
The camera slowly pans through a room as Smolders offers various observations and memories.



The camera slowly pans through a room as Smolders offers various observations and memories.
2008-02-05
6.2
The title (NOVENA in English) refers to the nine days of prayers undertaken in Roman Catholicism as an act of devotion or penitence with the aim of obtaining a state of grace. In Olivier Smolders' brooding, impressively refined short film, realized in black and white with liturgical choral music punctuating its obsessive narrative, a writer retreats into the seclusion and tumultuous memories of his old college. There he assumes a vow of silence mocked by his nearly ceaseless internal monologue and the violent, morbid preoccupations of his mind as he attempts to reconcile the competing forces of the ascetic and the voluptuary. - Robert Avila
7.2Cleo lives in Marseilles and works as a waitress in a waterfront dive. A stranger entices her into coming to Paris to take dancing lessons, but instead she is taken to a baron, who betrays her. In spite of this inauspicious start, Cleo becomes a successful and renowned actress, but her feelings about men have never recovered. She loathes them and uses them only for the money they offer her, which she then hands over to a penniless girl.
Eyüp decides to cross mount Ararat looking for his aunt in Yerevan after following a madman's words. His aunt has also been expecting someone to come from behind this mount for many years. Eyüp cannot be sure about the woman he finds behind the blue door, whether it is his aunt or not because they can't understand each other.
Static images of an old country house are combined with voices of the past to evocative effect. Haunting and nostalgic, 'Return' conveys the life that exists in old, abandoned places.
6.9Morbius Jr, now an OId Man, is nearing the end of life, when he finds the last hope for all Morbkind. However, as he fights to protect the future of Morbheads, he finds himself facing off against an unlikely of enemy... HIMSELF.
4.5Max films his friends having lecherous fun at his own birthday party; unaware of how it will change his life. Just out of high school, by haphazard, he becomes a big porno producer. His father, a principled police major, chases porno makers, not suspecting that one of them lives in his own apartment. Hoodlums and girls from good families, corrupted policemen, petty dealers find themselves in a luring and scary world of porno.
9.1The documentary Merikotkan paluu (Return of the white-tailed eagle), tells the tale of the past and the present of the white-tailed eagle. The second protagonist of the film is the human - the animal that can be blamed for the eagles’ distress but also credited for its rescue.
5.5Mux spent many years in a coma in a clinic with a constant stream of television. But at least he survived a serious car accident! Now he has woken up, and he has a plan: during his time in hospital, he came up with the idea of a fairer society. From now on, Mux sees it as his task to save the world from neoliberalism and goes to France, the motherland of revolutions, with his long-term nurse Karsten and a self-written manifesto.
7.1‘RETURN’ follows Torstein Horgmo, Mikey Ciccarelli, Mons Røisland, Brandon Cocard, Brandon Davis, and Raibu Katayama as they push the boundaries of what can be accomplished snowboarding when innovative minds join forces.
5.6It's the end of the century at a corner of the city in a building riddled with crime - Everyone in the building has turned into zombies. After Jenny's boyfriend is killed in a zombie attack, she faces the challenge of surviving in the face of adversity. In order to stay alive, she struggles with Andy to flee danger.
6.3A horror short with no dialogue (Advised to watch with headphones)
6.1The Lindenhof School is expecting a busload of proper young English ladies as exchange students. The shock is great when the students turn out to be teenage boys! But while Mademoiselle Bertoux is delighted to stage “Romeo and Juliet” with real boys, both Hanni and her sister Nanni fall for their “Romeo,” Clyde.
6.5This is a documentary linking ecological and political problems. The planet has come to be less important than the multinational earnings, and with it politicians earnings as well. With this project we bring foreward this problem, witch not only affects the third world, but is a worldwide situation witch needs to be adressed.
6.6Lewis Black stars in his second HBO solo special, an all-new hour of frenetic, take-no-prisoners stand-up comedy, taped before a live audience at the Warner Theatre in Washington, DC. Lewis Black: Red, White & Screwed features Black's opinions and insights into such issues as the State of the Union, abortion, frozen embryos, defecation habits, fossils, bad language, FEMA and, of course, Dick Cheney's aim.
5.9At the end of September 1941, Soviet artillery troops in besieged Leningrad realize that pretty soon they will fire their last shot, and after that the defense of the city will be doomed. The film is based on a true event: a small group of fearless soldiers transported a large supply of gunpowder through enemy lines to Leningrad.
6.5BBC docudrama telling the story of the father of science fiction, HG Wells, and his ambition to avert mankind's headlong course towards self-destruction.
5.9Six vignettes pit an assortment of characters against each other in everyday situations.
5.4A story of three couples and their intertwining love stories set in 1940s Taiwan and Shanghai, centered around the 1949 sinking of Taiping.
7.8Experts set out to prove that female great white sharks rule the ocean.
6.7Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.
A short film about the changing face of London Soho and the implications of gentrification on Mimi, an aging transvestite.
7.1An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.
7.1A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.
This documentary is featured on the DVD for Captain Blood (1935), released in 2005.
6.5Two old men enter an abandoned synagogue, look at the decay around them, and pray.
9.0Two rabbis show the ruins of an abandoned synagogue to a group of primary school-age Jewish children, and stand by as the children dip bread in honey, drink wine, pray, and sing.
10.0What we show in Milk is literally the best of the best when it comes to dairy farming, yet, as soon we view what happens from the perspective of the mother cow, it becomes clear that this is an industry that runs on the exploitation and suffering of animals. By using animation, we are able to show a unique perspective and tell the story of the mother cow in a way that cannot be done from investigative footage alone. Milk centres the cow as the protagonist of her own story and allows us to view what is happening to her from an up close and personal perspective. Organic, free-range, high-welfare, humanely raised. It doesn’t matter what label we put on dairy products, all dairy cows are victims of an industry that forcibly impregnates them, takes their babies from them, exploits their bodies and then sends them to a slaughterhouse to cut their throats. It's time to end the dairy industry.
This film describes the building of the drilling platform ADMA Enterprise in a shipyard on the Kiel Canal, from where it was rowed to the Arabian Gulf.
10.0A documentary that introduces FIT Hives, a student-run organization whose mission is to educate the FIT community about the importance of bees to the environment, the use of bee-derived resources in the industries related to the majors at FIT and its goal to put a beehive on the roof. FIT Hives is a recipient of an FIT Innovation Grant which also supported the making of this documentary.
4.0Here's a strange one. First, a song on a blackboard: a Polish translation of “I love my little rooster” by American folk writer Almeda Riddle. Then, two men roll around trash bins and lift them to the garbage truck. They do it several times. A woman shouts in the distance. At the end, the picture stops, and the woman sings the song. An early short by Piotr Szulkin.
6.1This sex education movie explore themes of body development, sexual hygiene, masturbation, menstruation, puberty, sex and giving birth.
7.1Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.
6.0Madrid, Spain, 1949. The Circo Americano arrives in the city. While the big top is pitched in a vacant lot, the troupe parades through the grand avenues: the band, a witty impersonator, the Balodys, acrobats, jugglers, acrobatic skaters, clowns and… Buffallo Bill.
4.8This short cautionary training film examines dangers associated with earthmoving equipment operation, showing many simulated accidents on construction sites.