Documentary

Toto est un marcassin accueilli par Madeleine. La bête va grandir, dans les cœurs, mais sur ses pattes aussi. Vincent affectionne les singes, dont il part retrouver les facéties en Inde. Et le pauvre Joseph souffre de cauchemars causés par la machine artificielle à respirer qu’il est contraint d’utiliser. C’est Pierre qui se trouve à nouer toutes ces aventures. Pierre Creton, ouvrier agricole et cinéaste, qui vit à Vattetot, et qui retrouve ici la veine de L’Heure du Berger (Grand Prix FIDMarseille 2008). Autrement dit avec l’autobiographique teinté de fantastique, avec l’extraordinaire pêché dans l’ordinaire, avec l’affection et l’amour portés aux êtres, humains et animaux confondus, avec l’humour saupoudrant chaque amorce de drame. Read More »

Synopsis:
At nearly 80, Agnès Varda explores her memory – growing up in Belgium, living in Sète, Paris, and Noirmoutier, discovering photography, making a film, being part of the New Wave, raising children with Jacques Demy, losing him, and growing old. She explores her memory using photographs, film clips, home movies, contemporary interviews, and set pieces she designs to capture a feeling, a time, or a frame. Shining through each scene are her impish charm, inventiveness, and natural empathy. How do people grow old, how does loss stay with them, can they remain creative, and what do they remember? Memory, she says, is like a swarm of confused flies. She envisions hers for us.Read More »

Synopsis
This documentary portrait of theater operator Nicolas “Nick” Nicolaou moves from 1970s Times Square adult film houses through decades of city regulation, chain takeovers, and cultural shifts, charting a charming odyssey through the history of film exhibition and New York City. Abel Ferrara traces the life and work of friend and fellow cinephile Nicolas “Nick” Nicolaou, a Cypriot immigrant who began working as a teenager in small neighborhood movie theaters around Manhattan, defying gentrification, changing viewing habits and corporate dominance in the 1980s, only to emerge decades later as one of New York City’s last independent theater owners. A moving tribute to friendship, tenacity and the love of cinema, THE PROJECTIONIST is also a timely paean to what going to the movies is all about.Read More »

Quote:
Beirut, My City finds Saab and her collaborator, the playwright and director Roger Assaf, returning to the shell of her former home following Israel’s 1982 invasion, finding small glimmers of hope in the chaos of refugee camps and the rubble of decimated neighborhoods.
“I consider this to be my most important film, the one that is the closest to my heart. In 1982, my house was burning. That’s not nothing. It was a very old house. 150 years of history went up in flames and disappeared. All of that is suddenly destroyed. The family home, wiped off the map, gone from the city, having become a pile of ruins.”Read More »

Costa da Morte is a region in Galicia (Spain), which was considered as the end of the world during the Roman period. Its dramatic name comes from the numerous shipwrecks that happened along history in this area made of rocks, mist and storms. We cross this land observing the people who inhabit it, fishermen, gatherers of shellfish, loggers… We witness traditional craftsmen who maintain both an intimate relationship and an antagonistic battle with the vastness of this territory. The wind, the stones, the sea, the fire, are characters in this film, and through them we approach the mystery of the landscape, understanding it as a unified ensemble with man, his history and legends.Read More »

Original Title in Japanese: ざ・鬼太鼓座
This documentary narrates the beginnings of the founding members of ondekoza who are a group of young musician living communally on Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture. They create the taiko drumming, which has gone on to entertain audiences around the world and give spectators kodo drummer. Watch the musicians go from rigorous training and adaptation to early performances.Read More »

Quote:
Using their sound and film equipment like musical instruments, the members of the band GUI AIUEO:S create an audiovisual work of art. On their journey, they search for UFOs, meet odd hermits, and are introduced to the sustainable toilet. Go SHIBATA, winner of the 2011 NIPPON VISIONS AWARD, presents an eccentric performance-roadmovie-documentary. Hop on board and step on the gas!Read More »

Gianvito’s portrait of Keller can be seen as a continuation and expansion of his PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE WHISPERING WIND, which recalled certain protagonists of the progressive movement in the US, inspired by historian Howard Zinn.

Helen Keller became both blind and deaf as a child. The film follows some of her most important public appearances and comments, starting with her speech “Out of the Dark” (1913). Gianvito’s narrative visual style has an almost elemental quality, when he crossfades voiceovers and silent written text passages by Keller with ever shifting close-ups of the structure of snowy boughs, ice or timber. It’s another highly idiosyncratic work of poetry, didactics, and agitprop at the service of a bottom-up view of history, at once an appreciation and analysis of Keller’s theses on capitalism. It’s no spoiler to say that they are just as valid 100 years on. (Gunnar Landsgesell)Read More »

Excellent documentary about the history of Yugoslavian Film Festival in Pula and ex-Yu cinema in general. Produced by HTV Croatian Television.

The festival was originally started in 1954 and within a few years it became the centerpiece event of the Yugoslav film industry, with first national awards being presented in 1957. This lasted until 1991, when the festival was canceled due to the breakup of Yugoslavia.Read More »