“Do you see this fine thing? Do you admire the humanity of it? Because the human beings, my son, they believe everything is alive. Not only man and animals. But also water, earth, stone. And also the things from them… like that hair. The man from whom this hair came, he’s bald on the other…

“No, I don’t want to be paid, I don’t need to be paid. Look, I’m here with my partner and nine other people, see. And we’re dying, man. You know? You’re going to see our brains on the sidewalk, they’re going to spill our guts out. Now are you going to show that on television?…

“It’s wrong to give all your love to only one person, Grandpa. If you don’t have potatoes, you eat turnips. When the turnips are gone, you eat gruel. But every girl loves her one and only. He goes to war; five months later he’s dead, and you mourn the rest of your life. Does that…

“We have a 10-80 out here, a truck on fire, we have a man on the lift. We are unable to find the switch to turn the lift off, can’t stop the dancing chickens. Send an electrician, we’re standing by.” ‘Stroszek’, directed by Werner Herzog in 1977, is a German drama focusing on the picaresque…

“In our town, the puffballs and spring arrive hand in hand. These are the sort of puffballs that drift around, soaring over the cemetery, where all rest in peace, soaring over the beachfront and over the Germans, newly arrived, who don’t feel the cold. Drifting, drifting… swirling… swirling… swirling… Drifting, drifting, drifting.” Federico Fellini’s ‘Amarcord’,…

“There’s a thousand sides to everything – not just heroes and villains. So anyway… so anyway… so anyway… so anyway ought to be one word. Like a place or a river. ‘So Anyway River.’” ‘Zabriskie Point’, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni in 1970, is an American counterculture movie featuring a pair of students who independently travel…

“Age makes women grow to look more like each other. Don’t you find that? Old men decay and each becomes quite distinct. Women seem to converge.” ‘Don’t Look Now’, directed by Nicolas Roeg in 1973, is a haunting, elegiac movie that, once watched, demands repeated viewings. The film tells the story of John and Laura…

“This is just like television, only you can see much further.” ‘Being There’, directed by Hal Ashby in 1979, is an American comedy drama starring Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine. Sellers plays Chance, a man who has lived almost his entire life in the house of a wealthy man in Washington DC. Chance looks after…

“And that’s the only thing I need is this. I don’t need this or this. Just this ashtray… And this paddle game. – The ashtray and the paddle game and that’s all I need… And this remote control. – The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that’s all I need… And these…

“We Fascists are the only true anarchists, naturally, once we’re masters of the state. In fact, the one true anarchy is that of power.” ‘Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom’, directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1975, is a controversial Italian horror movie set after the fall of Mussolini in 1943. Four fascist noblemen…

There is an debate that divides historical movies into two camps. The first attempts to depict history without mediation, in essence films that try to access a past before cinema began to shape it  through genre. The second embraces this mediation by presenting the past as a series of genre tropes and iconography, the past…

“I like this room. It’s got a good feel to it. It’s quiet and peaceful. Just like you. I envy you. The smell of paint and wood. Must be good to work here. Then when you finish something, you can see what you’ve done.” ‘The American Friend’, directed by Wim Wenders in 1977, is a…

This review of ‘Two Women’ and ‘A Special Day’ on DVD first appeared on We Are Cult on the 6th of November 2016 CultFilms, a new independent label specialising in world cinema, have released restored versions of two award-winning Sophia Loren movies: ‘Two Women’, from 1960 and ‘A Special Day’ from 1977 on DVD and…

“We’ll be rich, Ali, and we’ll buy ourselves a little piece of heaven.” ‘Ali: Fear Eats the Soul’, directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 1974, is a German drama focusing on the romance between a 60 year-old German woman and a much younger Moroccan man. Brigitte Mira plays Emmi, a lonely widow who takes shelter…

“In eighty movies I’ve died twenty-four times – electrocuted twice, hanged twice. I’ve been knifed, committed suicide, died in accidents, but never a natural death. Anyway, I don’t think death is natural.” ‘Day for Night’, directed by François Truffaut in 1973, is a French comedy drama about the lives of the cast and crew during…

“Listen, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.” ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’, directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones in 1975, and ‘Monty Python’s Life of Brian’, directed by…

In 1955, Guy Debord coined the term ‘psychogeography’, a way of seeing urban spaces as cultural playgrounds that, through wandering, can collapse time and space together, connecting the rich histories of locations with the contemporary experience of exploring them. Paris was an ur-text for this new way of seeing space and time, the history, mythology…

 “Alea iacta est.” ‘Roma’, directed by Federico Fellini in 1972, is the perfect example of a movie in which a city forms the central character. As with most of his films, ‘Roma’ doesn’t have a straightforward plot but is rather a sequence of vignettes ties loosely around the director’s own encounters with the city in…

My experience of the films of Akira Kurosawa before I started this journey through international cinema was limited. I’d seen ‘Rashomon’, bits of ‘Seven Samurai’ and, because of the film’s connection with ‘Star Wars’, the beginning of ‘The Hidden Fortress’. As with Andrei Tarkovsy, it took a few films to adjust my expectations to what…

 “Well I’m not a scientist. But I know all things begin and end in eternity.” ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’, directed by Nicolas Roeg in 1976, is a British science fiction movie set mainly in New Mexico. David Bowie plays Thomas Jerome Newton, an alien from a desert planet who has crashed to Earth….

“You must have patience, even while people die. Only thus can the whole evil be destroyed. You must let it grow.” I’m a happy member of the ‘Folk Horror Revival’ Facebook group. I bought the ‘Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies’ book and I’ve contributed a poem to the up-coming ‘Corpse Roads’ anthology, but I have…

“We don’t want to conquer space at all. We want to expand Earth endlessly. We don’t want other worlds; we want a mirror. We seek contact and will never achieve it. We are in the foolish position of a man striving for a goal he fears and doesn’t want. Man needs man.” ‘Solaris’, directed by…

“You were always insane, and you still are.” ‘The Night Porter’, directed by Liliana Cavani in 1974, is an Italian erotic thriller starring Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling. Bogarde plays Maximilianan Aldorfer, an ex-Nazi SS officer who had gone into hiding as a hotel porter in Vienna. Rampling plays a Holocaust survivor called Lucia Atherton…

“Hear the angel and the demon on those hills.” ‘Penda’s Fen’, directed by Alan Clarke and written by David Rudkin in 1974, is a BBC television play. Set in and around the village of Pinvin in the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire, it focuses on Stephen, played by Spencer Banks, the son of the local vicar…

“My mother died before I was born.” ‘Cría Cuervos’, directed by Carlos Saura in 1976, is a Spanish domestic drama with touches of abstract fantasy. Ana, an eight year old played by Ana Torrent (previously seen in Víctor Erice’s ‘The Spirit of the Beehive’ and later to be seen as an adult in Alejandro Amenábar’s…

“The truth is not always revolutionary.” ‘Cadaveri Eccellenti’, directed by Francesco Rosi in 1976, is an Italian conspiracy thriller set in the world of politics and the judiciary. Someone is murdering judges and a seasoned police detective, Rogas, played by Lino Ventura, is assigned to the case. He uncovers a conspiracy that leads to the…

“They told me, if I could sit on the stage so nobody climbed over me, I could drink beer till the show was over.” ‘Gimme Shelter’, directed by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin in 1970, is a documentary following the Rolling Stones as the prepared for and performed at the infamous Altamont Free…

“Too much perfection is a mistake.” ‘El Topo’, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky in 1970, is an hallucinogenic Western starring the  director as a black-clad gunslinger, El Topo who travels through the deserts of Mexico with his son. It’s a quest narrative. El Topo is tasked by a woman he rescues from a besieged village to…

“Man, I ain’t poor. Look, I give away things to the Salvation Army; you can’t give away nothin’ to Salvation Army if you poor. I mean, we may not have a damn thing sometimes – you wanna see somebody that’s poor? Now, you go around and look at Walters. Now, he be sittin’ over a…

“I could have made mashed potatoes, but we’re having that tomorrow.” ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’, a Belgian movie directed by Chantal Akerman in 1975, is a long study of three days in the life of a single mother. Over its three and a half hours, it follows the title character as…