The opening sequence of Brillante Mendoza’s Kinatay provides an intriguing foil in its organic, intersecting stories that mirror the chaos of the city, as a young working class couple (and new parents) Cecille (Mercedes Cabral) and Peping (Coco Martin) make their way to city hall to get married and, along the way, encounter a news […]
Set in the overcrowded, noise-polluted, bustling city of Angeles, the former location of the U.S. military-operated Clark Air Force Base, the characters in Brillante Mendoza’s kinetic and vertiginous Serbis are, in a sense, integrally connected to fortunes of the city’s postwar history as an entertainment district for the nearby air base. Once owning a chain […]
Le Samouraï opens to a shot of rain beating onto the window of a darkened room. At the corner of the frame, a puff of smoke emanates from a lit cigarette. An occasional shrill chirp is heard from a caged bird. The rest is silence. An impassive man, Jef Costello (Alain Delon), rises from the […]
Even in the underworld of professional gangsters and organized crime, there exists an implicit social structure. At the top of this criminal hierarchy is Bob (Roger Duchesne), an impeccably dressed, well-mannered reformed bank robber with a penchant for, or rather an addiction to, gambling. In fact, so well regarded is he that even the police […]
In an idyllic provincial town of occupied France, two German soldiers come upon the secluded home of an old man (Jean-Marie Robian) and his niece (Nicole Stephane), in search of a boarding house. One evening, a German officer named Werner von Ebrennac (Howard Vernon) introduces himself as the new household tenant. Despite their deliberate silence […]
Quis custiodet ipsos custiodes? – “Who guards the guardians?” – muses famed civil rights attorney, Dennis Cunnigham during an informal breakfast interview with his daughter, filmmaker Bernadine Mellis. A self-confessed dropout during the early 1960s whose passion for civil rights crystallized during a train ride home after the 1963 March on Washington that galvanized the […]