Don GiovanniThursday, February 11th, 2010 |
|
|
|
Don GiovanniThursday, February 11th, 2010 |
|
|
|
Die letzte BrückeThursday, February 11th, 2010 |
|
|
The winner of the International Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, Die Leitze Bruecke (The Last Bridge) was the most financially successful postwar effort of its co-director, veteran German filmmaker Helmut Kauetner. Filmed in a manner resembling Italian neorealism, the story concerns a German lady doctor, played by Maria Schell. While serving in WW II, Maria is captured by Yugoslavian partisans. Despite her distaste for her captors, she nonetheless tends to their wounded. As the film progresses, Maria realizes that people are people no matter what the color of their uniform. None of this altruism matters, however, when she voluntarily crosses “the last bridge,” which, symbolically, is her bridge to the Next World. Like the film itself, Maria Schell won the Cannes Film Festival award; equally impressive is future director Bernhard Wicki as the partisan leader. |
Summer with the GhostsThursday, February 11th, 2010 |
|
Upon arriving in Austria, Caroline meets her father and his crew, which include the ubiquitous director’s assistant Marcus, the irascible sound manager Steven, and the aged, gentle special effects manager Otto. These, among others, have come to Austria to make the film against the backdrop of a long-historied castle. While exploring this castle, Caroline meets and befriends a boy called Lakob and his dog Hannibal; who in turn introduce her to the castle’s community of ghosts. These ghosts are variously the animated memories of the castle’s deceased inhabitants or spirits of the nearby forest. |
CachéThursday, February 11th, 2010 |
|
Guilt. Anne and Georges Laurant have a book-lined Paris townhouse, jobs at a publishing house and as the host of a high-brow talk show, and a teenage son, Pierrot, who’s on the swim team. Their dinner parties sparkle, but there’s tension. They have little to say to each other: Anne may be on the verge of an affair with a close family friend, and Pierrot is monosyllabic and out with friends some evenings. There’s new strain when they begin to receive tapes of their home under surveillance—tapes accompanied by childlike drawings of a boy and blood. Anne and Georges are unnerved, dreams give Georges a clue, but he shares little with Anne. What part of himself and his past has he kept hidden? |
The CounterfeiterThursday, February 11th, 2010 |
|
The Counterfeiters is the true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, set up by the Nazis in 1936. Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch is the king of counterfeiters. He lives a mischievous life of cards, booze, and women in Berlin during the Nazi-era. Suddenly his luck runs dry when arrested by Superintendent Friedrich Herzog. Immediately thrown into the Mauthausen concentration camp, Salomon exhibits exceptional skills there and is soon transferred to the upgraded camp of Sachsenhausen. Upon his arrival, he once again comes face to face with Herzog, who is there on a secret mission. Hand-picked for his unique skill, Salomon and a group of professionals are forced to produce fake foreign currency under the program Operation Bernhard. The team, which also includes detainee Adolf Burger, is given luxury barracks for their assistance. But while Salomon attempts to weaken the economy of Germany’s allied opponents, Adolf refuses to use his skills for Nazi profit and would like to do something to stop Operation Bernhard’s aid to the war effort. Faced with a moral dilemma, Salomon must decide whether his actions, which could prolong the war and risk the lives of fellow prisoners, are ultimately the right ones. |
EzraThursday, February 11th, 2010 |
|
Ezra is the first film to give an African perspective on the disturbing phenomenon of abducting child soldiers into the continent’s recent civil wars. Ezra is structured around the week-long questioning of a 16 year old boy, Ezra, before a version of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, created in Sierra Leone in 2002 in the wake of its decade long civil war. This hearing is then inter-cut with chronological flashbacks to pivotal moments during Ezra’s ten years in the rebel faction which made him who he is. |
NordwandThursday, February 11th, 2010 |
|
NORTH FACE is the tense, edge-of-your-seat documentary that relives 48 death-defying hours in the lives of the two climbers who scaled the eponymous wall of the Eiger Mountain in 1936. What started as an event that bore the expectations of their nation and Fuhrer became a race for survival when the pair became threatened by serious injury and unrelenting weather conditions. |
SissiThursday, February 11th, 2010 |
|
16 year old princess Elisabeth, ‘Sissi’, follows her mother and sister Helene to the Austrian court in Ischl, where the engagement between Helene and the young emperor Franz Josef will be announced. But he meets Sissi when she’s out fishing and falls in love with her. Sissi loves Franz Josef but a marriage with him comes with a bonus, his arrogant and headstrong mother. |
Three Musketeers, TheThursday, February 11th, 2010 |
|
A Disney-ized retelling of Dumas’ classic swashbuckling story of three swordsmen plus one of the disbanded French king’s guard who seek to save their King from the scheming of the Cardinal Richelieu. Jokes and stunts are the expected fare in this light-hearted and jaunty adventure. |
Piano Player, TheThursday, February 11th, 2010 |
|
How far is a man willing to go to be with the woman he wants? Erika is a veteran piano instructor at a famous music conservatory in Vienna. Erika is highly respected for her remarkable talent and strong discipline, but she’s also known to be a harsh taskmistress and does not suffer fools gladly; among her students, Erika’s class is considered a highly rewarding challenge, but difficult to weather. Erika seems to get her stern and unforgiving nature from her mother, with whom she still lives, and without a husband or a lover, Erika satisfies her strong but frequently perverse sexual appetites through extreme porn videos, voyeurism, and masturbatory practices that sometimes involve pain and self-mutilation. Erika discovers she has attracted the attentions of one of her students, Walter, a gifted and good-looking young man who does not seem at all put off by her icy personality. She refuses to acknowledge Walter’s romantic overtures, but when he rises to the defense of a fellow student after a recital, Erika is enraged, and Walter pursues her, finally following her as she storms off to the women’s room. Erika abruptly approaches Walter in a rough sexual fashion, but refuses to fully satisfy him until he is willing to allow her to control the relationship. When Walter becomes aware of just how much pain and humiliation is involved in Erika’s erotic bill of fare, he refuses to participate, but in time his attraction to her causes him to weaken, and he begins to accede to her sexual demands. |