The Vermilion Pencil

Caravan of Death

November 1920 •German

Caravan of Death (German: Die Todeskarawane) is a 1920 silent German film, it was an adaptation of the latter half of the Karl May novel From Baghdad to Stamboul, and is now considered to be lost. The film featured Bela Lugosi playing an Arab Sheik pitted against European travellers in an adventure story set in the Sahara. It was the second of three films released by Ustad based on desert adventure novels by Karl May. Although Karl May’s widow praised the film, critics were unimpressed and it was a commercial failure.

Sklaven fremden Willens

January 1920 •German

When doctors fail to cure the young and beautiful Claire Raven, who for inexplicable reasons seems to have fallen under a spell, Professor Mors, an expert in the field of hypnosis, is called in to help.

Víťazný pád

October 1973 •Slovak

Zenovo vedomie

November 1976 •Slovak

Television adaptation of the novel by the Italian writer Italo Svevo. His hero is Zeno Cosini, the son of a merchant in Trieste. He is a type of useless person, defeated by life and incapable of action. The ironic insight with which the author draws a picture of the townspeople of Trieste at the turn of the century sounds like an accurate diagnosis of a social class that is doomed with its entire lifestyle and morality.

Varg Veum - Yours Until Death

March 2008 •Norwegian

Private eye Varg Veum is on a routine mission searching for his client Jonas Andresen's stolen car. The car is found having been used in a brutal robbery and not long after that the client himself turns up dead.

Angels of the Universe

January 2000 •Icelandic

The story of an Icelandic man and his slow descent into madness. Along his journey he meets Dagný, the initial cause of his breakdown. Other people he meets in the asylum have been committed for various reasons, such as signing cheques for Adolf Hitler and, believing themselves to be writing songs for the Beatles and telepathically transmitting to the band.

The Eiger Sanction

May 1975 •English

A classical art professor and collector, who doubles as a professional assassin, is coerced out of retirement to avenge the murder of an old friend.

O moravské zemi

February 1978 •Czech

La falena

March 1916 •Italian

Thea is a sculptor who is diagnosed with tuberculosis before she marries Filippo. After abandoning him, her health begins to decline. She organizes a final party, inviting along her estranged husband. The film is considered to be lost, with only a fragment surviving in the film archive of the Cineteca Italiana.

Moonshine Molly

August 1914 •English

Molly Boone's father has been sent to prison for twenty years for alleged complicity in the killing of a revenue officer, Uriah Hudson, whom she secretly suspects of having a hand in sending her father to prison, is her persistent suitor.

The Second Mrs. Roebuck

August 1914 •English

Mabel Mack's mother is deserted by her father and the mother dies. All that Mabel retains of her family history is a group photograph of her father, mother and herself, in a locket which she always wears.

The Road

November 2009 •English

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind and water. It is cold enough to crack stones, and, when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the warmer south, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there.

Yield to the Night

June 1956 •English

Locked in her cell, a murderer reflects on the events that have led her to death row.

The Handmaid's Tale

February 1990 •English

In a dystopian, polluted right-wing religious tyranny, a young woman is put in sexual slavery on account of her now rare fertility.

The Martyrs

June 1965 •Korean

Out of fourteen ministers taken away by the communist troop, only two come back alive. The mystery behind their survival is at the issue here. Told through one of the survivor's testimony, depicts images of men troubled between the war and the religion. Although laden with anti-Communist notions from the 60's military regime.

Virginity

November 1937 •Czech

The doomed love of a city girl caught in the vise of poverty is detailed in Vavra’s fluid, romantic work, one of the most elegant creations of the Czech Modernist era... The film lingers over its characters’ habitats and haunts, finding psychological truths in what each owns or desires, and countering every Hollywood-ready scene of gleaming restaurants and dazzling penthouses with realist moments of employment lines and crammed flats. Vavra’s classical camerawork and aura of romantic defeatism give Virginity a force comparable to the master of this genre, Hollywood’s Frank Borzage. (BAM/PFA)

The Great Santini

October 1979 •English

As he approaches manhood, Ben Meechum struggles to win the approval of his demanding alpha male father, an aggressively competitive, but frustrated marine pilot.

Blood and Bones

November 2004 •Japanese

In 1923, teenager Kim Shun-Pei moves from Cheju Island, in South Korea, to Osaka, in Japan. Along the years, he becomes a cruel, greedy and violent man and builds a factory of kamaboko, processed seafood products, in his poor Korean-Japanese community exploiting his employees.

The Flight of the Duchess

March 1916 •English

Based on Browning's poem, a widowed Duchess raises a son that decides to abandon modern ways and act like it's the medieval days. When he wishes to marry, a young woman is found and plays along believing it's all a joke.

Královská hra

February 1981 •Czech

Television play