An Idiot Adada

The Natural Son

March 1959 •

Chor Yuen started his directorial career with a bang. From its very first image, The Natural Son establishes Chor as a filmmaker of stylistic flourish, which would be sustained in various forms throughout his long tenure. Adapted from '30 cents' pulp fiction, it is a Kong Ngee melodrama made in the studio's mould, with Westernised characters and trendy middle-class lifestyles. Yet, Chor's first film is not exempt from the social urgency that characterises the Cantonese cinema of his father, Cheung Wood-yau. The film cloaks its entertainment in a moral deliberation on blood ties, its story about the raising of a bastard child a head-on challenge of archaic family values. An ostentatious start for a colourful and eventful career.

Holden

January 1961 •Polish

A rainy-night clash in a boarding-school dorm forces a swaggering teen to confront his insecurities and the price of rebellion.

Daisy Miller

May 1974 •English

Despite mixed emotions, Frederick Winterbourne tries to figure out the bright and bubbly Daisy Miller, only to be helped and hindered by false judgments from their fellow friends.

Sanctuary

April 1961 •English

In 1920s rural Mississippi, Nancy Mannigoe, an African-American servant, is placed on death row for the murder of Temple Drake's infant child. Temple, the daughter of the governor, pleads with her father to exonerate Nancy of the charges, explaining that Nancy acted in haste to prevent her from resuming her affair with a roguish Cajun called Candy Man. Details of Temple's sordid past are uncovered as she begs mercy for her faithful servant.

Sable Cicada

June 1938 •Chinese

Diaochan (aka Diau Charn and Sable Cicada), one of the Four Beauties of China, is supposed to be so stunningly lovely that the moon was shamed to hide behind clouds. Despite being the only Beauty among the four who is not a real historical figure but one conjured by storytelling imagination and embellished by public fascination, her story was nonetheless incorporated by author Luo Guangzhong into his popular and influential novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Her tale is one of Machiavellian intrigue, in which she schemes with her godfather Wang Yun to restore moral order to the land, sowing discord between the corrupt Minister Dong Zhuo and his adopted son Lu Bu, a man of martial and military prowess.

The Pedlar

October 1982 •English

The Pedlar is a dramatic film based on the short story by W.D. Valgardson, A Place of One's Own. Tired of the rootless, lonely existence of a travelling merchant, a man searches for a place to settle down, and someone to share his life.

Blue Is the Warmest Color

October 2013 •French

Adèle's life is changed when she meets Emma, a young woman with blue hair, who will allow her to discover desire, to assert herself as a woman and as an adult. In front of others, Adele grows, seeks herself, loses herself, finds herself.

Such A Girl Like Me

January 2012 •

'...is unsuitable for any man's love.' (Xi Xi, A Woman Like Me) Sum-yin patches up wounds, masks scars and performs other beautician services that, when done well - as she always does - bring comfort to her and appreciation from grateful families. But inside she's hurting. Her job as a mortuary cosmetologist makes her self-conscious about the smell of death that seems to be seeping through and under her skin and looming over her stagnant relationship with Kwan, her oblivious boyfriend. No amount of cigarettes and perfume and cleaning will rid of it. At some point, a decision has to be made.

Rebecca

September 2006 •German

The plot adheres closely to the original novel, revolves around wealthy Maxim DeWinter, his naïve new wife, and Mrs. Danvers, the manipulative housekeeper of DeWinter's Cornish estate Manderley. Mrs. Danvers resents the new wife's intrusion and persuades the new wife that she is an unworthy replacement for the first Mrs. DeWinter, the glamorous and mysterious Rebecca, who perished in a drowning accident. The new Mrs. DeWinter struggles to find her identity and take control of her life among the shadows left by Rebecca.

Seize the Day

September 1986 •English

Tommy Wilhelm (Robin Williams) is a salesman. An honest, hard-working guy who has lost his job, his girlfriend, and left part of his sanity behind as he heads to New York to pick up the pieces of his life. He's always been able to sell, but caught in a downward spiral, he must, in addition, face the father who never really understood him, while trying to balance his newly precarious existence.

Frankenstein's Master

June 2013 •English

Driven to the wilderness to bury the key to a horrible secret, a harried scientist is confronted by his own gruesome creation. Based on excerpts from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, this atmospheric and moody short film is a haunting look at what rules us.

Wuthering Heights

May 1958 •English

Mistreated foundling Heathcliff and his stepsister Catherine fall in love, but when she marries a wealthy man, he becomes obsessed with getting revenge, even well into the next generation. [Originally aired on CBS's DuPont Show of the Month.]

The Woman from Sarajevo

July 1980 •

The adaptation of a lesser known novel by Nobelist Ivo Andric, which describes the life of a spinster who was overwhelmed by a single passion: avarice.

Oshidori kenkagasa

May 1957 •Japanese

Fortress

October 2019 •Italian

Filmed entirely inside Civitavecchia prison, with the inmates themselves as protagonists and co-authors, Fortezza is the reinterpretation of one of the most important novels of the 1900s: The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati. Three soldiers arrive at a solitary military garrison which no longer serves any defensive function. Here, time is at a standstill and is marked by strict regulations, power dynamics, engrained idleness and habit. Waiting in vain for an enemy that will not arrive, the military officers are consumed by the need to give their stay meaning, and resist the attraction that this place holds for them.

Unholy Love

June 1932 •English

An adaptation of Madame Bovary transported to Rye, New York in the 1930's. All characters have been renamed.

A Chaos of Flowers

October 1988 •Japanese

Set in the Taisho era, which might be regarded as Japan's Hippie Phase, Hana no ran is a story about fashionable people without impulse control. Much of the action centers on a popular woman writer, the real-life poet Akiko Yosano, and her experiences among the literati of early 20th century Japan. Because of her independent, anti-war and often erotic poetry, she was a lightning rod for revolutionaries and other extremists, many of whom were destined to glamorous, yet ultimately pointless, deaths. The closest parallels might be the Byron/Shelley group or the people drawn to the Beat Generation.

The Tormented Beauty

January 1958 •

Guerrilla member Ting Siu-yuen works as a playwright and Lee, the leader of an opera troupe. They conceal their identities in the troupe in order to gather military intelligence. Yuen gradually falls in love with the lead actress Mui Law-heung. Ting is unsettled to learn that County Chief Fong covets Mui. He sneaks into Fong's residence and is astounded by the sight of his old lover Pak Kuen, now Fong's wife. Fong colludes with the military chief in conducting vicious schemes. With Kuen's help, Yuen is able to get the intelligence. But as Heung is not an insider, she reports to the Governor about the illicit relationship between Yuen and Kuen. Kuen backs Yuen to eliminate the conspirators and bring about the union of Yuen and Heung.

Table for Two

January 2012 •English

Julia, a waitress without much going on in her life, accepts a job offer from Milo, a writer in crisis who needs an assistant to talk to. From these conversations on, she begins to perceive that love is where we least expect for.

Jack London’s Son of the Wolf

May 2024 •English

After winning a thousand dollars in gold in a boxing match, Jack Mackenzie and his wolf-dog trek south on a journey in hunt of a suitable wife.