Brutal passion and political commentary meet in Luis Buñuel’s take on the Frankenstein tradition.  Made during his commercial period in Mexico, The Brute (1953), which pits a bourgeois landowner against his working-class tenants, may qualify as Luis Buñuel’s most political work. At the time of the film’s release, Mexico was going through an intense period of change and economic growth. Women received the vote, industrialization was occurring at a rapid rate, and the government had cut public funding. Conflicts between the state, the workers, and the labor unions were common.  Nevertheless, The Brute works well as both a twist on the Frankenstein mythos and a Marxist fable.

A relic of Buñuel’s commercial period in Mexico, Susana offers up sex, sensationalism, and literal Sturm und Drang.  The vast majority of Luis Buñuel’s filmography was released before his ascension to the throne of surrealist cinema. The filmmaker may have first come into the public conscious in 1929 due to his radical vomit-inducing collaboration with Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andalou, but his career also included a largely fruitless seven-year Hollywood residency and an 18-year period in Mexico. Within those two decades, Buñuel churned out 21 films, nearly all melodramas or action films meant to appeal to large audiences.  Susana (1951) is very much a product of Buñuel’s more commercial

Filmmakers Lorena Munoz and Sergio Wolf trace the life of an iconic tango singer who vanished at the height of her career.  Ada Falcon was a tango diva. She sang on cinema screens. Her voice dominated the airwaves. Tabloids were preoccupied with whispered rumors of her tumultuous affair with her married conductor. And in 1942, at the height of her popularity, Ada Falcon announced she was retiring. Within months, one of the most famous singers in Argentina had simply vanished.  In their documentary, I Don’t Know What Your Eyes Have Done to Me (2003), filmmakers Lorena Munoz and Sergio Wolf trace Falcon’s life from

25 Watts may be an ode to Linklater and Jarmusch, but the film is more than capable of standing on its own.  A worthy addition to that sub-genre of low-budget, seemingly low-effort, films that defined the independent film scene during the 90’s and early 2000’s, 25 Watts (2001) was shot and released as the trends that inspired it began to sputter out. A loving homage to the likes of Linklater, Jarmusch, and even Kevin Smith, the film isn’t radical revolutionary cinema, but it is skillfully crafted and, just as importantly, fun to watch.  One of less than two dozen films made in and by

In The House is Black, Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad presents the lives of leper colony inhabitants with empathy and grace.  “On this screen will appear an image of ugliness, a vision of pain no caring human being should ignore.”  The image in question is that of a woman standing before a mirror, staring straight at her reflection. Her face is a worm-riddled apple. And yet the camera zooms in closer. Director Forough Farrokhzad refuses to allow her audience to look away until they can see their shared humanity in the leper’s eyes.  Thus begins The House is Black (1963), an empathetic, often harrowing glimpse into the world of a leper colony, and

Made up of only twelve very long takes,  Miklós Jancsó’s film transforms a classic myth into a powerful political fable.  Miklós Jancsó’s Electra, My Love (1974) is very much a film of its time, an artistic reaction to Soviet oppression in the years following the 1959 Hungarian revolution. Yet, the film is also a retelling of an ancient story that predates the Soviet Union and Hungary by thousands of years. A stunning amalgamation of ancient myth and modern history, its message is somehow still pertinent today.  The film, itself an adaption of a 1968 play by Làszlò Gyurkò, tells the classic tale of Electra

The Sieges of Alcazar and The Man of the Badlands bookend the fascinating career of Luc Moullet.  Though he may be one of the less-decorated foot soldiers of the French New Wave, Luc Moullet is an integral member of that legendary legion of artists. His decade spanning career was hatched in the classic incubator of the French New Wave, Cahiers du Cinema, where Moullet wrote criticism that angered Françoise Truffuat and impressed a young Jean-Luc Goddard. At the start of his directorial career, his politically charged shorts failed to rustle up much attention, but he continued to release films at a steady rate from 1966 onwards.  His films are stamped with a