Michael Haneke, German born modern auteur, best known for his more recent works that have pleased art house crowds the world around. Funny Games and Hidden pushed Haneke’s work to the centre stream of art house and world cinema. His other works around this time, like Code Unknown and Time of the Wolf may have fallen into further obscurity, and his shot for shot remake Funny Games U.S. was arguably pointless.

An examination of Michael Haneke's trilogy from the late 1980's and early 1990's. Three films which tackle social ills within modern Europe, The Seventh Continent (1989), Benny's Video (1992) and 71 Fragments of the Chronology of Chance (1994).

Pace and length. They’re two very important elements in film production. The runtime of a film and a films pace can make or break a feature film in terms of commercial concerns. For Hollywood, the variance in pace and length is limited to a very narrow set of parameters and restrictions, the shorter in length and the faster in pace the better.

Bela Tarr's seven and a half hour feature film. A beautiful, difficult, infuriating, disturbing exploration of the death of communism through the microcosm of a small Hungarian village.

Julio Medem’s 2001 film Sex and Lucia is closely akin to its 1998 precursor Lovers of the Artic Circle. The Spanish director has created here two films with similar plots surrounding separated lovers who are seemly connected by forces beyond human perception. The basic notion is that love transcends time and space and forms an inseparable bond which is stronger than any of the commonly perceived physical forces of our earthly existence.

Left Field Cinema examines Julio Medem's 1998 feature film Lovers of the Arctic Circle, with special attention also paid to his inferior 2001 follow-up Sex and Lucia.

The Director: On-the-run film maker, with more than a touch of insanity, Herzog has made so much from so little over the years. His famously combustible relationship with actor Klaus Kinski lead to the production of two of the greatest films ever made, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, and Fitzcarraldo. The relationship is so interesting that Herzog managed to make an excellent and compelling documentary about the very subject with 1999’s My Best Fiend.

An examination of Werner Herzog's 1974 obscurity and a look back at the career of the director.

In 1982 Ryszard Bugajski co-wrote and directed Interrogation. At the time of the production he may well have foreseen its controversy, and the soviet authorities swift banning of the film. Unlike many other politically minded film makers on the east side of the iron curtain, Bugajski never attempted any kind of subtle dig at the system, or to mask the films message through the veil of metaphor;

The first episode in the Left Field Cinema Contemporary Obscurity series. This week is a review of the Polish film Interrogation.