Z (Costa-Gavras, 1969, Algeria/France)

After the murder of a liberal polititian (Yves Montand) in Greece a investigator (Jean-Louis Trintignant) for the prosecution starts hitting walls in his investigation. On the other side of these walls are high ranking officials within the government and army that not only are trying to hide their involvement in the murder but the also the murder itself.

The film is based on the fact that on May 22nd in 1963, in Greece, , Gregorios Lambrakis an deputy in the opposition party was fatally injured in a “traffic accident”. The event smelled of injustice and a investigator was assigned to affirm the accident but he discovered that Lambrakis was infact assasinated by a right-wing organization. Officials within the government and army were implicated but aquitted while the ones who carried out the murder were trialed and sentenced.

The film was a world wide hit which was unusual for a such a political film. It was also nominated at the Oscars for best film, best director and best script and won for editing and best foreign film.

Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962, USA)

Captain Marco Bennet (Frank Sinatra) wakes up every night from a nigthmare about a mission in Korea where he fought. His nightmare contradicts his memory of the events and he finds out that a fellow from his platoon is also having that same nightmare. The nightmare seems to center around Seargent Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) who was awarded the congressinal medal of honour for saving his platoon in that same mission. Captain Bennet starts to believe that his memory of that event is false and that he and his platoon have been brainwashed by communists to follow some plan they have against the American goverment. He later realises that the threat has roots with high ranking officials in the government.

Manchurian Candidate is a Cold War thriller and takes place in 1952 where the threat and fear of communism was at its peak. Between 1950 and 1953 Senator Joseph MaCarthy sought out, accused and trialed believed communists within the media and government. The movie goes further than just show commusist fear, some events in american history from that time are used and Senator John Islin (James Gregory) is a McCarthy type Republican in the film.

Crumb (Terry Zwigoff, 1994, USA)

Those familiar with the work of artist R. Crumb might suspect that yonder goes a man who's missing a few in the six-pack. Fewer know that he just might be the best adjusted and normal member of his family. In Terry Zwigoff's documentary on the artist Crumb we see a remorseful but never the less wildly funny view on a life marked by his rise as the best known underground comic-artist of the 60's. We follow him in his last months before retirement and relocation to France. Interviews with friends, relatives and co-workers reveal the personality of Crumb and his development alongside two brothers, one of which spends his time in meditation on the streets of San Francisco and the other is clinically insane. Crumb's doesn't hold back and hit's his own words that mark the film with humanism and sincerity and perhaps go some way to explain his work and view on life.

R. Crumb is known for his depiction of open sex lives and strange sexual behaviour (among his original stories is Fritz the Cat). His depiction of women is highly controversial, with some deeming them misogynistic and others a satirical criticism on patriarchy and male fears of women.

Terry Zwigoff and his film got a lot of praise, both critical and awards-wise. His latter work stays on the theme of weirdos and outsiders and comics, Ghost World was inspired by the works of Daniel Clowes and Bad Santa has the rawness that often follows comics. Both have been well received critically. And lastly the main producer of the film was David Lynch, a self-proclaimed admirer of alternative comics.

Harlan County USA (Barbara Kopple, 1976, USA)

In the year 1973 mineworkers in Harlan County, Kentucky laid down work and went on a strike which lasted for thirteen months. Barbara Kopple’s film weaves together the struggle of the Brookside miners and a past strike in depression times, remembered as The Bloody Harlan Strike. The film also follows the election campaign of Alan Miller (candidate for the Miners for Democracy) for the presidency of UMWA (United Mine Workers of America) and cycles back a few years to a contentious election, turned murderous.

The initial intentions of Kopple was to film the campaign of Alan Miller, and the trial of then UMWA president Tony Boyle who was accused of ordering the assassination of his rival Yablonski. When the strike began she turned her attention to the miners, their life, their battle and their families, keeping her first intentions in the backgroud. The story begins quietly with rallies, picketing, the miners’ wives organizing support commities, then building up to where the film crew is attacked and the picketers are shot at and ending violently with little feeling of closure.

Kopple uses handheld 16mm cameras and records the sound on location, sacrificing quality for easy and quick movement. She uses the methods of cinema verité but seperates from it by using interviews, archived footage and added music. The music is mostly grassroot and traditionally flavored and expresses a simular dialectic as the footage shown.

Flesh for Frankenstein (Paul Morrissey, 1973)

”In need of ze perfect Serbian nasum (i.e. nose)” it is the final thing baron Frankenstein needs to create the perfect man. He has a plan to complete his racist scheme by mating the perfect woman and the perfect man and thus creating a new breed of men. The plan ramshackles completely when the Serbian nose the baron found belongs to Nicholas, who´s planning to become a monk. When Nicholas´ head is fitted on the body, it is controlled by Nicholas celibate mind and it turns out impossible to get him to mate with the perfect woman. That is basically the story but into it is woven a plot of incest, blood, gore and general disgust, which is better to see than hear.

The role of the baron is in the hand of b-film star Udo Kier and he gives the baron a very thick German accent which increases the film´s comedy effect. Flesh for Frankenstein is often referred to as Andy Warhol´s Frankenstein, since he ran the production company responsible for it and many other b-classics. For example did Morrissey direct the classic Flesh, Trash and Heat trilogy for the company.
Many of the film´s scenes might seem awkward where the characters make swift movements toward the screen or throw bodyparts at it. That is the remains of the 3-D technology it was filmed with, but since we don´t have the techno gadgets for that on our screening we just have to do with the added weirdness of it.

Deep down, under all the pornography, violence and sickness of the film lies hidden a message. A message critisizing the perfect family and to say the least, that message is not shown in a very PC kind of a way. Every character of the film has a voyeuristic need to look at others and nothing seems holy. It is in many ways a parody and Morrissey thought of it as a comedy. The term splatter comedy seems more fitting with a dose of blood and organs all around. Enjoy.

Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972, USA)

Carrying the title “the filthiest person alive”, Divine lives in a trailer in the woods under the codename of Babs Johnson. (Might we add that Divine is in reality about 350 lb man named Harris Glenn Millstead). There she lives with her egg-loving mother Edie, her mad hippie son Crackers and her companion Cotton. The couple Connie and Raymond Marble are envious of Babs and plan to challenge her title. The Marbles run an adoption clinic which is in fact a black market baby ring. They kidnap young women and impregnate them, then selling the children to lesbian couples. They then use the profit from the baby selling to fund the selling of heroin in elementary schools. The Marbles hire a girl named Cookie to have sex with Crackers and spy on Babs and her filthy ways. Babs becomes aware of the Marbles scheming and the competition of filth begins and soon spirals wildly out of control.

Pink Flamingos is one of the best known film in a group of midnight movies focusing on sexual perversions and fetishism and is often remembered for coprophagia. Midnight movies as a cinematic phenomenon began in the early 70s in a few offbeat cinemas showing nonmainstream pictures at midnight, soon building a cult stature. Other films adopted cult status through midnight screenings such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), El Topo (1970), Freaks (1932) and The Night of the Living Dead (1968).

John Waters (1946 - , Baltimore, MD) began film making in the 60´s and wrote, produced and directed his own movies with independent financing. He shot his early movies in the Baltimore area with a company of local friends called the Dreamlanders. He got notable cult status in the 70´s and 80´s for films like Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble (1974), Polyester (1981) and Hairspray (1988). After the death of his favored actress and muse, Divine, in 1989 he is thought to have mellowed. The movies he made in the 90´s and recent years are thougt to be more “regular” satires, such as Serial Mom (1994) and Cecil B. DeMented (2000).

Passenger (Pasazerka, Andrzej Munk, 1963, Poland)

The film follows an accidental encounter between an ex-Auschwitz inmate and her Nazi oppresssor. She the tells her husband of the the meeting and her vision of the events is shown and then the true events come after.
Passanger is not so much about the reality of concentration camps, as about the power of memory to immortalise and distort what happened in the past. It also does not dwell on the prisoners´ nationality nor the oppressors. It rather looks at the induviduals and their life in those harsh concentration camps.
This is Munks last film as he died in a crash during the filming. He was born in Krakow 1921 and spent his formative years there. In 1940 he moved to Warsaw and due to his Jewish origin he had to hide his true identity. He took apart in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. He enrolled in filmschool in 1947 and after he graduated he made numerous newsreels in Poland. In 1955 he made his first feature film, The Men of the Blue Cross ( Belkitny Krzyz). Munk is regarded, along with Andrzej Wajda and Wojciech Has, as the greatest film author from Poland.

The Shop on Main Street (Obchod Na Korze, Jan kadar og Elmar Klos, 1965, Czechoslovakia)


At heart the film is the story of two diffirent people, a poor man and an old jewish widow which it takes place during the occupation of Czechoslovakia during World war II. The man is appointed the aryan controller over the widow, who is old and has lost her hearing, and has to look after her and her little buttonshop. The man is best described as a loser but he means the woman well but when he´s pressured by his brother-in-law and the tighening grip of the Nazi claw over the country, he must find a way to protect the old lady.

The film was very well recieved and won an Oscar for best foreign film and Ida Kaminska was nominated for best actress for her portrayal of the old widow. The film was made during the height of communist control in eastern Europe. And it depicts the horrors of the Nazi totalitarian regime and the relaitionships between people in times when jews and “aryans” were not allowed to congregate.

One of the film´s directors, Jan Kadar, is a jew and he spent WWII in a Nazo labor camp. The film is very close to his heart since his parents and sister all died in Auschwitz during the holocaust. Instead of filling the film with heavy judgements Kadar concentraits on the human realationship of the man and the old widow, their friendship.

Night and Fog (Alan Resnais, 1955, France)

This is not a narrative film aboout the Holocaust and though also not a definite documentary. The Film starts with clips of disserted consertration camp in Auschwitz filmed in 1955 only ten years after the liberations of the camps. The the film switches between the present and the past of the camps, and also uses other material filmed in Germany in World War II.

Unlike other Holocoust movies does the film not utilize the emotions the viewer might have for its subject. On the other hand a narrator reads a poetic text which instead of glorifying the subject it questions and reflects on it. Remindin the viewer that no word nor no pictures can tell us the heinous acts that went on there.

Alan Resnais undertakes a enormous subject that is still fresh in the worlds mind and crams into a thirty minute film. Though it is short it gives the viewer a bitteful taste of this tragic time in history and is all as meaningful as documentaries such as Shoah (Claude Lenzmann, 1985), that is over nine hours long and full of interviews with consentration camp victims.

Project 'A' part II ('A' gai waak juk jaap, Jackie Chan, 1987)

If this film doesn't convince the viewer that Jackie Chan will go to any lengths to entertain, nothing will. This is a very indirect sequel to Project 'A' (1983) which followed the adventures of agent Dragon Ma and his fight against pirates. This one follows the same hero who now does his fighting against enemies on land while his old enemies search for him. That's really it for story and plot. Such a limited narrative would normally ruin a film but this film frankly has no use for a plot. This is unpretentious entertainment that has no illusions about what it is: a kung fu action comedy that relies on humour, no-frills story and truly breathtaking stuntwork.

This sequel is very often considered superior to the original which must be considered highly unusual for a film of this nature. It has all the symptoms of sequelitis by repeating a winning formula but adding more of everything and making it all bigger in scale. But it unexpectedly works in this case and can only be explained by this films simply accknowledging what it is.

Jackie Chan combines the assets of legendary kung fu stars like Bruce Lee and the comics of the silent era, such as Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd and he references both considerably. He'll never be considered among the greatest of actors but there's nary a man who puts as much effort into his films as he does. He has broken almost every single bone in his body and he famously refuses to let others do his stunts, no matter how insane they might be. His films can confidently be called his own as he acts as executive producer, director, star, often supplies at least part of the score and supervises every step of the production. But his greatest asset may simply be his ability to make fun of himself, demonstrated by him being one of the pioneers of showing the bloopers over the final credits which mostly involve him embarassingly mutilating or maiming himself.

Kung Fu II, second film

Once Upon a Time in China 2 (Wong Fei Hung ji yi: Naam yi dong ji keung, Tsui Hark, 1992)

This is obviously the second film in the series following Chinese folk hero Wong Fei Hung (1847-1924), a respected physician as well as a renowned martial artist. There have been made more than a hundred films about this character, many of which are among the most respected and popular kung fu films of all time. This series of films numbered six films, the first three of which are quite good and the latter three not quite up the others.

Tsui Hark is one of the most prolific Hong Kong filmmakers. He has both directed or produced many of the more important local films of the last two decades and his collaborations with directors such as John Woo, Ringo Lam and Woo-Ping Yuen. When Once Upon a Time in China became an international hit he immediately started preparations for a sequel and made a film at least equal and by some accounts superior to the original. Unlike more traditional films following the exploits of Wong Fei Hung this is not only an action or comedy film, but a social study and unquestionably political work. Older Chinese values are studied as well as the changes imposed on Chinese culture by both foreign influences and indepence.

But this is no heavy social drama despite the introspective subtext. The plot takes many twists and the emphasis is on action. Par for the course is the tendency to make the fight scenes even grander than in the first film. This is succesfully done without going over the top and the final duel between Jet Li and Donnie Yen is often considered one of the all-time greatest of the genre.