Documentary

Revolutions, natural disasters, toxic fall-out, plane crashes – these are all part of the running picture of news against which America’s leading novelist, Don DeLillo , sets his fiction. In this film, as in his novels, DeLillo pinpoints the deep unease beneath the surface of our lives. The film begins with the assassination of President Kennedy and the politics of violence it brought to television screens for the first time. It goes on to look at the way the media has continued to feed its audience images of disaster and terror: massacres in great public squares, disasters in football stadiums, and dramatic acts of terrorism. DeLillo explores the relationship between words and images, and between gunmen and the novelist.Read More »

With her radically anarchic Czechoslovak New Wave landmark DAISIES, director Věra Chytilová set out, in her own words, “to make a film that is aesthetically pleasing and interesting, yet [which] is an image of destruction,” one in which “the idea of ‘destruction’ is present in everything, in every move of the camera.” In this edition of Observations on Film Art, Professor Kristin Thompson breaks down the complex visual motifs—in particular the use of plant and food imagery—that Chytilová employs to advance this aesthetic of annihilation, ultimately creating a film that threatens to literally self-destruct.Read More »

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In a confined section of a psychiatric ward in Northeast China, patients of schizophrenia, mania, depression, compulsive sexual behaviour and alcohol addition receive the mandatory treatment. As soon as their heads are cleared, they try to break free but always fail. Under the control of drugs and unquestionable discipline, they begin to reflect on their souls, will, desire and thoughts.Read More »

On the stage of Paris’s legendary Opéra Bastille, 30 dancers from non-traditional genres reprise and remix Jean-Philippe Rameau’s baroque masterpiece Les Indes galantes, offering a dynamic take on the landmark opera.Read More »

This documentary explores the life and work of the Austrian novelist, playwright and political activist, Peter Handke. The director managed to meet and stay with Handke in his house in the country side near Paris. Director Corinna Belz also did a portrait on the artist Gerhard Richter.Read More »

Following the life of artist Nan Goldin and the downfall of the Sackler family, the pharmaceutical dynasty who was greatly responsible for the opioid epidemic’s unfathomable death toll.Read More »

A cinematic homage to Peter Rice, one of the most distinguished engineers of the late 20th century. Tracing Rice’s extraordinary life and career, from his Dundalk childhood to his work on the Sydney Opera House,The Pompidou Centre and the Lloyd’s Building, to his untimely death in 1992, Marcus Robinson uses stunning time-lapse photography and revealing interviews to tell the story of a genius who stood in the shadow of architectural icons. Until now.Read More »

(auto-translated: ) An attempt to present, played by an actor, the mental universe of a schizophrenic, i.e. a patient whose inner life is supposed to be unable to distinguish between the dream world and reality. Description of the particularly rich oniric production of the subject (associative images, visual reminiscences, feelings of influence, strangeness) and its dramatic outcome.Read More »

The mesmerizing, utterly unclassifiable science films of Jean Painlevé (1902-89) must be seen to be believed: delightful, surrealist-influenced dream works that are also serious science. The French filmmaker-scientist-inventor had a decades-spanning career in which he created hundreds of short films on subjects ranging from astronomy to pigeons to, most famously, such marine-life marvels as the sea horse and the sea urchin. This definitive three-disc Criterion collection brings together the best of these, and includes more than two hours of interviews with the filmmaker, drawn from the eight-part French television series Jean Painlevé Through His Films, directed by Denis Derrien and Hélène Hazera. Also included is The Sounds of Science, an original score by Yo La Tengo to Jean Painlevé’s films, plus an interview with the band.Read More »