Solar(2020)

Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream(en)

From 1970-1977, six low budget films shown at midnight transformed the way we make and watch films.

Maine Pyar Kiya(hi)

After Suman's father leaves her in the care of another family while he travels abroad, she falls in love with Prem. However, in order to for them to marry, Prem has to prove to Suman's father that he is not the same as his own dad.

Liberation: Direction of the Main Blow(ru)

This five part epic war drama gives a dramatized detailed account of Soviet Union's war against Nazi Germany during world war two. Each of the five parts represents a separate major eastern front campaign.

Re-Cut(en)

When twin girls are found dead in their family’s barn, reality star turned TV-reporter Meredith Phillips and her de-facto camera crew are dispatched to rural Wisconsin to investigate the gruesome deaths. In their relentless drive to break the story, the reporters become entangled in a deadly mystery and uncover the small town’s shocking secret. Edited together from the crew’s multiple cameras, the film documents their struggle to survive the most terrifying night of their lives and becomes the only evidence of a crime too horrific to imagine.

Hero(ja)

Prosecutor Kohei Kuryu takes charge of a case with a foreign embassy possessing the key to solve the case. Due to the extraterritoriality involving the case, the investigation has not gone anywhere. A crisis then ensues. Kohei Kuryu and his office attempt to extract the truth behind the wall of the Neustrian Embassy.

Love on the Run(fr)

Antoine is now 30, working as a proofreader and getting divorced from his wife. It's the first "no-fault" divorce in France and a media circus erupts, dredging up Antoine's past. Indecisive about his new love with a store clerk, he impulsively takes off with an old flame.

Gamera 2: Attack of Legion(ja)

A strange meteor lands in Japan and unleashes hundreds of insect-like "Legion" creatures bent on colonizing the Earth. When the military fails to control the situation, Gamera shows up to deal with the ever-evolving space adversary. However the battle may result in Gamera losing his bond with both Asagi and humanity.

Kiss of Death(en)

An ex-con trying to go straight must face a crazed criminal out for revenge.

Maine Gandhi Ko Nahin Mara(hi)

Once known for his intellectual prowess, a retired professor (Anupam Kher) begins experiencing memory gaps and periods of forgetfulness. But while he tries to laugh it off, it soon becomes clear that the symptoms are a sign of a more serious illness, prompting his grown daughter (Urmila Matondkar) to move in as his caretaker. Meanwhile, as his mind regresses, he recalls a traumatic childhood memory involving the death of Mahatma Gandhi.

Brighton Rock(en)

Centring on the activities of a gang of assorted criminals and, in particular, their leader – a vicious young hoodlum known as "Pinkie" – the film's main thematic concern is the criminal underbelly evident in inter-war Brighton.

Main Street(es)

A small town in Spain, October 1955. Isabel, a 35-year-old dreamer who feels like a failure because she is not married yet, becomes the new target of a group of soulless pranksters.

Along Came Love(fr)

1947. On a beach, Madeleine, a waitress in a hotel restaurant, mother of a little boy, meets François, a rich and cultivated student. The force of attraction that pushes them towards each other is commensurate with the secrecy that each carries. If we know what Madeleine wants to leave behind by following this young man, we discover over time, what François is desperately trying to flee by mixing Madeleine's fate with his.

Coal Miner's Daughter(en)

Biography of Loretta Lynn, a country and western singer that came from poverty to fame.

Small Country: An African Childhood(fr)

Gabriel, aged 10, lives in a comfortable ex-pat neighborhood in Burundi, his ‘small country’. Gabriel is a normal kid, happy, carefree and having adventures with his friends and little sister. Then in 1993, tensions in neighboring Rwanda spill over, threatening his family and his innocence.

The Seventh Company Outdoors(fr)

The third part of Seventh Company adventures.

Yes or No 2(th)

Kim and Pie are in love, but after graduation they have to travel into two different directions for their internship; Kim is going to work in a farm in the northern province of Nan, while Pie is going South to work in a fishery center. Their love is being tested by the distance between them.

Between Two Worlds(fr)

Marianne Winckler relocates to the port city of Caen in order to pass herself off as a member of a large community of itinerant workers desperate to make ends meet. She gains employment as a cleaner on a ferry travelling between Ouistreham and Portsmouth, recording the drudgery of the work she and her colleagues are required to do.

Flow(en)

A filmmaker talks about his work and love life with an unseen friend behind the camera. We also watch four of his short films.

Sorry We Missed You(en)

Ricky and his family have been fighting an uphill struggle against debt since the 2008 financial crash. An opportunity to wrestle back some independence appears with a shiny new van and the chance to run a franchise as a self-employed delivery driver. It's hard work, and his wife's job as a carer is no easier. The family unit is strong but when both are pulled in different directions everything comes to breaking point.

Flow(en)

Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story(en)

The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.

Lockdown(en)

A man stuck inside his house during a worldwide lockdown starts to lose not just his friends, but also his sanity.

Anna the Maid(fr)

An experimental movie based on a poem of the French writer and director Jean Cocteau about a servant who fantasises about killing the lady of the house.

Chelsea Girls(en)

Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.

Only(en)

After a comet releases a mysterious virus that begins to kill all of the women in the world, a young couple's relationship is severely tested. They hide out (from both the illness and the savages who hunt the remaining women) in their over-sterilized apartment. Ultimately the duo escapes their self-imposed quarantine to head to the wilderness.

Serenity(el)

Originally edited in two versions. Version I, 70 minutes; version II, 90 minutes. (The only known existing version is not Markopoulos’s edit and contains additional titles, music and voice-over added later than 1961. 65 minutes.) Filmed in Mytilene and Annavysos, Greece, 1958. Existing copy on video, J. and M. Paris Films, Athens.

O'er the Land(en)

A meditation on freedom and technological approaches to manifest destiny.

She Had Her Gun All Ready(en)

Two women – one passive and resigned, the other aggressive and domineering – interact in various locations in New York city. The film explores the dynamic between them before ending with a showdown at the roller-coaster on Coney Island.

American Torso(hu)

In the final days of the American Civil War, an emigre Hungarian military officer attempts to map the situation of the enemy. Many veterans of the 1848 War of Independence in Hungary fought on the northern side. Experienced Fiala, Boldogh who struggles with homesickness and the reckless Vereczky all experience their enforced emigration in different ways and news of impending peace elicits different reactions from them all.

Time Consciousness(ko)

Time-Consciousness offers four mutually contradictory versions of a series of events. The constant factors are a middle-aged poet with a gammy leg, a prostitute who may or may not be dead, and the woman’s humble room (which may or may not be tidy), where the poet does his writing. Asking "What did happen at 9:20 that evening?," the film underlines the unreliability of memory and the impossibility of objectivity.

I Am Legend(en)

Robert Neville is a scientist who was unable to stop the spread of the terrible virus that was incurable and man-made. Immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City and perhaps the world. For three years, Neville has faithfully sent out daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. But he is not alone.

Engel und Puppe(it)

Engel und Puppe is the first film by Italian filmmaker and writer Ellis Donda. Screened at Oberhausen in 1975, Engel und Puppe is a political adaptation of some lines from Rilke's Duino Elegies, featuring the French poet Jacqueline Risset and a young Rossella Or (soon to become an avant-garde theatre actress).

The Fatal Telephone(sl)

Experimental feature about two young men trying to make a film.

Dyketactics(en)

Born in Los Angeles but a New Yorker by choice, Barbara Hammer is a whole genre unto herself. Her pioneering 1974 short film Dyketactics, a four-minute, hippie wonder consisting of frolicking naked women in the countryside, broke new ground for its exploration of lesbian identity, desire and aesthetic. (from bfi.org.uk)

Never Better(en)

Terese is a young woman with Cystic Fibrosis stuck in the time loop of quarantine. She fights her boredom with beer, weed, and an unstoppable internal dialogue. When her self-interested roommate returns and fails to practice safe social distancing, she finds that boredom may be the least of her worries.

Cargo(en)

After being infected in the wake of a violent pandemic and with only 48 hours to live, a father struggles to find a new home for his baby daughter.

Colossal(tl)

Colossal explores the complexities of grief and the process of grieving as understood through the myth of a Man as he ventures through shifting landscapes ruminating.

Todo Todo Teros(en)

Basically an artist is also a terrorist, the protagonist thinks in an unguarded moment. And if he is a terrorist after all, then he might just as well be one. Not an instant product, but an experimental feature in which diary material is brought together to form an intriguing puzzle.

it's a girl!(en)

A self-portrait short film on 16mm from a trans male perspective.

Midnight Toughts(es)

In this short film, a mysterious character goes on a journey to the back of his mind on the night of his birthday.