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Music icon David Byrne was inspired by tabloid headlines to make his sole foray into feature-film directing, an ode to the extraordinariness of ordinary American life and a distillation of what was in his own idiosyncratic mind. The Talking Heads front man plays a visitor to Virgil, Texas, who introduces us to the citizens of the town during preparations for its Celebration of Specialness. As shot by cinematographer Ed Lachman, Texas becomes a hyperrealistic late-capitalist landscape of endless vistas, shopping malls, and prefab metal buildings. In True Stories, Byrne uses his songs to stitch together pop iconography, voodoo rituals, and a singular variety show—all in the service of uncovering the rich mysteries that lurk under the surface of everyday experience.Read More »

Quote:
This seems to be one of Baillie’s most under-seen but it’s my favorite of his. Only an artist with beautiful heart and soul can create something like this, point camera as firmly as Lumiére’s to daily observation but instead the family unit transcends the everyday and the observational; father’s ode to his child becomes expression of the most meaningful love, the haptic communication reveals so much and every little detail that doesn’t make sense just strengthens the feeling of life and love. This is the film that should echo in the eternity – if someone from strange planet should come and visit after the earth is in ruins and all life is gone, this is what they should be seeing.Read More »

Synopsis:
Set in the desert-weird wilds of Joshua Tree, California, Serpentine Pink is a distinctively visceral and surreal independent, female-centric film that digs into the various and rigorous ways a heart heals from trauma. Inspired by France’s Grand Guignol style of horror theatre, and utilizing a lyrical language both visual and verbal to capture the strange poetry of the Mojave land and soundscape, Serpentine Pink follows a reclusive biker woman and her John Wayne-obsessed exotic dancer lover’s disturbing fallout after a violent acid attack. An ethereal psychic and her aspiring healer companion converge with supernatural forces in an attempt to confront and then heal the women’s – as well as their own – deep-rooted, personal pain that comes from trying to break the cycle of possessive love.Read More »

Orestis is the richest man on the Greek island of Corfu. He’s also a sadistic pervert. Together with his nymphomaniac wife Stella, he invites young people to his villa and pays them handsomely for participating in S&M orgies. The most beloved gem in his “collection” is the young blonde Bianca, who for the time being tolerates Orestis because he pays for the expensive treatment of her younger sister in a Swiss clinic.Read More »

An unknown and lethal virus has wiped out five billion people in 1996. Only 1% of the population has survived by the year 2035, and is forced to live underground. A convict (James Cole) reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to 1996 to gather information about the origin of the epidemic (who he’s told was spread by a mysterious “Army of the Twelve Monkeys” ) and locate the virus before it mutates so that scientists can study it. Unfortunately Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990, six years earlier than expected, and is arrested and locked up in a mental institution, where he meets Dr. Kathryn Railly, a psychiatrist, and Jeffrey Goines, the insane son of a famous scientist and virus expert.Read More »

Synopsis:
In Bangkok, in a low-budget hotel called “Heaven”, the fates of four guests are interconnected due to a theft in a room: Sean, a paranoid English drug dealer, who is dealing with a powerful local drug lord; the British psychologist Rosa, who is grieving the loss of her son and conducting research with poor children in Thailand; a seriously wounded killer, hired to kill the mobster; and Wit, an abused thirteen-year-old bellboy, who steals from the guests. In the end, we see that it is almost impossible to control life and, sometimes, a subtle incident may lead to fatality. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, BrazilRead More »

“Palestine Vaincra (Palestine Will Win)” is regarded as the first French documentary film made in support of the Palestinian liberation movement. Shot in 1969 by Jean-Pierre OLIVIER de SARDAN in a student dorm, the film blends historical testimonies by Palestinians, photographs, stock footage, maps, and music. The documentary centers on the 1968 Battle of Karameh, while also tracing the complex story of the past five decades of Palestinian resistance against oppression and colonialism.Read More »

Filmed in his studio in 1988, in front of Benoît Jacquot’s camera, the painter Robert Motherwell, then aged 73, retraces the main creative stages of his work and describes very precisely his way of working: the importance of the choice of brush , of the support, of the paint used, the accidents which occur and which determine the work… He engages in a discourse on art in the serene atmosphere of his studio in Greenwich. He describes the principles of psychic automatism and comments on the different periods of his work to which dozens of retrospectives, including one in Paris in 1977, have been devoted throughout the world. A rigorous portrait that reveals the painter with his doubts and convictions.Read More »

SYNOPSIS:
A talented boxer’s young career hits difficult terrain when an unethical promoter takes interest in him.Read More »