Louis Hochet

In the summer of 1986, Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub were working in the park of an old Sicilian mansion and in a clearing at the foot of Mount Etna shooting Der Tod des Empedokles. Assistant cameraman Jean-Paul Toraille toyed around, so to speak, with his first video camera, filming the daily work on the set. Now, 24 years later, he was joined by Jean-Marie Straub in editing the material into a film. Anyone who expected the shooting of Les Avatars de la mort d’Empédocle to be an austere affair, an exercise entirely devoid of humour or a Straubian tour de force is proven wrong: so much lightness, joy, concentration, spells of waiting for the sun to come out – and even proper slapstick in between – is hard to find.

A man returns to visit his native Sicily after living in New York for a long time. He learns about the Sicilian way of life from stylized conversations with an orange picker, his fellow train passengers, his mother, and a knife-sharpener.

About the history of the French region of Lorraine, called Lothringen in German.

A fearless Antigone, refusing to allow the dishonored body of her murdered brother Polynices to be devoured by vultures and dogs, defies the Thebian tyrant Creon by burying him.

A landmark work of symbolistic imagery. The words that the filmmakers speak offscreen are imaginary conversation with Cézanne quoted from a critique by Joachim Gasquet. An exchange of memories spanning over 250 years interweaves everything from the philosophy of Empedocles to excerpts from the film Madame Bovary, to extant paintings by Cézanne, to the buildings of the artists’ village at Mont Sainte-Victoire. —ntticc.or.jp

A companion piece to the earlier film ‘The Death of Empedocles’, 'Black Sin' is an adaptation of the third version of Friedrich Hölderlin’s play ‘Der Tod Des Empedokles’.

La obra inacabada del poeta romántico alemán Friedrich Hölderlin "Empedokles" cuenta la historia del filósofo griego y su exilio y muerte arrojándose a un volcán en activo. Huillet y Straub trasladan la acción a la Sicilia rural, colocando a sus actores frente a un entorno exuberante. Filmada casi exclusivamente en planos fijos, la película enfatiza la belleza de los versos de Hölderlin. (FILMAFFINITY)

Karl Rossmann, un joven burgués alemán de 17 años, es enviado a los Estados Unidos para evitar un escándalo familiar... Adaptación de la novela inacabada "Amerika", de Franz Kafka.

"Essay on the Military and the Power", a phrase that also belongs to the title of "Gestures & Fragments", sums up the spirit of the film, based on three points of view on the same theme: Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho and Eduardo Lourenço, in their own roles, and the one played by Robert Kramer, as an American journalist bent on seeking explanations for the process of the Portuguese Revolution.

Inspired by a letter by Friedrich Engels and a 1974 account of two militant Marxist writers who had been imprisoned by the Nasser regime, Straub-Huillet filmed this film in France and Egypt during 1980. They reflect on Egypt’s history of peasant struggle and liberation from Western colonization, and link it to class tensions in France shortly before the Revolution of 1789, quoting texts by Engels as well as the pioneering nonfiction film Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895).

The child Ernesto doesn't want to go to school any more because, as he says, all he is taught there is things he doesn't know.

Dividida en dos segmentos. El primero adapta seis historias de los "Diálogos con Leucò" de Cesare Pavese, basados en la mitología clásica. El segundo adapta un fragmento de la novela de Pavese "La luna y la hoguera"

Basado en el poema "Una tirada de dados jamás abolirá el azar", escrito por Stéphane Mallarmé en 1897. Fue rodado en el cementerio Père Lachaise de París en mayo de 1977. (FILMAFFINITY)

A familiar Biblical tale transformed into a cinematic opera of seemingly endless possibility. In expressive, melodic tones, the fraternal pair debate God’s true message and intent for His creations, a conflict that leads their followers towards chaos and sin. Set almost entirely within a Roman amphitheater whose history lends every precise line-reading and gesture, every startling camera move and cut, a totalizing force.

Marco Mazzetti, a driving instructor, lives with his wife Irène and their young child. After a series of dizzy spells, he goes to the doctor and discovers that he is four-month pregnant. Marco then becomes internationally famous...

Straub-Huillet’s first color film, adapts a lesser-known Corneille tragedy from 1664, which in turn was based on an episode of imperial court intrigue chronicled in Tacitus’s Histories. The costuming is classical, and the toga-clad, nonprofessional cast performs the drama’s original French text amid the ruins of Rome’s Palatine Hill while the noise of contemporary urban life hums in the background. Their lines are executed with a terrific flatness and frequently through heavy accents; the language in Othon becomes not merely an expression but a thing itself, an element whose plainness here alerts us to qualities of the work that might otherwise be subordinated.

Jonás es un joven vagabundo que va a dar por casualidad con una gasolinera en el pueblo de Salina. Allí, una mujer trastornada le tomará por Rocky, su hijo desaparecido tiempo atrás, y él fingirá serlo, al tiempo que se deja seducir por la hermana de Rocky. Todos parecen asumir que él es realmente Rocky, pero el misterio no ha hecho más que empezar. ¿Dónde está el verdadero Rocky? ¿Se parece Jonás tanto a él?

Arthur y Anatole son dos rateros de poca monta que planean hacerse con un botín que viaja de París a Bruselas, pero no sospechan que hay otros criminales que han planeado el mismo golpe que ellos.

Un profesor intenta mediante cirujía, convertir a los hombres buenos en malos. Cuando este fallece, su hija prosigue sus experimentos adueñándose de la voluntad de una bailarina, Miss Muerte, para vengarse de los médicos que dejaron morir a su padre.

Un científico loco planea usar su armamento de monstruos mecánicos para controlar a la gente que posea el tipo de sangre cero negativo.

François es un joven carpintero casado y con dos hijos. A pesar de que su vida conyugal con Thérese es placentera, cuando conoce a Emilie, no puede evitar sentirse atraído por ella y acaban teniendo una aventura. El verdadero problema es que no consigue aclararse con sus sentimientos: ama a su mujer y también a su amante, pero no sabe a cuál de las dos ama más.

A story about a widow who begins to receive blackmail letters demanding money from her. This is when everyone in the small town she lives in dismissing her husband.

When Massa is released from prison, he's sure that Luciano, an old freind, is responsible for his incarceration. Massa proceeds to keep watch on Luciano, who has been living with Massa's beloved sister Maria. Feeling doubly betrayed because of his unhealthy adoration for Maria, Massa is determined to get back at Luciano and ends up in a deadly game of roulette.

In this movie based upon Julian Green's novel, we follow Paul's downfall as he is torn between his love for Angele, a local prostitute, as he finds out too late, and Madame Grosgeorge's love for him.

Jean-Paul is a Frenchman who yearns to live in communist Czechoslovakia. His wish is granted when, mistaken as a masseur of a French boating team, he manages to elude the democratic authorities long enough to scamper over the Czech border.

Hunters track a wild boar in the Sologne forests

Mado loves Henry but is coveted by Bob Torquella, a dangerous gangster. The latter, mad with jealousy, is prepared to do everything to get rid of Henri. He and his accomplice involve him in a dangerous robbery. Henri is hurt and arrested by the police. But the young man, a weak character, denounces his accomplices. Two years later, the two gangsters run away from prison. Bob finds that Henri and Mado are husband and wife and have a daughter. In a panic, Henri runs for cover.