Ratataplan (1979)
Genre : Comedy
Runtime : 1H 35M
Director : Maurizio Nichetti
Writer : Maurizio Nichetti
Synopsis
Misadventures of Colombo, an engineer in Milano. He is the only winner of an admission test for a job, and just for this reason he isn't hired. So he becomes a barman, and he discovers a special formula that turns simple water into the "Immortality drink". He is robbed of the magic water copyright. So he tries to set up a theatrical company, but the first show is a fiasco. Since finding a normal job seems a mission impossible, he tries to set the sentimental side of his life. He targets the most beautiful girl of his building, and for her he builds a robot able to dance like Tony Manero (John Travolta's character in Saturday Night Fever (1977)). The robot gets drunk (!). It is another fiasco. So he targets an ugly girl and finally with her succeeds to live his surreal world for ever.
In February, 1945, Primo Levi (1919-1987) and other Auschwitz survivors set off for home. The journey took more then eight months. Sixty years later, a film crew retraces Levi's steps. Levi's words, mainly from "The Truce" (1963), tell us what he experienced. In turn, we see Poland's hollow post-war factories, nationalism in the Ukraine, Soviet-style Communism in Belarus, the abandoned town of Prypiat (Chernobyl), poverty and emigration from Moldavia, Italian factories in Romania, and on across Hungary and Slovakia to Munich where Levi's rage found no listeners. Then home to Turin. An aged Mario Rigoni Stern remembers his friend. What has changed? Some issues of the war remain unsettled.
Loosely based on a Japanese fairytale, an elderly couple on a farm in the 1920's South find a little girl from the moon inside an ear of corn and raise her as their own.
Vannina and Giacinto are a young married couple who live their relationship in an unequal way; while the girl is submissive to the will of her husband Giacinto, he sees in his bride only the personal object of his sexual satisfaction.
Three short films with the theme of death and dead ends in common.
A new teacher introduces radical ideas at a nursery school and it leads to various reactions from the students and the parents.
At a farmhouse, a large family cooks mountains of food for the next day's engagement party for Silvia and her city fiancé, Angelo. Her parents feud about infidelity; an aging salesman who rents a cottage from them arrives with a young French woman; in Bologna, Angelo's mother frets that her son is marrying beneath him; his sisters are less critical. Early the next morning, the four of them go by train to the farmhouse, joined by Angelo's married, unpregnant sister. The day-long dinner is riotous, couples display affection and impatience, children chase angels. Angelo's family stays the night, and his sister Linda has a visitor. A silver elephant makes the perfect gift.
A mental hospital somewhere in Tuscany during the thirties. Far away from fascism, this closed world is rules over by Dr. Bonaccorsi, a passionate benevolent psychiatrist whose dream is to isolate the germ of madness. He is also a very active ladies'man and makes three women benefit from his sexual itch: Francesca the hospital manager's wife, Bianca, his devoted nurse and Carla, a nymphomaniac doctor's wife. His well-ordered universe starts being challenged with the coming of Anna, a trainee psychiatrist, who disapproves of his theory on the origin of madness. Worse, she resists his advances. As Bonaccorsi is more insecure than he looks, what will become of him?
Four nights in Caracas. A documentary essay about chaos and civilization.
Iskyss is a strong and poetic love story based on Gunvor Galtung Haavik’s double life through 30 years. During the Cold War, she was employed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and assigned to the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow. With the information she had access to in the capacity of her position as interpreter and secretary, she frequently fed the KGB secret information.
On August 13th, 1961 - the night that the Berlin Wall goes up - three people must make a decision that will change their lives forever.
This documentary examines the life and legacy of controversial Italian filmmaker Lucio Fulci through interviews with his colleagues, each of whom answers the question, "What is your fondest memory of Lucio Fulci?". The responses are as varied as the people who knew the late writer-director, providing a nuanced look at the man behind such gory grindhouse classics as City of the Living Dead and The House by the Cemetery.
The story of Julia, a disabled woman in a wheelchair and voice synthesizer, who's trapped psychologically by a cruel, manipulative caregiver. After the arrival of a mysterious man, Julia begins to question the day-to-day dramas and frustrations she's tolerated for years. An achingly genuine and profoundly moving drama about a woman born with cerebral palsy.
Mother stands in for a runaway bride and marries the groom by proxy, then both set out to convince her daughter to reconsider. Later they mistake the missing bride and her companion for two escaped convicts and pursue them with a sex obsessed teenage boy in tow. All paths cross at a remote motel run by a jilted church deacon.
It is a love story between a prostitute and an artist. It was one of the first German films to break several taboos: nudity, suicide and euthanasia. In the Germany of the '50s, this caused a lot of negative reactions by the politicians and the Roman Catholic Church. The opposition reached the degree of banning the film and scandalizing it which paradoxically made it one of the landmarks in the history of film.
Young Chinese-American filmmaker Wei-ming travels from New York to his childhood home on Lamma Island to make a video documentary about the imminent opening of a Disneyland theme park in Hong Kong. While doing research for the project, he meets Larry, a dancer/choreographer.
Salome is the daughter of the second wife of King Herod. The King is infatuated with her and, after she fails to seduce the prophet John The Baptist, she dances for the King in order to ask for his execution.
In 1988, after much cunning political maneuvering, Loïk Le Floch-Prigent and Alfred Sirven become the chief executives at Elf. They discover a company that runs on kickbacks: in exchange for the oil rights, Elf makes handsome but discreet payoffs to the leaders of African nations. With the tacit complicity of President Mitterrand, and with eventual political and personal interests in mind, the new management takes charge of the slush fund. Within months, Sirven, Le Floch-Prigent and his wife Fatima Belaïd fill their pockets with more than they could ever have imagined.
Italian Communist Party (PCI) is going to change name and identity and renew itself into a new 'Thing'. This is a selection of talks that took place in various sections of the party throughout Italy before the historical congress.
A Texas oil driller schemes to steal millions of dollars in oil.
