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A selection of short features in which our writers shine the spotlight on individual films

2012

#Under the Bridges Lost and found

Though shot in Germany in 1944, Helmut Käutner’s Under the Bridges defiantly avoids any reference to Nazism. By Philip Kemp

#Group Portrait with Lady
Lost and found

Like so many films by the great Yugoslavian director Aleksandar Petrovic, Group Portrait with Lady is off the radar. By Vlastimir Sudar

#Image lib: John Berger’s Ways of Seeing Out of the archive

Forty years ago John Berger’s BBC2 series challenged us to be wiser consumers of fine art. As BFI Southbank marks the anniversary, Jonathan Conlin asks if the series speaks to us today

#The revolution of inaction:
This Is Not a Film

Made under house arrest, Jafar Panahi’s In Film Nist (This Is Not a Film) breaks all the rules, says Amy Taubin (from our July 2011 Cannes issue)

#Gervaise Lost and found

Mark Le Fanu pays tribute to 1956’s Gervaise, a great example of Zola on film – and of the work of its neglected director, René Clément

#Manuel Mur Oti Lost and found

Spain’s Manuel Mur Oti had huge success under Franco. Since the fall of the regime he’s been written out of history. By Mar Diestro-Dópido

#The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short
Lost and found

Tony Rayns welcomes the revival of a forgotten Belgian classic from the 1960s

#Spring Night, Summer Night
Lost and found

J.L. Anderson’s backwoods Appalachian love story is a forgotten classic of 1960s indie neorealism, says Ross Lipman

2011

#Odds Against Tomorrow Lost and found

Less interested in its heist than its characters’ psyches, Odds Against Tomorrow was a favourite of Jean-Pierre Melville – and Paul Tickell

#Worlds of sound: KanZeOn and We Don’t Care About Music Anyway…

Frances Morgan explores two complementary new documentaries about Japanese musicians who foray off the beaten track

#The Mist in the Palm Trees
Lost and found

The Mist in the Palm Trees creates a haunting found-footage montage of 20th-century history, says Michael Atkinson

#See You in the Morning Lost and found

Alan J. Pakula is best known for 1970s paranoia, but See You in the Morning is a more personal later work, says Peter Tonguette

#Station Six Sahara Lost and found

David Thompson remembers his youthful discovery of Station Six Sahara and the unfulfilled promise of its director, Seth Holt

#Across the Bridge Lost and found

A model of adaptation, Across the Bridge cleverly expands Graham Greene’s original short story, says the screenwriter Paul Mayersberg

#Allonsanfàn Lost and found

Once arthouse darlings, the Taviani brothers are now shunned by UK distributors. Michael Brooke resurrects their 1974 film Allonsanfàn, a picaresque yarn about ineffectual insurrectionists in post-Napoleonic Italy

#Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion Lost and found

Mike Hodges investigates a dark tale of murder, corruption, kinky sex and game-playing in Elio Petri’s 1970 box of tricks

#Corridor of Mirrors

Kim Newman reviews a familiar-yet-weird rococo makeover romance – the directorial debut of future James Bond director Terence Young

#Cohen and Tate Lost and found

A few years before Tarantino, writer-director Eric Red was playing bloodstained genre games in his 1988 debut Cohen and Tate. But where is he now, asks John Wrathall

#The Kondratiuk brothers

Michael Brooke dips his toes in the more or less gently absurdist worlds of Polish comic favourites Andrzej and Janusz Kondratiuk

#The Dark House: “A cinema of moral disgust”

Michael Brooke inspects an eloquently jaundiced anti-thriller set in the fag end of Poland’s Communist era

#The Red House Lost and found

Filmmaker Charles Burnett remembers the thrills, disturbances and subdued rage of The Red House

#The Watcher in the Woods
Lost and found

What’s the missing link between Tron, The Legend of Hell House and a big blue alien? For Joseph Stannard, it’s Disney’s cult 1980 fantasy The Watcher in the Woods

#The Green Hornet sells out!

Kim Newman tracks the masked superhero’s journey from 1930s radio days to 21st-century big-screen vacuity

#Little Murders Lost and found

Jim O’Rourke lauds Alan Arkin’s 1971 directorial debut, a quintessentially New York story of existential angst

#The Liberation of L.B. Jones
Lost and found

With his controversial and racially charged final film The Liberation of L.B. Jones, William Wyler confounded critics and audiences alike, says Neil Sinyard

2010

Arthur Penn’s Penn & Teller Get Killed
Lost and found

Barely seen in this country, Penn & Teller Get Killed more than earns its place in the oeuvre of its director, the late Arthur Penn, says Brad Stevens

O Bobo
Lost and found

Director Eugène Green sings the praises of Portugal’s José Alvaro Morais and his 1987 masterpiece O Bobo

The Water Magician
From the archive

Alexander Jacoby hails a rare screening of Mizoguchi’s 1933 silent – his fourth surviving film, and first signature work – accompanied by an equally rare benshi narration

Mix-Up
Lost and found

Françoise Romand’s inventive Mix-Up, about the families of two daughters switched at birth 21 years earlier, deserves a wider audience, says Jonathan Rosenbaum

Mothra
Lost and found

Foot-high singers and a giant godlike moth made pioneering Japanese monster movie Mothra too wonderfully weird for America, says Kim Newman

The Ballad of Tam Lin
Lost and found

Sam Dunn remembers how his mind was expanded by the daring of Roddy McDowall’s little-seen directorial work

Angelo My Love
Lost and found

In the first of a new regular column about overlooked gems, David Jenkins makes the case for Robert Duvall’s directorial debut

The Time That Remains

Elia Suleiman’s latest film is a deadpan portrait of half a century of Palestinian family life under the monotony of occupation. Adania Shibli examines its subtle simplicity.

Wild Grass

Adrian Martin hails nouvelle vague veteran Alain Resnais’ frisky comedy of “desire to desire”


Murder in Reverse?
From the archive

William Hartnell’s lead performance still gives Montgomery Tully’s 1945 British noir Murder in Reverse? a tough authenticity, says Cathi Unsworth

Raging Sun, Raging SkyRaging Sun, Raging Sky

Armond White finds spiritual tumescence in the finale of Julian Hernandez’s trilogy of mythical sex epics

ContentContent

Mark Fisher is mesmerised by Chris Petit’s documentary, an “informal coda” to his 1979 film Radio On

#Time regained: Vittorio De Seta

De Seta’s stunning 1950s documentaries preserve everyday moments that we never even knew we’d lost, says Kent Jones

Family photosMnemosyne

Sukhdev Sandhu revels in John Akomfrah’s cine-essays on migration and memory

2009

A curious faithThe Posters Came from the Walls

Jeremy Deller and Nick Abraham’s Depeche Mode-fan documentary, and the strange riddles of modern pop

For Cultural Purposes OnlyFor Cultural Purposes Only

Remembering, redrawing the lost Palestinian Film Archive

Sonic youthsAll Tomorrow’s Parties

All Tomorrow’s Parties rewrote the script for music festivals. Sam Davies wonders if Jonathan Caouette’s fan-filmed, end-of-a-decade collage can remodel the concert documentary

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Last Updated: 01 Jun 2012