Documentary

Synopsis:
In 1996, Marcello Mastroianni talks about life as an actor. It’s an anecdotal and philosophical memoir, moving from topic to topic, fully conscious of a man ^Óof a certain age^Ô looking back. He tells stories about Fellini and De Sica’s direction, of using irony in performances, of constantly working (an actor tries to find himself in characters). He’s diffident about prizes, celebrates Rome and Paris, salutes Naples and its people. He answers the question, why make bad films; recalls his father and grandfather, carpenters, his mother, deaf in her old age, and his brother, a film editor; he’s modest about his looks. In repose, time’s swift passage holds Mastroianni inward gaze.Read More »

Synopsis
This is the tale of a young woman, growing up in the age of the internet and turning the search for oneself into a public spectacle, allowing kids from all over the world to live their life through hers. Through her fragmented personalities you see the emergence of a new generation, in which the concept of a fixed identity has grown old.Read More »

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Russian documentary filmmaker Ksenia Okhapkina’s essay portrait looks at the strict order that governs life in a small industrial city in Russia. With her talent for visual composition and perceptiveness regarding local events, she puts together an audiovisual collage of seemingly minor details that enable us to observe a society bound by the regime and political power. Scenes of young girls learning about discipline at ballet school or adolescent boys training for the army are eloquent examples of citizen indoctrination, but the filmmaker avoids psychologizing the participants. Instead she portrays the dangerous ideology without excessive words or narration, thus perfectly capturing its furtive omnipresence and inconspicuousness.Read More »

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While in San Francisco for the promotion of her last film in October 1967, Agnès Varda, tipped by her friend Tom Luddy, gets to know a relative she had never heard of before, Jean Varda, nicknamed “Yanco”. This hitherto unknown uncle lives on a boat in Sausalito, is a painter, has adopted a hippie lifestyle and loves life. The meeting is a very happy one.Read More »

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Deep Crates 2 documents the history behind diggin’ for samples and creating beats. The 2nd Deep Crates DVD installment takes you back to the origins of sampling records with some of the culture’s founding pioneers. Worldwide diggin’ spots are exposed from the USA to Canada to Japan. From first impressions, Deep Crates 2 appears to be a step up from the crude shooting and editing of the original Deep Crates. With a shorter list of featured producers, one can expect longer interviews with more potency. Features in studio footage and exclusive anecdotes from some of the most famous crate diggers on earth.Read More »

Standing apart along the northeast shore of the Great Salt Lake is a huge earthworks project, boulders and potholes, clinging brine and mirrored sky, which the film documents, as it moves back geologically to dinosaur history.Read More »

Filmmaker Manfred Blank (director of the excellent Pharos of Chaos) interviews Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub at some length about their then-current production, Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations), in which he, himself, performed as an actor.Read More »

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Harun Farocki films Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet at work during the shooting of Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations), a film based on Kafka’s unfinished novel, Amerika, in which Farocki himself plays the character, Delamarche. The film is both a tribute to the work of the two filmmakers, who define themselves as “artisans” in reaction against the film industry, and as he says, a self-portrait: at work, directed by the couple, he endlessly repeats his gestures and lines, like a worker up to the point of exhaustion.Read More »

This is the story of Emoş Gülver, one of hundreds of women who decided to search for their roots after seeing the 2010 documentary “İki Tutam Saç: Dersim’in Kayıp Kızları” (Two Locks of Hair: The Lost Girls of Dersim), which recounted the stories of little girls who were separated from their parents in the late 1930s during a state intervention against the Dersim revolt in Tunceli.Read More »