Adventure

Criterion Synopsis
Legendary French star Gérard Philipe swashbuckled his way into film history as the peasant soldier Fanfan in Christian-Jaque’s devil-may-care romantic action-comedy. In eighteenth-century France, Fanfan joins King Louis XV’s army to avoid a forced marriage to a local lass and gets himself into close scrapes and tight squeezes with Gina Lollobrigida’s impostor fortune-teller, Adeline, on his way to fighting in the Seven Years’ War. Filled to the brim with dazzling stunts and randy innuendo, Fanfan la Tulipe, which won the best director prize at Cannes and was a smash hit upon its initial release, remains one of France’s all-time most beloved films.Read More »

Golgotha is noteworthy because it is the very first sound-picture ever made about Jesust. On top of that, it is thoroughly well done and engrossing. It starred a cast of hundreds—perhaps the biggest ever assembled for a film at the time. Like Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 film King of Kings, Duvivier gives his film a glossy, Hollywood look featuring terrific sets and (at the time) epic camera shots, but unlike many Hollywood incarnations of Jesus’ life, the story is decidedly intimate, focusing on characters who speak quietly in closed rooms rather than over-expressive actors who wear their Shakespearian training (or lack thereof) on their sleeves.Read More »

“Banksy’s work now reportedly changes hands for millions.
But he puts up his street art for free. Have you ever wondered
what would happen if you got your hands on one of these?
Does it mean you’ve found a winning lottery ticket or just
scraped some worthless crap off a wall?

Going up against the Art Establishment, Critics, Auction Houses,
Gallery Owners and Authentication Boards in a quest for the
elusive meal ticket, two filmmakers unwittingly gatecrash the
murky and protective world of Banksy.Read More »

Synopsis:
Tomu Uchida’s A Bloody Spear at Mt. Fuji is the story of an unassuming samurai who is more interested in a person’s actions than his social standing. In spite of the rigid class divide that exists between himself and his servants he tends to treat them as his equals even when they themselves feel that they are inferior to him. The film features remarkable subplots that add scope and depth to the social criticism offered by the main plot. Among these is the story of a male orphan who idolizes the samurai’s spear bearer and a young woman who is sold into prostitution because her family is too poor to support her.Read More »

In the nineteenth century, a French adventurer sets off to establish a kingdom in the inhospitable South of Chile, uniting the feared Mapuche under him. The response of the Chilean army is devastating. Rey is both an intricately designed adventure film as well as powerful textural experiment.

We’re excited to present, in synch with its cinema release, this phantasmagorical gem of a film. An unconventional and kaleidoscopic biopic that plays with history, myth and memory attesting to the endless possibilities of cinema. Strikingly beautiful, gloriously decadent and delectably avant-garde.Read More »

Quote:
The extraordinary, heart-breaking official record of Captain Scott’s legendary final expedition to the South Pole, has been fully restored by the BFI National Archive, with a new musical score by Simon Fisher Turner.

Captain Robert Scott described Herbert Ponting as ‘an artist in love with his work’, and, after the Antarctic expedition’s tragic outcome, Ponting devoted the rest of his life to ensuring that the grandeur of the Antarctic and of the expedition’s heroism would not be forgotten. The images that he captured have fired imaginations ever since.Read More »

In the bleak days of 1983, the Crimson Permanent Assurance, an accountancy staffed by elderly workers much like a slave ship, has been taken over by efficiency-minded corporate types. When they sack an employee, there’s an uprising, and the building is unleashed from its moorings to sail across the (dry) ocean and take on the financial centers of the world, starting with an all-out attack on the large skyscraper housing The Very Big Corporation of America, complete with filing-cabinet cannons, ceiling-fan broadswords, and paper-spindle short-swords.Read More »

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P. P. Rider is a Japanese film dealing with three teenagers who set out to recover a kidnapped schoolmate. This capsule description, while accurate enough, makes the film sound rather like something Disney used to make to fill a couple spare weeks on his TV show. P. P. Rider isn’t that at all. It certainly wasn’t made for children.
Written by Leonard Schrader and his wife Chieko Schrader.Read More »

Quote:
This spellbinding documentary follows Aisholpan, a 13-year-old nomadic Mongolian girl who is fighting to become the first female eagle hunter in twelve generations of her Kazakh family. Through breathtaking aerial cinematography and intimate verite footage, the film captures her personal journey while also addressing universal themes like female empowerment, the natural world, coming of age and the onset of modernity.Read More »