A Diola village is forced to “volunteer” their young men for the French army, while women are asked to give up tonnes of rice in Sembene’s urgent, spiritually defiant WWII work of anti-colonial resistance.
Defying genre classification, Cox’s cult debut feature is a grungy, spontaneous burst of punk energy—funny, strange, highly quotable, and ultimately asking pointed questions about the fizzling out of the American Dream under Reagan.
Though narratively simplistic and less radical than its African contemporaries, Ouedraogo’s debut feature finds hope in self-determination, presenting a prospective vision of a people carving out their own future, away from Western aid and “framings”.
Mambety’s iconic piece of African cinema showcases his talent as a rule-breaking filmmaker, marked by a transcultural soundtrack and brilliant use of associative montage, as a couple attempt to steal enough money to leave Senegal for France.
The show must still go on in Nazi-occupied France in Truffaut’s elegantly mounted film that resists simplistic morality, starring Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu, as a theatre troupe attempts to keep art alive and unblemished in trying times.
A delirious, nihilistic reimagining of the ‘One-Armed Swordsman’ tale, this is one of Tsui’s boldest achievements, as he disregards continuity and legible mise-en-scène for a whirlwind, impressionistic, and psychic wound of a movie.
Revolutionary, overrated, or somewhere in between, Welles’s extraordinary debut turns power, ego, and misery into an enigmatic cradle-to-grave portrait of a larger-than-life figure—‘European’ in its artistic style, but fiercely American in its spirit of derring-do.
A haunting blend of morbid realism and the fantastique, Franju’s cult French psychological horror follows a surgeon who, with an accomplice, lures and kills young women for their facial skin, as he attempts to transplant it onto his disfigured daughter.
A pimpish young man who finds labour work to be ideological suspect tries to make ends meet by manipulating his lovers into sex workers in Pasolini’s harsh, unflinching debut feature, as his talky ‘neo-neorealist’ film offers a stinging commentary on Italy’s social and moral disintegration.
An editing masterclass that feels ahead of its time, this is Welles at his most playful and elusive—utterly fascinating if you surrender to his tricks, obvious or otherwise, as he slyly provokes with a thesis on fakery, expertise, illusion and truth.
Eternality Tan 