101 hidden gems: the greatest films you’ve never seen

Restoration carried out by the National Museum of Singapore and the World Cinema Foundation. In association with the Konfiden Foundation and Kineforum Jakarta Arts Council. The film was restored from the original print kept at the Indonesian Cinematheque. Special thanks to the family of Usmar Ismail.

On a lazy Athenian Sunday, a young and fresh saleswoman loses her soon-to-be winning lottery ticket, only to meet its handsome new owner. Of course, she wants it back; however, what if fortune and ardent Cupid are already on her doorstep?

描述朝鲜战争后南韩妇女的地位。对争取独立，选择外出工作的女性似带有怀疑态度。
A college professor’s wife OH Sun-young discovers a new world since she started working at a boutique. She begins to enjoy wearing dresses that accentuate her features, achieve high sales profits, and dances in the arms of men other than her husband. However, the story takes a turn when she is caught in the hotel with the owner of the boutique who has been seducing her. Madame Freedom was already a famous story since the novelist JUNG Bee-suk wrote the series in The Seoul Shinmun. Despite the controversy on the moral issues between the writer and the critics, the book was published and produced as a play by the theater group Shinhyup. The film also set a new box office record of 130,000 and its success brought the boom of melodrama. Its cultural influence is proven to be powerful enough to shake the foundation of Korean film since there have been 5 sequels and remakes since the original.

Balarama promises Subhadra that he'll marry his daughter to her son. But when the Pandavas lose their kingdom to the Kauravas, Balarama breaks his promise.

Poor, hungry peasant Macario longs for just one good meal on the Day of the Dead. After his wife cooks a turkey for him, he meets three apparitions, the Devil, God, and Death. Each asks him to share his turkey, but he refuses all except Death. In return, Death gives him a bottle of water which will heal any illness. Soon, Macario is more wealthy than the village doctor, which draws the attention of the feared Inquisition.

1962 film by Luis María Delgado

After suffering a brutal defeat and being told he can no longer fight, 37-year-old, scar-ridden prizefighter Louis 'Mountain' Rivera struggles to find a new direction in life

Die Parallelstraße is one of the most mysterious pioneer films of the New German Cinema. It was produced by GBF, a production company for innovative industrial and promotional films and received awards in inter national film festivals. French critic Robert Benayoun called it "a philosophical thriller, a western of meditation which compensates for a whole year of inevitable manifestations of stupidity," Jacques Rivette put it on his list of the most important films of 1968. The DVD presents for the very first time this "unjustly forgotten masterpiece of the New German Cinema" (Martin Brady) as well as several rare shorts by Ferdinand Khittl (1924-1976) which show his talent for innovative film experiments.
One of the greatest discoveries in this sense was former Luis Trenker assistant Ferdinand Khittl’s Die Parallelstraße (1961), not by chance produced by his “Gesellschaft für bildende Filme” (“Society of educational film”). Not a third path, but a parallel street becomes the symbol of Khittl’s enterprise, a thoughtful and only occasionally winking meta-comment on metaphysics and documentary objectivity in film, sometimes extraordinarily hilarious, sometimes hardly able to get away from its deliberately starched setting. A group of young men is trying to analyse an enormous number of fragmentary film documents (shot by Khittl and his cameraman Ronald Martini during two extensive travels around the world in 1959 and 1960). The 308 “documents” – films about water and erosion, Brasilia, a volcano, rice in Asia or a meanwhile legendary Rosstäuscher (horse cheater) – are screened one after the after and intermitted by comments of the team members (who, on their part, are being commented by a supervisor). “In a Kafkaesque room five Ionescoesque people find themselves in a Sartreesque situation, trying to solve a Camuesque problem”, as back then pre-eminent critic Helmut Färber ironically described this setting.
Khittl, who in 1961 like Vesely signed the famous Oberhausen manifesto, puts the end of his film at the beginning (a device we can later find in Vlado Kristl’s works), signifying that despite its message – the team is supposedly bringing the recordings in a certain order – his film will never get a structure than could be overlooked. Another aspect touched by Khittl is the special role of different forms of media used for recordings. What today would be called a media theory of the archive in 1961 was referred to not on a theoretical but on a highly entertaining and poetic level. Subtext and meta-text run on parallel tracks. (Martina Lunzer and Barbara Wurm @ Senses of Cinema)

In this influential cult-classic animated film based on Japanese folklore, Susano is the youngest son of Izanagi and Izanami, the heavenly couple who created the Earth. Still a young boy, Susano is devastated by the passing away of his mother. Determined to find her despite the reprimands of his father, he embarks on a journey to find his brother and his sister for spiritual guidance.

In the late 19th century, a former high school teacher turned unionist tries to organize workers laboring with inhuman conditions at a textile factory.

Of Stars and Men is a 1964 animated film from the Hubley family of animators, based on the 1959 book of the same name by astronomer Harlow Shapley, who also narrates. Made in the style of a documentary, it tells of humankind's quest (in the form of a child) to find its place in the universe, through themes such as outer space, physical matter, the meaning of life and the periodic table. There are no character voices; instead, they "talk" through their actions. It has been cited as an example of an "animated documentary".

Japanese documentary from 1964 directed by Noriaki Tsuchimoto. The film focuses on the taxi drivers of Tokyo in the year before the Tokyo Olympics and the difficulties they face: construction obstructing traffic, poor working conditions, numerous accidents, and bad pay. It becomes a critique of a changing and modernizing urban Japan.

1965 film by Vijay Anand

Bakai is an old shepherd who lives in the country while his children have long grown accustomed to life in the city. When his youngest son pays him a visit, Bakai wants him to stay and help with the rigors of rural living.

2005年索菲亚国际电影节回顾单元评选的“保加利亚影史十部最伟大影片”之一。
A large balloon suddenly appears above villages and fields and grabs the attention of the peasants. They start liking the sudden guest from nowhere for the beauty of the free existence. A policeman comes and the dreams of freedom vanish.
A barrage balloon appears unexpectedly over a Bulgarian village. The startled villagers decide to knock it down with a fusillade. But the balloon flies off to the mountains. The villagers, armed to their teeth, set off after it. But they are not alone in this undertaking. There is another armed group that chases the 'wonder'. An argument whose property the balloon is breaks out between the two groups. It turns out that the balloon flew from Romania over the Danube River. In the turmoil following the argument, the balloon is destroyed. The police arrive and punish the villagers for meddling in other people's affairs.

Six and Twelve is one of a series of short films and documentaries produced under the auspices of the Centre Cinématographique Marocain in the years after Moroccan independence. While most of these were utilitarian in nature, Bouanani, Tazi, and Rechiche took a different route with this film, creating a modernist “city symphony” film that documented six hours in the life of the city of Casablanca. Combining a hard bebop soundtrack with stunning black and white cinematography and a radical editing style, the film stands as a document to the energetic experimentation of this period of Moroccan art and cinema.

Born a fully grown black man in a village in the Brazilian jungle, Macunaíma later magically transforms into a white man before making an adventure-filled trip to the city of São Paulo. Once there, he becomes something of a dandy, falling in love with Ci, a revolutionary who dies in an accidental bombing. After robbing a ruthless industrialist, Macunaima returns to his village where he finds his newly acquired knowledge and possessions of little use.

Savanyú and his friend work at a plant. After the monotonous shifts they engage in the pleasures of the afternoon and the night, i.e. parties and concerts. Savanyú dates Juli, they are already engaged. The young men live as sub-tenants, the young women in workers' hostels. None of these places are suited for spending time together. They are in need of an apartment. Out of the ruinous apartment which they lay siege on, however, they are sent away by the otherwise friendly policeman. At a concert held in the Park of Youth, Juli gets to know Géza. They flirt, then go to the country with a pop-group. Savanyú and his friends follow them. A minor fight cools the atmosphere.

Rikiya Shoda is an engineer working for the Atomic Agency in Japan. One day, his wife Nanako returns home with a lost teenager called Ayu. A man, pretending to be the father, comes to get her back; Ayu keeps telling him that Rikiya and Nanako are her parents. Through this disruption, Rikiya suddenly starts remembering his youth as a revolutionary.

A montage of images of film making is followed by a silent western story.