London Film Festival 2008

Recently restored and rediscovered classics from archives around the world.

View other London Film Festival Films by strand: Cinema Europa, Experimenta, Film On The Square, French Revolutions, Galas And Special Screenings, New British Cinema, Short Cuts And Animation, World Cinema

Touki Bouki Touki Bouki
Touki Bouki and Dry Summer
Cover Girl (Country: USA; Year: 1944; Director: Charles Vidor; Writer: Erwin S. Gelsey, Marion Parsonnet, Paul Gangelin, Virginia Van Upp, John H. Kafka; Stars: Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Lee Bowman, Phil Silvers, Leslie Brooks, Eve Arden, Otto Kruger, Jess Barker, Anita Colby, Curt Bois)
Gorgeous vintage Technicolor musical starring Rita Hayworth in her prime as a Broadway dancer loved by Gene Kelly in his first big song-and-dance success.
Dry Summer (Susuz yaz) (Country: Turkey; Year: 1964; Director: Metin Erksan, David E. Durston; Writer: Necati Cumali, Metin Erksan, Kemal Inci, Ismet Soydan; Stars: Ulvi Dogan, Erol Tas, Hülya Koçyigit, Alaettin Altiok, Hakki Haktan, Zeki Tüney, Yavuz Yalinkiliç)
Beautifully restored revival of a powerful melodrama, neglected since 1964, about a brutal and avaricious farmer stealing precious water in arid rural Turkey.
The Exiles (Country: USA; Year: 1961; Director: Kent MacKenzie; Writer: Kent MacKenzie; Stars: Mary Donahue, Homer Nish, Clydean Parker, Tom Reynolds, Rico Rodriguez, Clifford Ray Sam, Eddie Sunrise, Yvonne Williams)
Kent Mackenzie's riveting, innovative dramadoc, unseen since 1961, about displaced urban Native Americans leading despondent lives in LA's Bunker Hill district.
The Last Wagon (Country: USA; Year: 1956; Director: Delmer Daves; Writer: James Edward Grant, Delmer Daves, Gwen Bagni, Gwen Bagni; Stars: Richard Widmark, Felicia Farr, Susan Kohner, Tommy Rettig, Stephanie Griffin, Ray Stricklyn, Nick Adams, Carl Benton Reid, Douglas Kennedy, George Mathews)
A tribute to the late Richard Widmark in one of his best roles as an outlaw who saves a wagon train from marauding Indians - beautifully shot in “Scope and Technicolor.
The Living Corpse (Zhivoy trup) (Country: Germany, Soviet Union; Year: 1928; Director: Fyodor Otsep; Writer: Boris Gusman, Anatoli Marienhof, Fyodor Otsep, Leo Tolstoy; Stars: Vsevolod Pudovkin, Maria Jacobini, Viola Garden, Julia Serda, Nato Vachnadze, Gustav Diessl, Vera Maretskaya, Dmitri Vvedensky, Vladimir Uralsky, Boris Barnet)
Late-silent Soviet-German masterpiece, with a superb original score recorded live, adapted from Tolstoy's classic about a state prosecutor who stages his own murder.
A Man To Remember (Country: USA; Year: 1938; Director: Garson Kanin; Writer: Dalton Trumbo, Katharine Havilland-Taylor; Stars: Anne Shirley, Edward Ellis, Lee Bowman, William Henry, John Wray, Granville Bates, Harlan Briggs, Frank M. Thomas, Dickie Jones, Carole Leete)
Welcome re-discovery of an RKO B-movie gem from 1938 by Garson Kanin, about a liberal smalltown doctor who puts his patients before his pocketbook.
The Miracle Woman (Country: USA; Year: 1931; Director: Frank Capra; Writer: Dorothy Howell, John Meehan, Robert Riskin, Jo Swerling; Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, David Manners, Sam Hardy, Beryl Mercer, Russell Hopton, Charles Middleton, Eddie Boland, Thelma Hill, Robert Bolder, Mary Bracken)
Barbara Stanwyck in her first big role as the ambiguous heroine of Capra's cynical study of a crowd-stirring evangelist preacher, based on the real-life Aimee Semple McPherson.
A Modern Musketeer (Country: USA; Year: 1917; Director: Allan Dwan; Writer: Allan Dwan, F.R. Lyle Jr.; Stars: Douglas Fairbanks, Marjorie Daw, Kathleen Kirkham, Frank Campeau, Eugene Ormonde, Tully Marshall, Edythe Chapman, Jim Mason, Zasu Pitts, Charles Stevens)
Frantic fun, with hyper-acrobatic Douglas Fairbanks enjoying himself as a latter-day D'Artagnan who performs athletic acts of chivalry from Kansas to the Grand Canyon.
Shopworn (Country: USA; Year: 1932; Director: Nick Grinde; Writer: Sarah Y. Mason, Jo Swerling, Robert Riskin; Stars: Barbara Stanwyck, Regis Toomey, Zasu Pitts, Lucien Littlefield, Clara Blandick, Robert Alden, Oscar Apfel, Maude Turner Gordon, Albert Conti, James Durkin)
Depression-era morality tale starring Barbara Stanwyck.
The Soul of Youth (Country: USA; Year: 1920; Director: William Desmond Taylor; Writer: Julia Crawford Ivers, Julia Crawford Ivers; Stars: Lewis Sargent, Ernest Butterworth, Clyde Fillmore, Grace Morse, Lila Lee, Elizabeth Janes, William Collier Jr., Claude Payton, Betty Schade, Fred Huntley)
Compassionate, heart-warming study by talented W. Desmond Taylor of juvenile justice in America in 1920, extolling the humanitarian methods of real-life Judge Ben B. Lindsey.
The Trespasser (Country: USA; Year: 1929; Director: Edmund Goulding; Writer: Edmund Goulding; Stars: Gloria Swanson, Robert Ames, Purnell Pratt, Henry B. Walthall, Wally Albright, William Holden, Blanche Friderici, Kay Hammond, Mary Forbes, Marcelle Corday)
Gloria Swanson's successful first talkie, Oscar-nominated as a stenographer who endures scandal and sacrifice when abandoned with child by her rich husband and his disapproving family.
Touki Bouki (Country: Senegal; Year: 1973; Director: Djibril Diop Mambéty; Writer: Djibril Diop Mambéty; Stars: Magaye Niang, Mareme Niang, Aminata Fall, Ousseynou Diop, Christoph Colomb, Ndou Labia, Mustapha Ture)
Mory, a cowherd, and Anta, a university student, try to make money in order to go to Paris and leave their boring past behind.
Virtue (Country: USA; Year: 1932; Director: Edward Buzzell; Writer: Ethel Hill, Robert Riskin; Stars: Carole Lombard, Pat O'Brien, Mayo Methot, Jack La Rue, Ward Bond, Willard Robertson, Shirley Grey, Edward LeSaint, Lew Kelly, Fred Santley)
Cracking, fast-paced pre-Code melodrama with Carole Lombard
Winstanley (Country: UK; Year: 1975; Director: Kevin Brownlow; Writer: Kevin Brownlow, David Caute, Andrew Mollo; Stars: Miles Halliwell, Jerome Willis, Terry Higgins, Phil Oliver, David Bramley, Alison Halliwell, Dawson France, Bill Petch, Barry Shaw, Sid Rawle)
Meticulously researched and sparely beautiful account of the creation and destruction of England’s first commune.
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