An unpredictable documentary from a fascinating storyteller, Agnès Varda’s next film sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls “cine-writing,” traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing.Read More »
Is being hit by lightning a random natural occurrence or a predestined event? Accidents, chance, fate and the elusive quest to make sense out of tragedy underpin director Jennifer Baichwal’s captivating new work, an elegant cinematic meditation on the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning. To explore these profound questions, she sought out riveting personal stories around the world–from a former CIA assassin and a French storm chaser, to writer Paul Auster and improvisational musician Fred Frith. The philosophical anchor of the film, Auster witnessed his friend get struck dead by lightning as a teenager, and has been wrestling with its import on destiny ever since. In a neurological experiment, Frith improvises with his guitar to demonstrate the ubiquity of electricity in our bodies and the universe. Visually dazzling and aurally seductive, Act of God singularly captures the harsh beauty of the skies and the lives of those who have been forever touched by their fury.Read More »
Nasrin is an immersive portrait of one of the courageous human rights activists and political prisoner, Nasrin Sotoudeh, and of Iran’s remarkably resilient women’s rights movement. Featuring acclaimed filmmaker Jafar Panahi (Soutoudeh appeared in his film Taxi), Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, journalist Ann Curry, exiled women’s rights activist Mansoureh Shojaee, and Nasrin’s husband Reza Khandan. In the courts and on the streets, Nasrin has long fought for the rights of women, children, LGBT prisoners, religious and ethnic minorities, journalists, artists, and those facing the death penalty. She was arrested in June 2018 and sentenced to 38 years in prison, plus 148 lashes.Read More »
“Marx can wait” was something Camillo Bellocchio said to his twin Marco the last time they met before the former died at a young age in the heated days of 1968. This documentary is dedicated to his memory.
A personal documentary centered around the suicide of the director’s twin brother, Camillo Bellocchio, in 1968.Read More »
This four hour documentary looks for the exotic in the everyday life observed in just one city, the filmmaker’s own Amsterdam.Read More »
“Mammy Water” is mother sea, source of food. Jean Rouch filmed this short documentary in the Gulf of Guinea, in Ghana, where is held a colorful festival, the Chama, in which the participants offer cassava, gin and tobacco to the spirits of water and sacrifice a white ox to thank them and express their gratitude and respect.Read More »
How African Americans created the upbeat musical form that started out as gospel quartet music and became rock and roll.Read More »
The White Rose – the first comprehensive documentary of Munich ‘s resistance work Students in the war years 1942 and 1943: companions, friends and siblings tell, as they supported leaflets, as they surrendered the Gestapo and the People’s Court, some that no one has asked before. The first talks for the documentary film were conducted in 2000, a part of the time witnesses is not alive anymore. Their irretrievable testimony makes the resistance work of the friends comprehensible and transforms the heroes into political people. Impressive and with a sensitive Aesthetics are the self-pronouncements of the participants and original documents combined. Your part unpublished youth photos, photos of the cops, the Gestapo officials, judges and the executioner add to an authentic portrait of the White Rose beyond legends.Read More »
In his meetings with various different people, Jean-Luc Godard develops his thinking about history, politics, the cinema, images and time, and this will lead to his exhibition as an artist at the Pompidou Centre. Jean-Luc Godard’s conversations with Dominique Païni, Jean Narboni, André S. Labarthe, Jean-Marie Straub, Danielle Huillet and Christophe Kantcheff were filmed at his home in Rolle, in his study, at the Fresnoy National Studio for the Contemporary Arts (in front of students) and in the exhibition rooms of the Pompidou Centre.Read More »