El Dorado is the fifth film directed by Marcel L’Herbier for Gaumont’s prestige collection ‘Pax’ which was characterised by high production quality. Its most striking aspect is the invention of new elements of the cinematographic language. L’Herbier uses distortions of the images to convey different messages or impressions: the faces of drinkers become distorted as they become drunk, Sibilla’s face becomes blurred as she thinks about her sick child, or photographs of the Alhambra are distorted to express the artistic vision of the painter intending to represent them.Read More »

Raising Bertie is a longitudinal documentary feature following three young African American boys over the course of six years as they grow into adulthood in Bertie County, a rural African American-led community in Eastern North Carolina. Through the intimate portrayal of these boys, this powerful vérité film offers a rare in-depth look at the issues facing America’s rural youth and the complex relationships between generational poverty, educational equity, and race. The evocative result is an experience that encourages us to recognize the value and complexity in lives all too often ignored.
—Kartemquin FilmsRead More »

Atamanov’s sublime and terrifyingly beautiful masterpiece, based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, follows a resourceful young girl, Gerda (voiced by Yanina Zheymo), as she embarks on an epic journey to save her friend Kay (Anna Komolova) from the frozen embraces of the magnificent Snow Queen (Mariya Babanova.) “Had I not one day seen ‘The Snow Queen’ during a film screening hosted by the company labor union, I honestly doubt that I would have continued working as an animator.” – Hayao MiyazakiRead More »

“Ginza’s Story” is based on Yujiro’s hit song about the hopes and dreams of Japan’s young people.Read More »

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Beyrouth el lika is a film with a very tiny budget, the kind of films where the director cannot take as many takes as he wants (sometimes even one take only) and where there is not much time for filming. The result is a film that have some actors forgetting their lines and acting badly. But if we forget these flaws, we can appreciate a very original film about a relationship between a muslim man and a christian girl, the title ironicly prepare us for a meeting that’ll never happen. The mid section of the film is composed of 2 long monologues were the main characters record their thoughts on a tape to give them to one another, this section is the most interresting part of the film and is very well directed but it is so so overlong and talky that it weaken the film’s impact. Overall it’s an interresting and original vision of the way people used to live and survive in war time that manage to not fail at any moment in the cliche.Read More »

A woman juggling care for her elderly parents and a failing marriage encounters a single mom. Their unexpected bond challenges her to face the cracks in her meticulously planned life.Read More »

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Jeanne, a 15-year-old orphan, witnesses the shoot for a film adaptation of the fairy tale The Snow Queen, and she becomes fascinated by its star, Cristina, an actress who is just as mysterious and alluring as the Queen she is playing.Read More »

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A romantic tale from the team of Fujio F. Fujiko and director Yoshimitsu Morita. The two heroines are played by Shizuka Kudo and Misa Shimizu, and it co-stars Motoya Izumi, David Ito, Toshiaki Karasawa, Isao Hashizume, Kyoka Suzuki, et al. The soundtrack is packed with hit songs incouding Wham’s “Last Christmas”, Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove”, Kome Kome Club’s “Roman Hikou,” Saki Kubota’s “Ihoujin” among others.Read More »

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Valtos is a story told from thirty years hence, in the last moments of its narrator, who awoke one day in 1987 ‘with the knowledge that I had been duplicated during the night, and that I was an inferior replica of myself’. There follows a relentless, epic, pursuit of an absconding phantom – his ‘original’ – which ends in catastrophe at Valtos, a place at once ethereal and terrifying.

‘…a sort of molecular exchange between kinds of chaos, in the human mind and the world at large.’ – Caroline Collier, British Art Show 1990 catalogueRead More »