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This bizarre film by one of the most original directors now working in Germany is hermetic, expressionist, oblique, and of a creative perversity that bespeaks the presence of a genius. Purporting to deal with a real-life 19th century diva 'whose popularity was such that over-exertion led to her death while singing,' the film is actually a grisly series of frozen or tortured tableaux (predominantly lesbian in implication) of heavily rouged, frequently ugly women who, pretending to sing heavy opera, go through contorted, icy attempts at communication that lead nowhere. The lip-sync is off; the singing is off-pitch; mouths are frequently open while no sound issues forth, or closed, with mellifluous arias or cheap popular songs heard on scratchy renditions of old records. Neither burlesque nor slapstick, the film's intent, at least in the beginning, is nevertheless ironical and subversive, though mysteriously so. However, it grows increasingly dark and more threatening, with screams, faces bathed in Vaseline, red, wet mouths, smeared eye shadows, and dehumanized figures. One cannot 'explain' Schroeter's work, other than recognize his debunking of opera as a metaphorical rejection of bourgeois society; but one trembles in recognition of a prospective major talent."
Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art

While Jackie Raynal is best known as the former programmer of two of New York’s premiere art cinemas—the Carnegie Hall and the Bleecker Street—she began her career in film nearly forty years ago in Paris, where by 1964 she was the youngest film editor in France. Challenged by Zanzibar patroness Boissonnas to stop editing other people’s films and make her own, Raynal traveled to Barcelona, where she completed Deux Fois in a single week. One of the most enigmatic of the Zanzibar films, it is composed of a series of unconnected episodes, some of which are repeated. The film begins with a prologue in which Raynal (carefully made-up and fashionably dressed) is seated, head lowered and hands joined in prayer, before both her dinner and her film. While Deux Fois lays claim to the Surrealist legacy of Buñuel and Cocteau, it gained critical recognition as a pioneering work within the burgeoning feminist cinema.

1971 film

Brazil, 1594. The Tupinambás natives are friends of the French and their enemies are the Tupiniquins, friends of the Portuguese. A Frenchman is captured by the Tupinambás, and in spite of his trial to convince them that he is French, they believe he is Portuguese. The Frenchman becomes their slave, and maritally lives with Seboipepe.

An African travels to Paris to learn about the construction of tall buildings, but is soon taken up with the oddities of French life.

A successful businessman goes to Italy to arrange for the return of his tycoon-father's body only to discover dad died with his mistress of long standing.

Originally produced as Out 1, noli me tangere (1971) with a running time of 13 hours. Later edited to 4 1/2 hours and retitled for general release.

1974 film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Included in Jonathan Rosenbaum’s list of 1000 essential films, Parviz Kimiavi’s The Mongols (1973) is a leftfield satire and sharp commentary on the expanding presence of cinema and television in Iran. The story follows a filmmaker, played by Kimiavi himself and also named Parviz, as he struggles with both his own film and a looming assignment to oversee the installation of a television relay station in the remote province of Zahedan. Imbued by his wife’s thesis work on the Mongol invasion of Iran, Parviz’s anxieties coalesce and materialize in the form of surreal visions in which the origins of cinema are acted out by the Turkomans he hired to play Mongols in his own film. Together with Parviz, we watch as the would-be gang of Mongols wander the desert in search of their director and the answers to their pressing questions about the nature of cinema, all while the forthcoming introduction of television consumes the local village and its inhabitants. Kimiavi fashions a fantastical cinematic space rife with bizarre metaphoric imagery and Godardian references to film-making in order to draw a sarcastic parallel between the Mongol invasion and the hyper-accelerated modernization of 1970s Iran.
A director of a television series on the history of cinema, who has been grappling with the screenplay of his first feature film, receives an assignment to oversee the installation of a television relay station in a remote region of Zahedan province, near the Afghanistan border. He has already hired Turkoman tribespeople for his film and selected his filming location. Meanwhile his wife, who is working on her Ph.D. dissertation about the Mongol invasion of Iran, attempts to dissuade him from accepting the assignment. One night, while working on his history of the cinema series, the director fantasizes a diagetic world that consists of clever juxtapositions of his different worlds: the history of cinema, the history of the mongol invasion, his own film idea and his imminent assignment to the desert.

Shinsuke Ogawa documentary about the life of the farmers in Heta Village opposing their resettlement due to the construction of Narita Airport.

1972 film by Marguerite Duras

There have been many films of the play "Salome", but none of them are anything like Carmelo Bene's version. The film is so bright, colorful and strange; it will make your head spin. The intro of the film contains a cartoon camel jumping through a loop, women getting spanked with feather paddles, a man slicing a watermelon with a machete and a women with beaded jewelry emerging from the water. Unfortunately, the only copy I could find didn't have subtitles. I really didn't need to understand the dialog to enjoy the strange and weird images. It's as if someone filmed Fellini Satyricon on a fixed budget, cut it into pieces, rearranged it and laced it with LSD style editing. That's why it is so darn entertaining. I first learned about Italian director Carmelo Bene from the book "Film as a Subversive Art" by Amos Vogel. This book changed the way I view films. I go out of my way to find surreal films like "Salome". It is strange, experimental and quite an experience. Don't watch this film on drugs, because the film is a drug in itself. A startling head trip of a film.

A jazz musician falls in love with a comatose woman at a carny sideshow and takes her to his mansion to join his cabinet of sexual curiosities.

A young American woman traveling through Italy finds herself in a strange Mediterranean villa where nothing seems quite right.

A young girl, Benilde, so protected by her religious family that she seemingly knows nothing about procreation, insists that her mysterious pregnancy is a miracle; however, her distressed bourgeois family decides that Benilde has lost her mind.

Frank Mansfield has wanted to win the Cockfighter of the Year medal for ages. Frank never speaks. After shooting his mouth off one too many times then losing a champion rooster in a casual hotel room cockfight, he swore never to speak again until he's won that award... He makes a bet with old crony Jack to be settled at the upcoming meet. Frank puts his car and his trailer on the line; he loses. Jack gets the trailer, and Frank's part-time girlfriend who goes with it. Frank's long-time girlfriend Mary Elizabeth wants him to get serious and settle down. But Frank has to raise some money for a new cock - $500 - then he can form a partnership with fellow cocksman Omar Baradansky and make another try for that medal...

Thom Andersen's hour-long documentary adroitly combines biography, history, film theory, and philosophical reflection. Muybridge's photographic studies of animal locomotion in the 1870s were a major forerunner of movies; even more interesting are his subsequent studies of diverse people, photographed against neutral backgrounds.

Monique is dying of cancer, lying in bed in the apartment above the store her family owns. Her philandering husband carries on with life, her son remains aloof, and her daughter-in-law wonders if she is witnessing her own decline. They all struggle to express, or feel, their love for one another.

This movie was intense and funny in its analysis of a restless gifted person. She was an abortionist. The very bizarre close examination of the work she did includes a jaw dropping opening that makes it appear that the film was shot during the events as they actually happened. She is keeping her family together but then loses interest and becomes a rabble rouser for workers in a chemistry plant. She helps them keep their jobs when the threat of moving the plant to Portugal comes to light, but of course, gets her husband fired when they identify her as the agitator.
In the end she opens a stand at the plant selling sausages wrapped in union pamphlets... Very funny, even the abortion clinic segment where she converts it into a veterinary clinic after she coaxes a dog to break through the police tape for her. Great basic film-making!

Jukti, Takko Aar Gappo " was the legendary Ritwik Ghatak's last film, starring the writer/director himself as a learned man whose wife leaves him because of his insufferable alcoholism. Forced from his home, he wanders through the countryside and meets unusual folks along the way. The film, adventurous and revolutionary, is a exceptional mix of images that challenge the limits of narrative storytelling. Made two years before the director´s death, the film is also a personal and desparate last attempt to confront the separation of his beloved home country.