"The Great Magician" - A portrait of Frans Zwartjes (1927-2017), sometimes called 'the most important experimental filmmaker of his time' by the American essayist Susan Sontag.
After Bernd (Cas Enklaar) picks up his daughter Walyne (Tara Fallaux) who lives with her mother, he takes her off for a supposed day of fun together. His idea of fun is to get his hands on as much free alcohol as he can, and as a result of his carelessness he and his daughter are constantly separated. Each time they reunite, he finds a new group of people for a few more drinks, and another round starts -- as a consequence, there is no build-up to the climax at the end.
Fabian is a 1980 West German film directed by Wolf Gremm. It is based on the novel Fabian, the Story of a Moralist (1931) by German author Erich Kästner. The film was chosen as West Germany's official submission to the 53rd Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film receive a nomination.
This film is dominated by an icy blue. In a monumental building a group of scientists submit women to obscure experiments, in which sexuality and cruelty constantly merge into one another. When the film was released, this horrifying game of power and powerlessness was condemned severely by a militant group of feminists. The criticism was undeserved. After all, 'Pentimento' is an art-historical term for a hidden image underneath the actual image giving an indication of how the latter evolved to its current state. The film does not endorse the lopsided power relations in our world but actually challenges them.
In the late 19th century, a young woman moves to Amsterdam with her family and tries to make a living. Preyed upon by various men, she nonetheless rises in society.
