Catherine de Seynes
An American ornithologist meets a French student on a trip to the Basque Country in 1975.
French filmmaker Jean Delannoy directs this inspiring sequel to his biopic about Marie-Bernarde Soubirous (portrayed by Sydney Penny), a young shepherdess who claimed to have seen numerous apparitions of the Lady in White at Lourdes in 1858. Chronicling Bernadette's years with the Sisters of Charity of Nevers convent, the film traces her life from age 22 until her untimely death from tuberculosis at age 35.
This well-executed biographical docudrama is a plunge into the madness (and the sanity) of a writer living life on its rawest edges. Agnes Von Krusenstjarna (Stina Ekbland) was a Swedish novelist (1894-1940) whose works ranged from the idyllically romantic to crushingly sardonic, sexually explicit autobiography. Von Krusenstjarna teamed up with the eccentric bisexual David Sprengel (Erland Josephson) and continued to suffer bouts of mental instability that Sprengel felt were best cured by sexual abandon. Von Krusenstjarna was not a model of emotional health when she first met Sprengel. She had inherited madness from her family while at the same time passionately rebelled against the narrow-minded mores of her genteel but poor parents. With his own wildly unorthodox behavior, Sprengel both helped and hindered Von Krusenstjarna throughout their turbulent relationship.
Director Stanislav Stanojevic's award-winning drama tells eight stories of people whose human rights have been violated by their governments. Set in Zaire, Uruguay and several European countries, the stories all take place on November 10, 1983. Starring Juliette Andres, Anamaria Castro and Laurence Wistoursky, the film depicts the struggle of unjustly persecuted people trying to hold on to their dignity.
The film tells the story of Françoise Frémont, who travels across Europe on an apparently random killing spree, bumping off a series of increasingly odious men. From Swinging London to the eternal city of Rome, she leave a trail of dead bodies and the question: why? A mystery film as only Jean Louis van Belle could make it, The Lady Kills is a blast from start to finish with an amazing soundtrack of gloriously groovy psych-rock.
France, 1965. A man with many names, an exiled Spanish Communist in his forties, begins to accept the futility of his long struggle against the dictatorship of General Franco, who has suffocated his country with an iron hand since the end of the Civil War in 1939, when he learns that some of his comrades who work undercover in Spain are being cornered by the authorities. (Followed by “Roads to the South,” 1978.)
