Keith Griffiths Movies

Director Bahman Ghobadi follows the success of Turtles Can Fly and A Time for Drunken Horses with this tale of an iconic Kurdish musician who, despite his failing health, determines to lead a dozen of his sons to Iraq for a concert staged to celebrate Saddam Hussein's fall and the end of the brutal Iraqi dictator's repression of Kurdish music. Authorization has just been granted for the concert, and upon receiving word of the upcoming musical celebration, Kako (Allah-Morad Rashtian) immediately procures a school bus and sets about rounding up his father, Mamo, and many brothers. Mamo is an elderly statesman of Kurdish music, and as the jovial collection of men make their way across the border between Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan, they bear witness to a wide-ranging variety of sights both sublime and soul-scarring. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A homeless Chinese itinerant is attacked by thugs in Kuala Lampur, only to fall in with a group of kind but curious Bangladeshi men and other fascinating denizens of the smog-soaked city in director Tsai Ming-liang's minimalist mediation on contemporary life in the Malaysian capitol. Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng) has been injured in a brutal street attack, and after being brought to the crumpling abode of a group of Bangladeshi men, he is nursed back to help on the musty mattress of his benevolent rescuer Rawang (Norman Bin Atun). Upon gaining the strength to venture out on his own, Hsaio-kang makes the acquaintance of pretty Chinatown waitress Chyi (Chen Siang-chyi) - who currently works and lives with her female boss (Pearlly Chua). In another part of the city, a paralyzed man (also played by Lee) is tended to by a team of nurses before being moved from the hospital to the women's tenement. When a toxic fog descends upon the city and the citizens are sent running for cover, Hsaio-kang finds his already complicated relationship with his three new acquaintances taking on a whole new, and decidedly surreal, dimension. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In this innovative and long-in-development cross-cultural musical from director Garin Nugroho, a contented pair of former Ramayana dancers who have since forsaken their art in favor of selling earthenware finds their real-life relationship falling toward the same dark fate as their fictional counterparts. A married couple who live a simple life in a remote village, Siti (Artika Sari Devi) and Setio (Martinus Miroto) once made a living by reenacting the mythical tale of Sita and Prince Rama. As the story goes, Sita and Rama lived a life of marital bliss until the nefarious King Ravana kidnapped Sita and spirited her away to the land of Lanka in hopes of realizing his darkest fantasies. Now, as if the tragic tale has purposefully sought to curse those who would attempt to dramatize it, Siti and Setio find their own relationship plagued by the arrival the powerful and domineering Ludiro (Eko Supriyanto), a ruthless tyrant who will stop at nothing to claim Siti as his own. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The Brothers Quay return for their first film in a decade with this live-action story of an 19th-century opera singer who is murdered on-stage shortly before her upcoming wedding. Soon after being slain by the nefarious Dr. Emmanuel Droz (Gottfried John) during a live performance, Malvina van Stille (Amira Casar) is spirited away to the inventor's remote villa to be reanimated and forced to play the lead in a grim production staged to recreate her abduction. As the time for the performance draws near, piano tuner of earthquakes Felisberto (Cesar Sarachu) sets out to activate the seven essential automatons who dot the dreaded doctor's landscape and make sure all the essential elements are in place. Once again instilled with life after her brief stay in the afterworld, amnesiac Malvina is soon drawn to the mysterious Felisberto as a result of his uncanny resemblance to her one-time fiancé Adolfo (also Sarachu). ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Manny Farber was one of America's most influential and intriguing film critics; between 1942 and 1977, Farber wrote about movies for a variety of publications (including The New Republic and The Nation) and championed an aesthetic that concerned itself more with a film's visual qualities and its idiosyncratic details than the traditional narrative analysis that dominated most reviews of the day. Farber was also well known for his writings on fine art, and was a champion of the use of space within the image; Farber coined the phrase "negative space," which was used as the title of a collection of his essays, as well as for a documentary by Chris Petit about Farber's work and his unique critical style. Farber appears in the film to discuss his critical perspectives, as well as showing film clips that illustrate what he feels represents good and bad visual style in a film. Farber also weighs in on contemporary film writers, current films and filmmakers he respects, and his own artwork, which is also discussed by art critic Dave Hickey. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Acclaimed animator Jan Svankmajer combines cartoon and live-action imagery to bring to life a bizarre story based on an old Czech folk tale. Karel (Jan Hartl) and Bozena (Veronika Zilkova) are a married couple who desperately want a child, but have been unable to conceive; Alzbetka (Kristina Adamcova), an only child who lives next door, has long wanted a friend to play with and feels for the couple's sad dilemma. One day, Karel is digging up an old tree stump when it occurs to him that the roots look a bit like a baby; Karel brings the stump home and carves it into the image of a child, and Bozena expresses so much love for the wooden infant that it comes to life. Karel and Bozena name their new child Otik, but their joy is short-lived when they discover the infant has a bottomless appetite -- so much so that Otik begins eating stray animals and even people in an effort to satisfy its hunger. Karel and Bozena hide Otik in their basement to keep it from harming others, but Alzbetka feels sorry for the strange child and begins bringing Otik scraps of food. It soon becomes obvious that this isn't enough to keep Otik satisfied, so Alzbetka starts luring people from the neighborhood into the basement -- letting Otik do the rest. Otesanek was screened in competition at the 2000 Venice Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Two fictional characters, The Narrator (Paul Scofield) and Robinson, provide the wry commentary for Patrick Keiller's semi-documentary look at contemporary British society. The two have been commissioned by a British advertising company to do a thorough survey of Great Britain in order to discern its "problem," the exact nature of which is never elucidated. The two embark upon seven distinct trips across the country and find it inundated with ugly urban sprawl and nearly devoid of habitation. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Czech animator Jan Svankmajer gained acclaim and notoriety for his eerie, nightmarish stop-motion animated pieces fashioned out of discarded dolls, battered marionettes, and pieces of junk. His films such as Alice and Faust delved headlong into the subconscious and dredged up images that were imbued not only with a woozy sense of dread but with a savage sense of wit. Svankmajer's third feature -- and his first (mostly) live-action film -- is an absurdist look at some very weird sexual adventurers. Peony (Petr Meissel) is a nebbish bachelor with a passion for porno mags and poultry. At the film's outset, he pulls a live chicken from his wardrobe and has his neighbor, Mrs. Loubalova (Gabriela Wilhelmova), cut its throat -- which she does with a fair amount of relish and glee. Using the head as a model, he fashions a papier-mâché chicken mask -- made from old pornography -- and an accompanying chicken suit. Later, in a bizarre backwater ritual, Peony dons his chicken costume and taunts and crushes an effigy of his neighbor. Mrs. Loubalova apparently harbors similar bloodthirsty fantasies for Peony -- in a similarly weird ritual, set in an abandoned church, she whips and then drowns a straw effigy of her fellow apartment tenant. Surrounding this unlikely romance of sorts are the onanistic obsessions of another quartet of very kinky characters. Mrs. Malkova (Barbora Hrzanova), the neighborhood postwoman, has a penchant for balling up pieces of bread for unlikely purposes. Kula (Jiri Labus), the guy who sells Peony his nudie mags, has created an elaborate autoerotic device connected to his TV, complete with robot controls and rubber hands, designed to, um, augment his enjoyment of the news -- especially when read by Mrs. Beltinska (Anna Wetlinska). Mrs. Beltinska, in turn, reaches the height of on-the-air bliss by having her toes sucked by a pair of carp hidden beneath her desk. And finally her husband, a police inspector, is much more interested in scrubbing his naked self with rollers spiked with nails or funnels filled with fur than in fulfilling his marital duties. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

A side of London rarely experienced by tourists is seen in this spare, austere mix of narrative film and documentary. The filmmaking team behind Robinson in Space returns to the capitol of the United Kingdom to find out just how much a modern city can change in the short window of seven years. Upon returning to London to tour the city with his longtime lover Robinson, a mysterious traveler (Paul Scofield, heard only in voice-over) sets his sights on a series of fascinating historical locales made famous by such popular authors as Edgar Allen Poe and French poet Charles Baudelaire. In their journeys through city streets once brimming with vitality, the traveler soon finds that London has become but a shadow of its former glory due to the damaging effects of pollution, IRA bomb scares, and urban decay. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

As part two of The Brothers Quay's "Still Nacht" series, the 3-minute, black-and-white animated short Are We Still Married? constitutes an animated "ballet" of a stuffed white rabbit, a tattered female doll, and a ping-pong ball. The Quays choreograph and orchestrate the objects into a fluid symphony of movement, set to the haunting song of the title, as performed by the pop group His Name is Alive. The work loosely suggests thematic influence from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Adapted from a fragment of text by the Austrian writer Robert Walser, the 17-minute Quay Brothers short The Comb opens with the image of a sleeping princess and then delves into her dream world, where the tunnels of the mind literalize, and become a mazelike, labyrinthine playhouse patrolled and explored by a roving doll figure. Stephen and Timothy Quay shot the film as a blend of animation and live-action, enveloped in a mythic golden aesthetic. On the soundtrack, they overlay a haunting score of violin and guitar notes, co-mingled with the cries, murmurs and whispers of the subconscious mind. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Stephen and Timothy Quay conceived and shot Dramolet (1988), the first film in their multipart Still Nacht series, as a two-minute short for an MTV Art Break, after gaining fame for their work on Peter Gabriel's wondrous "Sledgehammer" music video. The Quays shot the film on patchy, grainy stock, in deep chiaroscuro (to emulate the "gothic" aesthetic of the German expressionist films), with German-language credits opening and closing the piece, and a heavy, dark onslaught of foreboding organ music by Lzydor Hoffman on the soundtrack. Dramolet begins with a cracked and ragged puppet (with no hair and empty sockets for eyes) watching through the window of his cabin as a visual symphony of iron filings unfolds on the ground, the filings dancing around a magnet and eventually clustering atop it. The filings eventually materialize in the puppet's soup bowl, as he sits at a wooden table with a metal spoon before him, and he studies them dancing and gyrating in his dish. Spoons then briefly emerge, en masse, from the wall behind the puppet, and the utensil on the table doubles, then blurs, and scuttles over several inches toward the puppet's hand. As the film fades out and then back in for a second, the puppet begins to reach into his bowl. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Also known as This Unnameable Little Broom and Little Songs of the Chief Officer of Hunar Louse (Being a Largely Disguised Reduction of The Epic of Gilgamesh), Tableau II, The Epic of Gilgamesh constitutes an 11 minute surrealist puppet film, conceived and shot by the famed Quay Brothers, Stephen and Timothy. The premise concerns Gilgamesh, a slightly demented, hydrocephalic dwarf boy riding his tricycle around a "sandbox kingdom." He attempts to seduce Enduku, a wild creature who resides in a forest (which actually constitutes a bird skull decorated with an array of exotic, multicolored feathers). Gilgamesh sends a prostitute, then sets a trap comprised of a mound of bloody flesh and a vulva-shaped trapdoor with a mechanical apparatus. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide