The Birdcage Inn (Palan Taemun, 1998) Directed by Kim Ki-Duk | VIDEO (MKV)

Synopsis :
Birdcage Inn is a drama about experiences moulding people's lives. After the clearing of the red light districts in Seoul, a young prostitute named Jin-Ah settles in at the Birdcage Inn, a family-run establishment in a small port town. Although the family seem to be quite "normal," with a daughter, Hea-Mi, attending college and a son, Hyun-Woo, in high school, they have no qualms about living off the prostitutes to whom they rent their rooms. Only Hea-Mi seems embarrassed by the situation, and takes her anger out on Jin-Ah every chance she gets. Complications arise when all the male members of the family (including Hea-Mi's boyfriend) line up to sleep with Jin-Ah. Jin-Ah sells sex, but in one sense, she is free from it, whereas Hea-Mi is prudish and hypocritical about sex. A twist of events bring the two girls together when they realize how much they have in common and sex, which had alienated one from the other, turns into a mediating factor for reconciliation. Prostitution has long been a favorite themes of Korean cinema. Director Kim Ki-Duk, who is also an accomplished painter, captures some beautiful moments in the life of the prostitute, particularly when she leaves the inn and goes near the sea. The open landscape in these scenes serves as a metaphor for the girl's inner freedom, which is paradoxically fed by her captivity to her profession, inside the symbolic "Birdcage Inn" of the title. Intense dramatic moments of conflict are tightly controlled by the director to overcome tendencies towards theatrical melodrama. Birdcage Inn was screened as part of the Panorama section of the 49th International Berlin Film Festival, 1999. Gönül Dönmez-Colin
Title : The Birdcage Inn (1998)
Original title :   Palan Taemun  
Directed by Kim Ki-Duk
Duration : 101 min.
Subtitles : Portuguese
Audio in Korean
Genres :  Drama
Countries : Korea, South
Note: Video with age restrictions for viewers over 18 years old defined by YouTube

Daughter of Deceit (La Hija del Engaño, 1951) Directed by Luis Buñuel | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
In the drama, a father, firmly believing that the baby daughter in his arms is not his own, abandons her upon the doorstep of the town drunk. Many years pass, and the man finds himself continually wracked with guilt about deserting her. He begins looking for her. He finds that she has grown up to be happily married. She is also pregnant. Sandra Brennan
Title :  La Hija del Engaño (1951)  
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Duration : 80 min.
Subtitles : Portuguese, Spanish
Audio in Spanish
Genres :  Drama
Countries : Mexico

You Can't Take It With You (1938) Directed by Frank Capra | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's whimsical Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play You Can't Take It With You was transformed into a paean to populism by director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin. This is the story of the zany Sycamore household, presided over by Grandpa Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore), a former businessman who has turned his back on commerce to enjoy life. At the Sycamores', everyone does just what he or she pleases. Penny Sycamore (Spring Byington), Grandpa's daughter, has become a novelist because someone delivered a typewriter to her home by mistake. Penny's husband makes firecrackers in his basement with the help of Mr. DePinna (Halliwell Hobbes), an iceman who showed up at the Sycamore doorstep one day and never left. Their daughter, Essie (Ann Miller), imagines that she's a prima ballerina, even though her dour teacher, Boris (Mischa Auer), assesses her work with, "Confidentially, it steenks!" Essie's husband, Ed (Dub Taylor), who'd rather play a xylophone than work, spends his free time selling Essie's candy, wrapping each package in paper from a used printing press that dispenses anarchistic slogans. The one normal member of the household is Alice Sycamore (Jean Arthur), in love with wealthy Tony Kirby (James Stewart). Naturally, when the stuffy, aristocratic Kirbys come to the Sycamores' for dinner, the event is a disaster, capped with the arrest of everyone in the household. Hart and Kaufman's third act found the previously judgmental Kirby softening his attitude toward the freewheeling Sycamore clan, admitting that he's never had so much fun in his life. Screenwriter Riskin altered the focus of the play by throwing out the third act and concentrating upon Tony Kirby's father, Kirby Sr., who as played by Edward Arnold is transformed from a stock stuffed shirt into a ruthless, grasping tycoon, eager to buy up every house on the Sycamores' block to make room for a munitions plant. The film thus became the story of Kirby's regeneration at the hands of the carefree Sycamores. Enough of the play's screwball elements are retained to compensate for Riskin's speechifying and plot distortions (though the softening of one of the play's vital ingredients, Grandpa's refusal to pay his income tax, borders on the sacrilegious). You Can't Take It With You earned several Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director (Capra's third Oscar). Hal Erickson
Title :  You Can't Take It With You (1938)
Directed by Frank Capra
Duration : 126 min.
Subtitles : English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Japanese
Audio in English
Genres :  Comedy, Drama, Romance
Countries : United States 

Landscape After Battle (Krajobraz Po Bitwie, 1970) Directed by Andrzej Wajda | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
Based on the writings of Tadeusz Borowski, a child survivor of Auschwitz who committed suicide at 29, this is the story of two concentration camp survivors. A sensitive young poet is approached by a pretty Jewish girl with a plan to move to the West. Fueled by hatred over his experience in prison, he is reluctant to go and seeks revenge on his former captors. His hatred of the Germans prevents him from realizing the girl has fallen in love with him. The woman is accidentally shot by an American soldier, causing the poet to cry for the first time in years. He must reckon with his past and is finally awakened to the feelings that allowed his initial creativity that was suppressed by his Nazi captors. Dan Pavlides
Title : Landscape After Battle (1970)
Original Title : Krajobraz Po Bitwie
Directed by Andrzej Wajda  
Duration : 109 min.
Subtitles : English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French
Audio in Polish
Genres : Drama, War
Countries : Poland
Note:
Video restricted to viewers over 18 years old defined by YouTube

 

They Live by Night (1948) Directed by Nicholas Ray | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
"This boy...and this girl...were never properly introduced to the world we live in." With this superimposed opening title, director Nicholas Ray inaugurates his first feature, They Live by Night. Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell play a "Bonnie and Clyde"-type fugitive couple, who in trying to escape their past are hell-bent down the road to Doom. Despite their criminal activities, Bowie (Granger) and Keechie (O'Donnell) are hopelessly naïve, fabricating their own idyllic dream world as the authorities close in. The entrapment -- both actual and symbolic -- of the young misfit couple can now be seen as a precursor to the dilemma facing James Dean in Ray's 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause. A box-office disappointment upon its first release, They Live by Night has since gained stature as one of the most sensitive and least-predictable entries in the film noir genre. The film was based on a novel by Edward Anderson, and in 1974 was filmed by Robert Altman under its original title, Thieves Like Us. Hal Erickson
Title : They Live by Night (1948)
Directed by Nicholas Ray
Duration : 97 min.
Subtitles : Portuguese
Audio in English
Genres : Mystery, Drama, Romance, Crime
Countries : United States