Quote:
Commissioned to promote the sleepy Portuguese city of Guimarães as a 2012 European Capital of Culture, this omnibus curio brings together an illustrious quartet of international cinema auteurs and invites them to roam through picturesque town squares, abandoned industrial sites and the ghostly remains of national history. In the first segment, Finnish favorite Aki Kaurismaki, in customary deadpan mode, finds bleak humor in the comings and goings of a hapless café proprietor whose business and romantic prospects dwindle as he daydreams of dancing. Next, native son Pedro Costa deploys his rigorous formalism (static shots, unstinting gazes, disembodied speech) to interrogate a former Cape Verdean revolutionary who flees the unnerving accusations of a calcified soldier through dead-of-night forays into an enchanted forest.Read More »
Documentary
-
Aki Kaurismäki, Pedro Costa, Víctor Erice, Manoel de Oliveira – Centro Histórico (2012)
Aki KaurismäkiArthouseDocumentaryManoel de OliveiraPedro CostaPortugalVictor Erice -
Eric Baudelaire – Letters to Max (2014)
2011-2020DocumentaryEric BaudelaireFranceVideo Art“Abkhazia is a paradox: it’s a country in the physical sense of the term, with borders, a government, a flag and a language, but it’s a state that doesn’t legally exist as, for almost twenty years, no other nation has recognized it. So Abkhazia exists without existing, in a liminal void, a limited space between realities. As such, my letter to Max was a bit like a bottle in the sea, a nod to Alfred Jarry and the world of Ubu Roi which Maxim seems to inhabit. Then fiction overtook reality.” Thus Eric Baudelaire launched a letter writing campaign, sending 74 letters in 74 days: a script for the voice- over of a film in which Max is the narrator. This exchange was to become the structure of the film: letters that should not have been received by Max, the recording of his replies, and footage of Abkhazia shot by Eric Baudelaire when the correspondence ceased.Read More »
-
Thom Andersen – The Tony Longo Trilogy (2014)
2011-2020DocumentaryExperimentalThom AndersenUSAAlthough he has been limited to bit parts, actor Tony Longo is an axiom of American action cinema: the giant who is too softhearted for the job. Composed of three short movies, “Hey, Asshole!,” “Adam Kesher” and “You Fucking Dickhead!,” The Tony Longo Trilogy brings together all of the actor’s scenes in three of his most memorable films: “The Takeover” (Troy Cook, 1995), “Living in Peril” (Jack Ersgard, 1997) and “Mulholland Dr.” (David Lynch, 2001).
Read More » -
Jörg A. Hoppe & Heiko Lange & Klaus Maeck – B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989 (2015)
2011-2020DocumentaryExperimentalGermanyJörg A. HoppeMusic, art and chaos in the wild West-Berlin of the 1980s. The walled-in city became the creative melting pot for sub- and pop-culture. Before the iron curtain fell, everything and anything seemed possible. B-MOVIE is a fast-paced collage of mostly unreleased film and TV footage from a frenzied but creative decade, starting with punk and ending with the Love Parade, in a city where the days are short and the nights are endless. Where it was not about long-term success, but about living for the moment – the here and now.Read More »
-
Martin Bell – Streetwise (1984)
1981-1990DocumentaryMartin BellUSASynopsis:
This documentary portrays the lives of nine desperate teenagers. Thrown too young into a seedy grown up world, these runaways and castaways survive, but just barely. Rat, the dumpster diver. Tiny, the teen prostitute. Shellie, the baby-faced blonde. DeWayne, the hustler. All old beyond their years. All underage survivors fighting for life and love on the streets of downtown Seattle. Written by Fiona KelleghanRead More » -
David Gregory – Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)
2011-2020David GregoryDocumentaryUSASynopsis
Behind the scenes chronicle of how clash of vision, bad creative decisions, lack of interest and really bad weather plagued the disastrous production of the infamous 1996 remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau.Quote:
Riding high on the wave of unforeseen success created by his arty 1990 dystopian flick HARDWARE, Richard Stanley turned next to a passion project adaptation of H.G. Wells’ THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU—which, after years of expending chutzpah and actualizing willpower, the South Africa-born writer-director somehow manages to get his provocative, imaginative take on the story green-lit by New Line with Marlon Brando installed in the lead role…Read More » -
Hito Steyerl – November (2004)
Documentary2001-2010GermanyHito SteyerlPoliticsQuote:
My best friend when I was 17, was a girl called Andrea Wolf. She died in 1998, when she was shot as a Kurdish terrorist in Eastern Anatolia. There was a warrant out for her in Germany, as she was suspected of having participated in terrorist activities, for example the complete destruction of the deportation prison in Weiterstadt. She was also suspected of having been an associate to the Red Army Faction.
In 1996, she chose to go to Kurdistan in order to join the womens army of the PKK, the Workers Party Kurdistan. She took on the name “Ronahi”, trained and lived with the womens army for a few months, mostly in camps in Northern Iraq. Then in October 1998, her unit was tracked by the Turkish army close to the border. A heavy firefight took place. Only a few of the units members remained alive. They were under heavy fire by Army helicopters. Most of the survivors took refuge in what is being described as an earth hole. As surviving earwitnesses who remained in the hole say, she was shot by either army members or Kurdish village keepers after having been dragged out as a prisoner. Her case is only one of the many extralegal executions which structure this war.Read More » -
Calum Waddell – 42nd Street Memories: The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Notorious Street (2015)
2011-2020Calum WaddellDocumentaryUnited KingdomQuote:
The story behind the rise and fall of New York`s 42nd Street. The cinemas, the films, the people, the crime and the rebirth of the block as “New 42nd Street“ – this is the document of the world`s most notorious movie strip.Read More » -
Mercedes Álvarez – Mercado de futuros (2011)
2011-2020DocumentaryMercedes ÁlvarezSpainQuote:
The abandonment and demolition of an old house, with all its furniture, its plentiful library and its full load of personal memories, becomes the starting point for this film, which tries to portray some of the aspects of the new world. The camera peeps into the real state furore, turned into a showroom and promise of financial gain or of the paradise; into financial investment brokers, gurus and preachers of success and mythology. Personal and collective memory, dreams and desires will be ultimately transformed into pure merchandising. Written by Mercedes Alvarez.Read More »








