Sukhov

Two great films of Rainer Werner Fassbender are being played this Sunday- Lola - 2 AM, July 14th, Sunday Veronika Voss - 4 AM, July 14th, Sunday (this one may be a premiere on the TCM channel)

The idea behind this thread is to discuss the foreign films on TCM Imports like how the Noir Alley has a dedicated thread for the films shown under it. I usually record these films and watch them every week and would appreciate to discuss the films shown with anyone interested. If you have seen the film before or have an opinion on it, please do not be afraid to share. It is okay to dislike or disagree about movies. I know that foreign language films are generally not as popular as other genres but I'm certain many of you like some of them too so please do not be shy.

Yeah, it's one thing to have never seen a movie before but it's another to show open hostility towards movies here of all places.

Rudolf Hrsusinsky is also quite a good actor. He reminds me of Peter Lorre.

Yeah, I thought it might be the B movie too and that would have made sense but earlier in the day they did show Vampyr and Little Shop of Horrors too and the film does fit into the horror genre.

This information is all incorrect. It's for the 1972 B movie and is completely unrelated. It listed the same plot on my television as well.

Hrusinsky is quite good in this one as the Tibetan Buddhism obsessed, German cremator Kropfkringl who dreams of sending people to their afterlife and reincarnation while becoming a "savior" like the Dalai Lama. This one is a good political satire of the Fascists in Czechia and the Sudetenland right before WWII. The film is both horrible and comedic and the gruesome murders of his wife and son are done in a very comical way. The film also uses the very sexually explicit imagery that the Czech new wave was known for which only adds to the perversion. One "comedic" scene is where the cremator praises German Fascism and the very act of death itself at his own wife's funeral while his comrades hail him and cheer him on. The scene where Kropfkringl discusses the beauty of a Jewish ceremony while scapegoating them to his NSDAP comrades in an intercut scene was masterful editing. The soundtrack to this is very beautiful. I feel Terry Gilliam must have been influenced by this film and Czech New Wave films like it because many parts of the soundtrack and cinematography reminded me of Baron Munchausen and some of his other films (including an ending shot and scene that seemed very reminiscent to me of Brazil's). The quality to this one seemed touched up and I liked it. Overall a very great film.

Stanley Kubrick and the rest aren't even close.

Do you remember what day it aired? The poster here MovieCollector has an informative website that lists everything that has aired on TCM (including dates they aired).

Yeah, it would make a good silent sunday night double feature with Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness and maybe with Mickey's Man Friday as a short/ extra in-between (if Disney gave permission of course).

According to Amazon, Wikipedia and some users on IMDB, Kliou exists as an extra on a Milestone DVD of Legong but I don't want to buy it if I'm not sure it's available on the disc. Not to mention I don't even have a working DVD player right now. I really wish TCM would show it sometime. I can hope. The person who runs this blog claims to have seen the film and lists examples of animal violence in it ( even though I don't think any of it is too bad as the natives almost certainly used the dead animals for food and clothing). https://violence-hurt-animals-in-film.blogspot.com/2015/07/kliou-killer.html

Quite a handsome man too.

TCM has shown Legong: Dance of the Virgins before but I was wondering the status of the same director Henri de la Falaise's (husband of Gloria Swanson btw) later Kliou the Tiger (which also happens to be the last film shot in two-strip technicolor though IMDB claims it only exists in black and white). If this film even survives anywhere, I can't find it online. Kliou the Tiger and the alternate title Kliou the Killer turn up nothing. I hope this film does actually exist still in decent condition because it would make a good pairing with Legong or Chang: a Drama of the Wilderness on the Silent Sundays. Also one other interesting aspect according to IMDB is that this is considered the first film to be made in what is now Vietnam.

I was just thinking of this today but they haven't shown Legong: Dance of the Virgins in quite a bit. A wonderful travelogue of Balinese culture based on a local legend. A time capsule of the country before culture became global.

From the foreign editions- Playing, Eduardo Coutinho, Brazilian Edition

My top FF films of 2007 1. Silent Light, Carlos Reygadas, Germany 2. Assembly, Feng Xiaogang, China 3. Persepolis, Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi, France/Iran 4. It's Hard to be Nice, Srđan Vuletić, Bosnia 5. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Cristian Mungiu, Romania 6. The Counterfeiters, Stefan Ruzowitsky, Germany 7. Alexandra, Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia 8. Darling, Ram Gopal Varma, India 9. The Schoolgirl's Diary, In Hak Jang, North Korea

Scarface is a great early gangster film with nice cinematography (I love the "X" motif used throughout). White Zombie is a good Karloff film but the ending was too rushed. Also I love der Kongress Tanzt -a beautiful Lehar-style German operetta film.

Review of Luka Dhont's Girl Belgian film about a transgendered ballerina. https://life.spectator.co.uk/articles/transgender-dogma-is-naive-and-incompatible-with-freud/ Suffice it to remember what happened with “The Girl” (Lucas Dhont, 2018), a Belgian film about a 15-year-old girl, born in the body of a boy, who dreams of becoming a ballerina. Why did this film trigger such ferocious reactions in some powerful post-modern-post-gender circles? The predominant LGBT+ doctrine encourages the rejection of biologically and/or socially given gender identities and advocates individual’s self-acquaintance and politicisation of its identities: “You are free to define yourself as how you feel yourself! And everybody shall accept you as how you define yourself” This, exactly, is what happens in the film: the teenager protagonist is fully encouraged to adopt “the way she feels”, her identity; she is encouraged to improve “point” in ballet (despite very strict and difficult classical ballet training standards), her doctor prescribes hormones, the ballet instructor gives private lessons to her, the father continuously asks her about her problems to encourage her to talk, she is even encouraged to elucidate her fantasies to her psychologist and to her father, and the we see things getting worse. Many LGBT+ activists attacked it ferociously for its focus on the traumatic aspects of gender transition, for its depiction of the painful details of gender change, claiming that it functions as a pornographic horror show – although the ballerina on whose life the movie is based defended it staunchly, insisting that it portrays perfectly her troubles. In these critiques, we are obviously dealing with a conflict between the painful reality of gender transitions and its official sanitised version which puts all the blame on social pressure.

Hey, they're not programming the Flag (1927) this year. I love that one. A beautiful early two-strip technicolor film about the father of America. Also has a bit of a pro-WWI allied powers bit at the end. I really like that one.

Did you ever watch Jolly Fellows as a kid? I saw this one and whistled this tune for a while after I saw it, according to my mother.