beloved patriarch whose restaurant is a haven for them all. When tragedy strikes the group, the friendships are put to the test.
Quote: Donna Deitch’s swooning and sensual first narrative feature, Desert Hearts, was groundbreaking upon its release in 1985: a love story about two women, made entirely independently, on a shoestring budget, by a woman. In this 1959-set film, adapted from a beloved novel by Jane Rule, straitlaced East Coast professor Vivian Bell (Helen Shaver) arrives in Reno to file for divorce but winds up catching the eye of someone new, the free-spirited young Cay (Patricia Charbonneau), touching off a slow seduction that unfolds against a breathtaking desert landscape. With undeniable chemistry between its two leads, an evocative jukebox soundtrack, and vivid cinematography by Robert Elswit, Desert Hearts beautifully exudes a sense of tender yearning and emotional candor.
Synopsis: One morning at an isolated mansion in the snowy countryside of 1950s France, a family is gathered for the holiday season. But there will be no celebration at all because their beloved patriarch has been murdered! The killer can only be one of the eight women closest to the man of the house. Was it his powerful wife? His spinster sister-in-law? His miserly mother-in-law? Maybe the insolent chambermaid or the loyal housekeeper? Could it possibly have been one of his two young daughters? A surprise visit from the victim’s chic sister sends the household into a tizzy, encouraging hysterics, exacerbating rivalries, and encompassing musical interludes. Comedic situations arise with the revelations of dark family secrets. Seduction dances with betrayal. The mystery of the female psyche is revealed. There are eight women and each is a suspect. Each has a motive. Each has a secret. Beautiful, tempestuous, intelligent, sensual, and dangerous…one of them is guilty. Which one is it? — Anthony Pereyra (IMDb)
Quote: Pablo and Tina have complicated sexual lives. Pablo writes and directs plays and films; he’s gay and deeply in love with Juan, a young man who won’t reply to Pablo’s affection or letters. Pablo’s sibling Tina is a transsexual, angry at men, raising Ada, and trying to make it as an actress. Pablo takes up with Antonio, a youth who becomes jealous of Pablo’s love for Juan. Antonio seeks out Juan, and violence leads to Pablo’s grief and a temporary loss of memory. When memory returns, he learns that Antonio has taken up with Tina. In horror, he hurries to Tina’s rescue and must face Antonio and his desire.
With a blend of harsh realism and aching humanity, Héctor Babenco’s international breakout Pixote offers an electrifying look at youth fighting to survive on the bottom rung of Brazilian society, and a stinging indictment of the country’s military dictatorship and police. In a heartbreaking performance, Fernando Ramos da Silva plays a young boy who escapes a nightmarish reformatory only to resort to a life of violent crime, even as he forms a makeshift family with some fellow outcasts. Abandoned by those that were meant to protect them, they are forced to survive with the only economies open to them: sex and drugs.
Quote: Red Cow is a coming-of-age film that takes place in the days leading up to the assassination of Rabin and depicts the life of Benny, 16, orphaned from mother at birth and the only child of Joshua – a religious, right-wing extremist, in those critical junctures when she is forming her sexual, religious and political awareness.
This is a collection of licentious little films from last century: twelve short silent pornographic films with piano accompaniment made between 1905 and 1930 by sometimes illustrious directors who preferred to remain anonymous. True curiosities in the history of cinema, these films were originally screened in the waiting rooms of brothels.
The Good Old Naughty Days is a refreshing and impertinent anthology about the pleasures of the flesh. Both naive and racy, it was programmed at the Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes in 2002. The film has a historical and sociological dimension completely foreign to the spirit of today’s porn flicks. Spontaneity and naturalistic grace clearly contribute to the appeal and humor of this ode to insouciance from the Roaring Twenties…
List of films: • La Coiffeuse (1905) • Devoirs de vacances (1920) • Mousquetaire au restaurant (1920) • L’Atelier Faiminette (1921) • La Voyeuse (1924) • Agenor fait un levage (1925) • Buried Treasure (1925) • La Fessée à l’école (1925) • L’Heure du thé? (1925) • Miss Butterfly (1925) • Mr. Abbot Bitt at Convent (1925) • Massages (1930)
Continuing its exploration of the weirdest moments of cinema, Cult Epics brings us Vintage Erotica anno 1940 (aka Les Archives d’Eden), a collection of French porn vignettes covering the early years of celluloid sex from 1900 to 1940.
Through these short films, 15 black & white silent sequences accompanied by a soundtrack, we discover the sexual fantasies of our elders and though, technically, cinema was in its mumbling stage, it is evident that these filmmakers quickly assimilated and mastered the visual potential of this medium. Delivering XXX in various settings (maids, bourgeois, nurses, lesbians, fetish, spanking, nudism without forgetting a Santa Claus cameo!) through different sophisticated shots, involving lots of close-ups, they seem to have established all the rules of a genre that doesn’t seem to have changed much in the last 100 years.
Rosa von Praunheim portrays some Berlin citizens which are all connected to the GLBT community. This doc works as a sequel to his 1989 movie “Überleben in New York” (Staying alive in New York) in some ways.
A German pimp with a penchant for violence. The prostitute with a heart of gold who loves him. The demented mother who ruined him. Lots of depressing sex scenes set in dreary working-class apartments.
If these seem like the key ingredients to a Rainer Werner Fassbinder movie, they’re in fact part of a true story that makes up the latest docudrama from prolific Berlin-based filmmaker/gay activist Rosa von Praunheim (Rent Boys, Neurosia: 50 Years of Perversity). Based on the harrowing life of Andreas Marquardt, a victim of sexual abuse who grew into a karate champ, prosperous hustler, federal prisoner and eventually, martial arts instructor and author, the film jumps between present-day interviews and kitschy flashbacks shot in black-and-white, revealing a man who overcame trauma through the power of therapy and his own two fists. Screening in Berlin’s Panorama section – where von Praunheim’s movies (over 70 in all) have often premiered – Love should play well with the filmmaker’s local fan base and minor cult following abroad, with continued gigs on the international fest circuit.
Adapted by the director and writers Nico Woche and Jurgen Leme from Marquardt’s 2006 autobiography, the film begins with its subject speaking candidly about his past, before jumping into dramatized recreations where young Andreas, aka Andy (Hanno Koffler), is raised by a single mother (Katy Karrenbauer) after his abusive father is kicked out of the house for crushing his 6-year-old son’s hand.
But rather than finding solace in the arms of mutter, Andy lands between the legs of a perverted Mommie Dearest who forces him into a long-term incestuous relationship – one which von Praunheim hardly shies away from, capturing sexual acts from the young boy’s POV as his mom strips down for him, plays with his genitals or, in one rather unbearable sequence, casually lubricates an oversized dildo like she’s spreading icing on a tray of cupcakes.
To say Andy had an unhappy childhood is more than an understatement, and he soon grows up to become a fierce fighter and street enforcer, eventually setting up shop as a pimp in what he would call his personal “I Hate Women” campaign. Yet despite his outward loathing of the opposite sex, one woman pops into his life with the possibility of changing it: beautiful 16-year-old secretary, Marion (Luise Heyer), who soon falls in love with Andy, only to turn into one of his prized streetwalkers – a vocation she doesn’t seem to mind at all. (We later learn that Marion was also abused as a child.)
Much of the film’s midsection depicts the push-and-pull relationship between pimp and prostitute, and in that sense recalls Fassbinder’s debut Love is Colder than Death, especially with its stark, colorless imagery (by Nicolai Zorn and Elfi Mikesch) and faux theatrical backdrops (credited to four production designers). Some of these scenes veer into camp territory, especially when mom pops back into the picture, but stars Koffler (Free Fall) and (Jack) offer up convincing, intensely physical performances, playing two self-punishing people who nonetheless find their way toward true love.
If the last act is less visceral as it follows Andy’s quest for psychological aid, and if it’s not always easy to accept how easily Marion victimizes herself – even if she’s clearly as damaged inside as her boyfriend/mack – Tough Love ultimately works as a portrait of a man who was able to channel his rage into a highly lucrative, if highly questionable, existence. It’s not everyday that sexually abused kids manage to surpass their childhood suffering, and in that sense Marquardt – who now runs several karate schools aimed at inner-city youth – can be seen as a hero, and one who still kicks ass.
Quote: Two high school sweethearts, Luke and Jonah, spend their final months together over the course of a long, quiet summer in the rural South–a world of baseball, bicycles, church and green bean casserole–contemplating their uncertain future and the uncertain future of America.
Quote: Beijing, 1988. On the cusp of middle-age, Chen Handong has known little but success all his life. The eldest son of a senior government bureaucrat, he heads a fast-growing trading company and plays as hard as he works. Few know that Handong’s tastes run more to boys than girls. Lan Yu is a country boy, newly arrived in Beijing to study architecture. More than most students, he is short of money and willing to try anything to earn some. He has run into Liu Zheng, who pragmatically suggests that he could prostitute himself for one night to a gay pool-hall and bar owner.
Quote: Directed by Hong Khaou (Lilting), MONSOON is a visual and emotional tour de force with a tender performance from Henry Golding (Crazy Rich Asians, The Gentlemen). The film is a rich and poignant exploration of the struggle for identity in a place where the past weighs heavily on the present.
Kit (Henry Golding, Crazy Rich Asians) returns to Ho Chi Minh City for the first time since he was six years old when his family fled the country in the aftermath of the Vietnam-American war. Struggling to make sense of himself in a city he’s no longer familiar with, he embarks on a personal journey across the country that opens up the possibility for friendship, love and happiness.
A immigrant’s father is coming to visit from Germany. She has lied to him about her acting career, having looked unsuccessfully for parts for a year, and has also told him she’s married. So she enlists her gay roommate to act as her husband, which causes complications in his lifestyle. When Dad arrives, he accompanies her to an audition for a New Age Erotic film with Annie Sprinkle, and he accidentally gets a part in a commercial, and gets involved with Annie. The daughter is miffed, and ends up trying to decide what her own sexual orientation is. (IMDb)
Forest fires burn in Sumatra; a smoke covers Kuala Lumpur. Grifters beat an immigrant day laborer and leave him on the streets. Rawang, a young man, finds him, carries him home, cares for him, and sleeps next to him. In a loft above lives a waitress. She sometimes provides care and attention. More violence seems a constant possibility. They find another man abandoned on the street, paralyzed. They carry him. While no one speaks to each other, sounds dominate: coughing, cooking, coupling, opening bags; music and news reports on a radio, the rattle and buzz of a restaurant. It’s dark in the city at night. We see down hallways, through doors, down alleys. Who sleeps with whom?
Extras: ● Tony Rayns – (2007) Interview with Director Ming-liang Tsai
Greta, a beautiful young American woman, travels to Italy and is hired as a secretary by Richard Stuart, a wealthy author. Her secret motive for taking on the job is to look for Sally, her missing lover. Richard’s very attractive wife becomes sexually interested in the beautiful Greta and lets her know it. One evening while viewing of a porn movie, Greta is stunned to see the film stars her missing love, Sally. Greta also discovers a deadly secret about Richard and his wife and they learn Greta’s real motive and decide to have some fun with her! Starring two of Italy’s most beautiful starlets; Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri. It’s a classic and worthy giallo with great killings and lots of nudity.
