L'Atalante (1934) Directed by Jean Vigo | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
The most acclaimed (and sentimental) film in Jean Vigo's short career. L'Atalante is the name of the barge owned by Jean (Jean Daste), who marries the lovely Juliette (Dita Parlo) at the film's beginning. Juliette comes to live aboard the barge, for Jean makes his living on the Seine. The arrival of a woman on board disrupts the small crew, but they do their best to make her welcome. The solitude and boredom soon take their toll on Juliette, so Jean brings her ashore for a night at a cafe in Paris. He becomes jealous of a flirtation between Juliette and a peddler, and when she leaves the ship again later, Jean casts off from the port. This dark love story is also peppered with hallucinations and unusual camerawork. A restored version was made available in 1990. John Voorhees
Title : L'Atalante (1934)  
Directed : Jean Vigo  
Duration : 89 min.
Subtitles : English, Spanish, Portuguese
Genres : Comedy, Drama
Countries : France 

Man With a Movie Camera (1929) Directed by Dziga Vertov | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
Soviet director Dziga Vertov's experimental film grew out of his belief, shared by his editor, Elizaveta Svilova (who was also his wife), and his cinematographer, Mikhail Kaufman (also his brother), that the true goal of cinema should be to present life as it is lived. To that end, the filmmakers offer a day-in-the-life portrait of a city from dawn until dusk, though they actually shot their footage in several cities, including Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa. After an opening statement, there are no words in the film (neither voice-over nor titles), just dazzling imagery, kinetically edited - as a celebration of the modern city with a marked emphasis on its buildings and machinery. The Image Entertainment DVD edition of the film offers a musical score composed from notes left by the director, which adds greatly to the impact of the film. Tom Wiener
Title : Man With a Movie Camera (1929)
Original Title :  Chelovek s kino-apparatom
Directed : Dziga Vertov  
Duration : 68 min.
Subtitles : English, Spanish, Germany, Portuguese
Genres : Anthropology
Countries : Russia 

À Nous la Liberté (1931) Directed by René Clair | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
À Nous la Liberté is an early talkie from French filmmaker René Clair. Louis (Raymond Cordy) and Emile (Henri Marchand) are a pair of convicts whose lives take decidely different paths after prison. Emile works his way up the ladder of capitalism, becoming a phonograph factory boss, a job that finds him overseeing a bleak outfit of automatous drones. Louis, on the other hand, lives the life of a poverty-stricken vagabond. Despite their contrasting lots, the pair meet up again later in life. À Nous la Liberté is perhaps best remembered for being the main inspiration for Charlie Chaplin's 1936 classic Modern Times.  Matthew Tobey
Title :  A Nous la Liberte (1931)
Directed : René Clair  
Duration : 97 min.
Subtitles : English, Spanish, Portuguese
Genres : Comedy, Drama, Music
Countries : France

The Blood of a Poet (1930) Directed by Jean Cocteau | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
In the first of this film's four episodes, a tall smokestack starts to collapse. Then the scene shifts to a young poet who is sketching faces. He sees that a sketch's mouth is moving and wipes it off with his hand; the mouth attaches itself to his palm. Eventually he transfers the mouth to a statue in his room. In the second episode, the statue tells the poet to enter a mirror. He falls into the darkness of the mirror's interior and finds himself at the Hotel de Folies-Dramatiques. The poet crawls along the hallway and peers into the keyholes, where he sees various bizarre situations. He reaches the end of the hallway, someone hands him a gun, and he shoots himself. The poet returns to his room and smashes the statue; then he becomes a statue himself in a courtyard. In the third episode, a group of boys engage in a snowfight in the courtyard. The statue is destroyed and one boy is left bloody and possibly dead after being hit with a snowball. In the final episode, the courtyard is revealed to be a stage on which a young woman and the poet play cards next to the boy's body, which is still lying on the ground. The woman tells the poet that he is lost without the Ace; he takes the card from the boy's jacket. The boy's guardian angel appears and covers him. He takes the Ace from the poet and leaves; the poet shoots himself in the head and the audience applauds. The woman walks away and it is revealed that she is the statue; then the film ends with the final collapse of the tall smokestack. Todd Kristel
Title : The Blood of a Poet (1930)
Original Title : Le sang d'un poète
Directed : Jean Cocteau  
Duration : 58 min.
Subtitles : English, Spanish, Portuguese
Genres : Fantasy
BONUS : Documentary Jean Cocteau Autobiography
Countries : France

The General (1926) Directed by Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton | VIDEO (ISO)

Synopsis :
Buster Keaton plays Johnny Gray, a Southern railroad engineer who loves his train engine, The General, almost as much as he loves Annabelle Lee (Marion Mack). When the opening shots of the Civil War are fired at Fort Sumter, Johnny tries to enlist -- and he is deemed too useful as an engineer to be a soldier. All Johnny knows is that he's been rejected, and Annabelle, thinking him a coward, turns her back on him. When Northern spies steal the General (and, unwittingly, Annabelle), the story switches from drama and romance to adventure mixed with Keaton's trademark deadpan humor as he uses every means possible to catch up to the General, thwart the Yankees, and rescue his darling Annabelle -- for starters. As always, Keaton performs his own stunts, combining his prodigious dexterity, impeccable comic timing, and expressive body language to convey more emotion than the stars of any of the talkies that were soon to dominate cinema. Emru Townsend
Title : The General (1926)
Directed : Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton
Duration : 79 min.
Subtitles : English, Spanish, Portuguese
Card : English
BONUS - Cops 18 min.
Genres : Comedy, Romance, Action, Adventure, War  
Countries : United Kingdom, United States