The wonderful people over at Second Run DVD have released another hidden gem: 'Daisies' (Sedmikrasky), originally made in 1966 by Vera Chytilova, who has since been called 'the first lady of Czech cinema' and whose efforts also earnt her a screening at the First International Festival of Women's Films in New York in 1972. find out more...

Told partially in flashback we learn of a married Japanese man, Kengo, who is sent to manage forests in Indochina, during WW2. Here he meets a young typist, Yukiko, who falls hopelessly in love with him. Despite his promises when he returns to Tokyo it is to his wife that does so and he continues having heartless affairs, while Yukiko is forced to become the mistress of a GI and then a rich businessman, anything to survive. find out more...

Elizabeth is a highly renowned actress who has lost her ability to speak, Alma is the nurse responsible for helping her through her psychological, rather than physica,l ailment. As the relationship between the two women develops Alma seamlessly becomes Elizabeth's voice, the start of a metamorphosis that sees the very essence of who they both are beginning to blend. Bergman's remarkable voyage of the psyche is deemed one of his very best, visually stunning and hypnotically intense. find out more...

It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...

Petra Von Kant has been left deeply scarred by her recent divorce and, though a successful fashion designer, she has moved in with her assistant, a woman she dominates without pity or compassion. Enter Karin, a pretty young woman that Petra becomes obsessed by, but when their fledgling relationship collapses Petra dives into an oblivion of embittered neurosis. One of Fassbinder's most controversial films, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant is a striking piece of new wave cinema. find out more...

"Josephine Decker has created a new style of thriller that employs allegory, incorporates touches of David Lynch as well as Magritte -esque imagery. Decker's setting of a remote farm feels like a metaphor for what turns out to be hell. The raw and emotional (and yes, sometimes funny) dialog tells a story that can seem familiar at points but really is meant to keep you guessing and off balance. I really enjoyed how the undertones of this film came to life through her very deft contrast of the find out more...

Nana is a provincial girl working as a shop assistant who, after separating from her husband, decides to embark on a career as an actress. She watches the silent classic 'The Passion Of Joan Of Arc' and, with tears streaming down her face, abandons her ambition and instead drifts into a life of prostitution. The film is presented in twelve episodes which navigate us through Nana's sad life climaxing with a shocking and poignant finale. Jean-Luc Godard expertly directs his then wife, Anna Karina, find out more...

'Waiting Women' is an episodic work composed of three segments, the third of which represents Bergman's first foray into comedy, later honed in the erotic farce 'A Lesson In Love'. Three sisters-in-law talk about their marital problems while waiting for their husbands at a summer cottage. The first story concerns Rakel and an adulterous episode that changed her marriage forever. In the next, Marta tells of her difficult relationship with an artist, her future husband, in Paris. In the acclaimed find out more...

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse's finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko, played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine, who works as a bar hostess in Tokyo's very modern post-war Ginza district. Sly, resourceful, but trapped, Keiko comes to embody the conflicts and struggles of a woman trying to establish her independence in a male-dominated society. A profoundly moving masterpiece. find out more...