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According to the story he himself tells in the documentary series Hollywood, UK, Canadian filmmaker Sidney J. Furie came to England to take part in the British new wave, whose films he admired. First, he had to pay his dues with nonsense like Dr. Blood's Coffin, The Snake Woman and The Young Ones (starring pop singer Cliff Richard), but eventually, with The Leather Boys in 1964, he was able to make the kind of dynamic working-class social realism he'd been admiring from afar (Rita Tushingham's presence in the cast provides the stamp of authenticity).But During One Night (1961) shows Furie working on a small-scale independent film that has more in common with his mid-sixties work than it does with the cheesy exploitation movies he marked time on, and its date shows how quick off the mark Furie must have been: Look Back in Anger only hit cinemas in 1959, and by '61 Furie was in Britain,...

Above: Bedrich Dlouhy’s 1970 poster for Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1950).Flipping through the website of the incomparable Czech poster store Terry Posters the other day, I came across an artist whose name I hadn’t known before. I was aware of some of Bedřich Dlouhý’s posters: his split-screen design for Věra Chytilová’s Something Different was one of my favorites in Isabel Stevens’s recent piece on Chytilová’s posters in Sight & Sound, and I knew his designs for Rashomon, Red Desert, The Pink Panther and 8 1/2, but I had never put two and two together that they were by the same designer.Part of the reason I didn’t know more of his work is that most of the films Dlouhý worked on in the ten years that he was designing posters (from 1962 to 1971) were films from the Eastern Bloc that are little known here. Films from Hungary, Yugoslavia...

Although men far outnumber women in terms of producing and making their own films, the Brooklyn Girl Film Fest hopes to inspire one woman at a time to overcome that obstacle and finally get their feet wet.

Headed by filmmaker April Mosqus, the three day event took place from March 26 to 28 at the Brooklyn Fire Proof Galleries in Brooklyn. Gaining the support from other local organizations like Women Make Movies, Bam, Brooklyn Soda Works, Rooftop Films, and more, the festival’s founder stated, “It’s very rewarding to see these women form friendships and inspire each other.”

Opening night opened with the feature Cathy Coppola, written and directed by Stefanie Sparks, which sure brought in laughs. Following the event was the Shorts Block of the festival, featuring five incredibly original shorts that only proved to entertain.

Birthday Box was the first short, and dare I say, the best. Written and directed by Ashlea Patterson,...

By Howard Hughes

(The following review is of the UK release of the film on Region 2 format.)

In Roy Ward Baker’s 1960s comedy-drama Two Left Feet, Michael Crawford plays Alan Crabbe, a clumsy and unlucky-in-love 19-year-old who begins dating ‘Eileen, the Teacup Queen’, a waitress at his local cafe. She lives in Camden Town and there are rumours that she’s married, but that doesn’t seem to alter her behavior. Alan and Eileen travel into London’s ‘Floride Club’, where the Storyville Jazzmen play trad for the groovers and shakers. Eileen turns out to be a ‘right little madam’, who is really just stringing Alan along. She’s the kind of girl who only dates to get into places and then starts chatting to randoms once inside. She takes up with ruffian Ronnie, while Alan meets a nice girl, Beth Crowley. But Eileen holds a strange hold over...