2012-05-03
8
Cafe Waldluft is a rustic hotel in the picturesque Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden, near Hitler's former mountain retreat. Over the past few years, tourist numbers and the business have started to decline, so when Flora Kurz, the cafe owner, was approached by the German authorities to house refugees, she decided to fill her rooms with asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone.
A short comedy spoof about Universal Monsters and their everyday unconventional work done at their very own talent agency for their movies.
On the 20th anniversary of their edgy little 90's cable show Underground Entertainment, the authors, along with many SF, horror and B celebrities in cameos, remember how they pushed the envelope, shocked, entertained, but also introduced the audience to many movies, comics and conventions.
Forced collectivism, famines, errors and mistakes mark Stalin´s ruthless rise to dictorial power and only increase his madness until he even declares a chicken to be an English spy that should be liquidated.
Owain's girlfriend Lorna has gone into labour unexpectedly. The baby is stuck in its sac and Owain's the only one who can do anything about it. Has he got what it takes when life gets messy?
Truck driver Teddy's late night stop at a gas station takes a dark turn when he meets the mysterious hooker Katerina, leading to unexpected consequences.
A giant mutated alligator runs riot in a small town after the sewer system washes it into a lake.
A bar fight leaves up-and-coming professional footballer Andy injured and out of the game. Needing money to support his pregnant wife and himself, he buys an ice cream van and gets to work. When a gang of Polish drug runners starts to irritate him, he joins a British gang involved in football hooliganism for protection.
Hava's brothers decide to divide their paternal property. According to traditional customs, the right to inheritance belongs to male descendants only whereas Hava has no right to inherit. The eldest brother is obligated to find a husband for his sister. Hava must be married and live at her husband's house.
Young writer sells a soap-opera script to a TV network and manages to place his girlfriend in an important role.
Rise Up is a journey into the heart of Jamaica - the island that gave birth to the worldwide cultural phenomenon of Reggae. In a society where talent abounds and opportunity is scarce, three distinct and courageous artists fight to rise up from obscurity and write themselves into the pages of history. With music and appearances by legends Lee "Scratch" Perry, Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, and a slew of soon-to-be superstars, Rise Up follows artists in the dangerous streets, back alleys and crowded dance halls of Kingston and the countryside. These artists demonstrate the raw power of hope and courage in a land which is largely unseen, but certainly not unsung.
Garden parties, music and dancing characterize the lives of a family of German aristocrats in the days leading to World War I.
A strange wire-fingered homunculus navigates through his dreams of different faces and faces, traversing a subliminal and endless variety. They are all different faces, but all have huge eyes that are questioned as to what keeps them apart, perhaps left broken by an impossible love.
A featurette hosted by Art Hindle and Lynne Griffin, who revisit the original house from the movie 'Black Christmas'.
By the People: The Election of Barack Obama is a documentary film produced by Edward Norton broadcast in November 2009 on HBO, which follows Barack Obama and various members of his campaign team, including David Axelrod, through the two years leading up to the United States presidential election on November 4th, 2008.
Filmmaker Froukje van Wengerden’s 86-year-old grandmother shares a powerful memory from 1944, when she was just 14. As her story unfolds, we see a group of contemporary 14-year-old girls. Their procession of portraits permits the spectator to see simultaneously forward and back, into the future and towards the past. A miraculous testimonial that uses eye contact to focus the viewer inward and evoke unexpected emotions.
In 1928, Lady Heath became the first person to fly solo from Cape Town to London. Eighty-five years later, Tracey Curtis-Taylor set out in a vintage biplane to fly that adventure again. Following Tracey as she retraces the journey, The Aviatrix is more than just a film about the rapture of flying – it’s a story about living life on your own terms and having the courage and determination to realise your greatest dreams.
The life and career of the hailed Hollywood movie star and underappreciated genius inventor, Hedy Lamarr.
The last day of Patrizia Cavalli’s home. Before it’s all gone.
The Devil's Playground is a fascinating and moving documentary about a little-known aspect of Amish life. Amish are not permitted to join the church until their late teens, and have to do so of their own volition. The film explores Rumspringa, wherein young Amish are given the opportunity to explore the "English" way of life.
In the 1920s, Angela Murray Gibson chose an unusual location to embark on a career in silent filmmaking: her tiny hometown of Casselton, North Dakota. She had previously helped Mary Pickford as an advisor and assistant director on The Pride of the Clan (1917), which Mary Pickford produced and starred in. She opened North Dakota's first movie studio, and she had the audacity to be a woman in an industry dominated by men.
All the feature is given prestige to by the narration in Caetano Veloso's voice, that also signs one of the segments of the project. São Paulo is the largest city of the Southern Hemisphere, with an incessant dynamics of cultural mixtures, with immigrants of all the world and migrants of all parts of Brazil. The gathering of these peculiarities are seen through the 13 film directors's sensibilities and their segments.
For First Nations communities, the headdress bears significant meaning. It's a powerful symbol of hard-earned leadership and responsibility. As filmmaker JJ Neepin prepares to wear her grandfather's headdress for a photo shoot she reflects on lessons learned and the thoughtless ways in which the tradition has been misappropriated.
After five years studying in Paris, Arash has not adjusted to life there and has decided to return to Iran to live. Hoping to change his mind, his two friends Hossein and Ashkan convince him to take a last trip through France.
Documentary about red-bereted Jimmy Mirikitani, a feisty painter working and living on the street, near the World Trade Center, when 9/11 devastates the neighborhood. A nearby film editor, Linda Hattendorf, persuades elderly Jimmy to move in with her, while seeking a permanent home for him. The young woman delves into the California-born, Japan-raised artist's unique life which developed his resilient personality, and fuel his 2 main subjects, cats and internment camps. The editor films Jimmy's remarkable journey.
The drought in the American West is predicted to be the worst in 1,000 years. Join five Academy Award-winning filmmakers as they explore the environmental crisis of our time and how to fix it before it's too late.
Documentary short following French-Vietnamese artist Marcelino Truong on his journey back to Vietnam for the research on his 'roman graphique' 'Une si jolie petite guerre' (A Lovely Little War). Truong looks back to when his family lived in Saigon from 1961 to 1963 when his father served as a translator to then president of the Republic of Vietnam Ngo Dinh Diem. The film follows Truong as he ruminates over memories, photos and films, and also conducts a host of interviews with Vietnamese relatives and officials to present a personal and long awaited Vietnamese perspective to the war.
Henry Rollins narrates Lilly Scourtis Ayers' no-holds-barred profile of volatile Bay Area punk legend Marian Anderson, whose hypnotic beauty, devil-may-care rebellion and shocking sexual exploits onstage launched her to infamy before tragically dying of a heroin overdose at the tender age of 33.
A sister shares an apartment with her heroin-addicted brother. Over the course of twelve years, she records the constant struggle and the constant losing.
This short documentary is the portrait of an 88-year-old woman who lives alone in a log cabin without running water or electricity in the Williams Lake area of British Columbia. The daughter of a Shuswap chief, Augusta lost her Indian status as the result of a marriage to a white man. She recalls past times, but lives very much in the present. Self-sufficient, dedicated to her people, she spreads warmth wherever she moves, with her songs and her harmonica.
Documentary that highlights 18 women and covers a period of time from the 50's to the 90's. The women chosen were selected because they represent the real diversity within both feminism and independent film and video. They range in age from 65 to 25. They are black, white, Puerto Rican, Yugoslavian, Asian American, biracial. They are straight, gay and bisexual. What they share is a need to express their own interpretations of what American culture is and could be and a belief that this work is made particularly powerful through the media.
July 2006. Another war breaks out in Lebanon. The directors decide to follow a movie star, Catherine Deneuve and a friend, actor and artist Rabih Mroue;, on the roads of South Lebanon. Together, they will drive through the regions devastated by the conflict. It is the beginning of an unpredictable, unexpected adventure...
Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.