J.A. Martin Photographer (1977)
Genre : Drama
Runtime : 1H 41M
Director : Jean Beaudin
Synopsis
The wife of photographer J.A. Martin decides to go with him in his tour of the hard Canadian countryside at the turn of the century. She hopes the intimacy will revive their marriage.
Non-Quebecois may find this French language comedy somewhat inscrutable, as it contains many local references and in-jokes. The story concerns two incredibly primitive backwoods types. These men have just been released from prison for kidnapping the local police chief's daughter but still have a hankering for a woman. When they return to their campsite, they discover a woodland nymph whom they both bed and who drives them wild. Jealousy nearly destroys their relationship, but after they have come to blows over her, they discover she has left. This film is mildly pornographic, as it has nudity and depicts sexual situations.
The title of this French "reality" drama, which translates to Before the Deluge, is a play on Louis XVI's famous prognostication, "Apres moi, le deluge." Set in 1950, the film concentrates on five Parisian adolescents. Certain that the next war will herald the apocalypse, the youngster make plans to run off to a desert island and set up a new society. This, however, will require money, which is why the boys decide to pull off a "necessary" robbery. Idealism collapses in the face of cold reality, as the five youths suffer from the consequences of their actions. Avant le Deluge was one of a group of films cowritten by director Andre Cayatte and Charles Spaak which endeavored to explore the touchy social issues of the day: others in the Cayatte-Spaak canon include the euthanasia-themed Justice est Faite and the capital-punishment tract Nous sommes tous des assassins.
This black-and-white film – the first road movie of Algerian cinema – presents one of the most readily apparent, though subtle, transformations of the daily life of the people of Algeria brought about by the ordeal of French occupation and the war of liberation. With military repression in full force, a peasant woman finds herself alone in her house in the mountains when her only son is taken away by French soldiers soon after her husband is killed in a raid. One day, on seeing a dead chicken, which she considers a bad omen, she decides to leave home, and sets off on a tiring journey through the mountains. With a pair of chickens in tow, she moves from one detention camp to the next in a desperate search for her missing son. The film was inspired by events experienced by the family of its director.
A loving couple Martin and Lea have some problems with each other too.
Michel Recanati was a militant leader in the May, 1968 riots in Paris, organizing many groups to meet, discuss, and act on leftist principles both before and after the disturbances. He was imprisoned for a short while in 1973. Disillusioned after the failure of the demonstrations and the death of the only woman he had loved, his life seems to have changed from a period of hope and activism to one of bottomless despair. His friend, Romain Goupil wrote and directed this biographical documentary. Death at 30 received the 1982 Cannes Film Festival's Golden Camera Award for "Best First Feature-Length Film."
Canuxploitation musical spy comedy.
Claire Weygand, a thirty-year-old young woman who is about to defend her anthropology thesis, unfortunately not only feels bad but even worse and worse with each passing day. The migraine attacks she suffers from indeed keep her from working as hard as she should and in despair she decides to consult Doctor Fish. When the medicine the physician prescribes for her fails, Claire, who can't take it any more, asks him to hospitalize her. In hospital, Claire shares her room with Odette, a young woman who has lost the use of her legs and Eléonore, a frightening old woman. The third episode from "The Blindfold" by Siri Hustvedt.
The clownish security chief of a West German business is obsessed with protecting his factory from fancied and real breaches, especially from groups such as The Red Army Faction. Ferdinand's paranoia and methods can't be contained by his company. The sympathetically-drawn Ferdinand's ludicrous actions recall those of the cynical, disastrous axis between fascism and big business in 1930's Europe: satire of the rise of private security.
A young woman, living with her parents and siblings on a remote farm in harsh, picturesque northern Québec, has three suitors: a steady and unimaginative farmer, Eutrope, the Americanized and wealthy Lorenzo, who has sought his fortune in Boston, and François Paradis, a rough and virile logger who captures her heart despite the warnings of her parents and the village priest. For a year, marked by seasonal change in an atmosphere charged with the strangeness of Indians and the demons of the woods, we see Maria at work and prayer, struggling with decisions, choosing to stay in Canada, in love with François, seeking to change his rough behaviors, and dealing with extraordinary loss.
In this French Canadian drama, the life of a paraplegic painter implodes when an old girlfriend comes back into his life and accuses him of raping her 15 years earlier.
With an enthralling central performance by Gilbert Sicotte, this masterful debut feature examines the life of the top car salesman in a fading Quebec town as events challenge the 67-year-old’s sense of identity and the meaning of life at the most profound level.
A romantic comedy based around the proposed closure of the last cinema in a small Welsh town.
In this French Canadian film, when the provincial government tries to move two young farmers from their land to make way for development, the two fight back, accidentally killing a policeman and becoming outlaws in the process.
Amanda Weber is a museum employee. Her nephew, Victorien, who feels that wild animals should not be kept in zoos, while hitchhiking saw a mysterious bus with 50 dead tourists that later was found by autorities at the bottom of a lake. When Victorien gets in very serious problems due to what he saw Amanda seeks to find out what happened and soon also becomes a target.
After 10 years separation from his wife, a film director (Jean-Louis Trintignant), imagines he can make up with her by giving her a part in his next film, an adaptation of Tshekov's "Three Sisters". He goes location scouting and stays in Bex, a Spa near Lake Leman, together with the three actresses : Julie, his ex-wife (Delphine Seyrig), the mysterious Cecilia, that his producer wants him to take (Lea Massari), and Esther (Valérie Mairesse), a teenager. They all stay in an old decaying hotel. In this isolated mansion the four of them will fight but also discover each other.
World War I aviator Carbot attempts to establish a commercial airline after the war, for the purpose of delivering the mail to the outermost regions of France.
In 1944, an Allied spy must find and execute a Berlin scientist who discovered the way to build an atomic bomb. Things get complicated when memories of love and quantum mechanics get intertwined in the chase.
A working-class family fights a greedy developer for control of their neighborhood.
In this Canadian made oddball mix of music and drama, an actress (Carole Laure) in a traveling musical revue is involved with the show's director until she meets and falls for an aging ecological activist. He too is drawn to her, and together they try to stop a factory from being built over an old-growth forest.
A collection of early shorts (a combination of old stag films, vintage shorts, cartoons, and films made for the Penny Arcades) is narrated by an unknown voice-over actor in this compilation piece.