Documentary

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Burroughs: The Movie explores the life and times of controversial Naked Lunch author William S. Burroughs, with an intimacy never before seen and never repeated. The film charts the development of Burroughs’ unique literary style and his wildly unconventional life, including his travels from the American Midwest to North Africa and several personal tragedies. Burroughs: The Movie is the first and only feature length documentary to be made with and about Burroughs. The film was directed by the late Howard Brookner. It was begun in 1978 as Brookner’s senior thesis at NYU film school and then expanded into a feature which was completed 5 years later in 1983. Sound was recorded by Jim Jarmusch and the film was shot by Tom DiCillo, fellow NYU classmates and both very close friends of Brookner’s.Read More »

Between Dorothy Lange and Walker Evans, a realistic and sensitive snapshot of the 1965 rural world in the South of West Germany.Read More »

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143 RUE DU DESERT is a portrait of Malika, an elderly woman who runs a rest-stop café on the side of National 1, Algeria’s main highway. Through the various patrons who stop for eggs, coffee or tea, we become intimately acquainted with this eccentric woman, whose opinions on a variety of subject matters entertain, enlighten, and baffle in equal measure. Most of the customers know her so well that we suspect they perhaps stop not for the tea, but for her company. The film almost never leaves the inside of her small café, which serves also as her home. However, with every new shot, Ferhani manages to reveal a new fragment of this minuscule space, which keeps the film surprisingly dynamic. Ferhani does not hold sway over Malika’s representation, which is one of the most satisfying elements of the film. Malika seems aware of her character’s cinematic construction, and even dares to contradict statements about her life from one moment to the next, in a scene that is as performative as any fiction. Even though the film provides us with real-time access to this woman’s world, she retains a sense of privacy, which is the main source of the film’s mystery. (Nico Pereda)Read More »

In 1946, shortly after the atomic bombings, an American army team shot a documentary about ‘defeated Japan’. Reel 11004 concerning Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be classified top secret for 36 years. Mirabelle Fréville has found it and edited it to denounce the first censorship in nuclear history.Read More »

Introduction
The Spectre of Hope is based on the latest work of photographer Sebastiao Salgado. Salgado spent 6 years traveling to over 40 countries, taking pictures of globalization and its consequences – most notably, the mass migrations of populations around the world. In the film, Salgado presents his remarkable photographs in conversation with John Berger.Read More »

Short films by Montxo Armendáriz (b. 1949)
LA DANZA DE LO GRACIOSO aka FUNNY DANCE (1979), 12 min. IMDb page

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Monologue of a clown in front of a camera. Constant interruptions, which at first he accepts coily, prevent him from finishing his tale. The director interrupts him to insert some images representing a cliched reflection on the passage of time; the cameraman leaves him out of the shot to include bucolic Basque landscapes, and the producer interrupts him a third time.Read More »

Housemaids are an integral part of the household in Brazil, and participate in the day-to-day life of the family. The employment of housemaids is almost obligatory among the middle and upper classes of the country. The vast majority of these housemaids are black women, who face high levels of inequality based on their gender, race and social class. Their role in the household raises important questions about public and private space, endurance and choice, and labor and family life.Read More »

In the early ‘70s, in Argentina, a group of homosexuals decided to confront the status quo. With testimonies from its survivors as its denouncement source, Sex and Revolution brings back the voices of those who thought in order to be recognized as political actors in a society that wasn’t prepared for them.Read More »

Synopsis
A film starting from naught. With no prior research, no characters, no sites, nor specific themes, a film team arrive to the hinterland of Paraíba state in northeastern Brazil in search of people with stories to tell. In the village of São João do Rio do Peixe they come to Sítio Araçás, a rural community of 86 families, mostly relatives. With a girl from Araçás as mediator, the residents, in their majority, elderly, tell their life story, marked by popular catholicism, by a hierarchy, by a sense of family and honor – in a world fast disappearing.Read More »