
The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), formed upon nationalization of the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, employed film systematically, producing many films on oil and petrochemical subjects. It also made films depicting Iran's progress and modernization, highlighting the role of the Shah and NIOC in that direction. Under its auspices, Ebrahim Golestan directed A FIRE (1961), a highly visual treatment of a seventy-day oil well fire in the Khuzestan region of southwestern Iran. This film was edited by the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad and won two awards at the Venice Film Festival in 1961.

The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), formed upon nationalization of the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, employed film systematically, producing many films on oil and petrochemical subjects. It also made films depicting Iran's progress and modernization, highlighting the role of the Shah and NIOC in that direction. Under its auspices, Ebrahim Golestan directed A FIRE (1961), a highly visual treatment of a seventy-day oil well fire in the Khuzestan region of southwestern Iran. This film was edited by the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad and won two awards at the Venice Film Festival in 1961.
1961-04-01
7.5
6.6Liu Sanjie is a story that originates from the Zhuang minority people; the largest of the minority groups in China. It’s based on the legend of a woman called Liu Sanjie (literally meaning “third sister of Liu family”). Across generations, the story has become an oral tradition amongst these people and similar characters have even been found to exist in other minority cultures. According to legend, Liu Sanjie had the gift of a beautiful singing voice from a very early age. So beautiful was her voice, she could quell anger and raise the spirits of the people around her. The story became famous around China when the movie Liu Sanjie was released in 1960 – a rare musical production in Chinese cinema.
6.7Research chemist Barnaby Fulton works on a fountain of youth pill for a chemical company. One of the labs chimps gets loose in the laboratory and mixes chemicals, but then pours the mix into the water cooler. When trying one of his own samples, washed down with water from the cooler, Fulton begins to act just like a twenty-year-old and believes his potion is working. Soon his wife and boss are also behaving like children.
6.6Set over three generations and beginning with a sexually frustrated orderly during WWII who relieves his tensions in the most outlandish, gross ways. The result of his liaison is a glutton who grows up to be a champion speed eater. He produces a child who becomes obsessed with taxidermy.
7.4Early in the 20th century, middle-aged lawyer Fredrik Egerman and his young wife, Anne, have still not consummated their marriage, while Fredrik's son finds himself increasingly attracted to his new stepmother. To make matters worse, Fredrik's old flame Desiree makes a public bet that she can seduce him at a romantic weekend retreat where four couples convene, swapping partners and pairing off in unexpected ways.
7.8In late 19th century Tokyo, Kikunosuke Onoue, the adopted son of a legendary actor, himself an actor specializing in female roles, discovers that he is only praised for his acting due to his status as his father's heir. Devastated by this, he turns to Otoku, a servant of his family, for comfort, and they fall in love. Kikunosuke becomes determined to leave home and develop as an actor on his own merits, and Otoku faithfully follows him.
7.3Dorota Geller, a married woman, faces a dilemma involving her sick husband's prognosis. Her husband's doctor, who believes in God, sweared about it in vain.
7.4“Re-Existence” is a documentary about migration stories of individuals from the Brazilian queer community.
8.0Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.
6.6A free-spirited woman "kidnaps" a yuppie for a weekend of adventure. But the fun quickly takes a dangerous turn when her ex-con husband shows up.
6.2After inheriting the family mortuary, a pyrophobic mortician accidentally exposes hundreds of un-cremated bodies to toxic medical waste. As the corpses re-animate, the mortician's inheritance-seeking younger brother unexpectantly shows up, stumbling upon a full zombie outbreak!
7.3Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion, he ekes out a living as a street musician. He befriends Eva, a prostitute down on her luck and they join his neighbor, Scheitz, an elderly eccentric, when he leaves Germany to live in Wisconsin.
7.9A teenage postal worker, Tomek, routinely spies on his older neighbor Magda, a sexually liberated artist who lives in the apartment across the courtyard from his. As their private worlds merge, fascination turns to obsession, and the line between love and curiosity becomes violently blurred.
8.5An idiosyncratic FBI agent investigates the murder of a young woman in the even more idiosyncratic town of Twin Peaks. (This standalone version of the series pilot was produced for the European VHS market and has an alternate, closed ending.)
6.2A plane containing a highly classified government project crashes outside of a small town in the US. Realizing the level of danger, the government tries to secretly fix the problem. As tensions grow, the situation gets out of control, and civilians from the town find themselves facing their worst nightmare: a genetically enhanced killing machine that doesn't know how to stop.
7.0Ismael and Julie, in the hope of sparking their stalled relationship, enter a playful yet emotionally laced threesome with Alice. When tragedy strikes, these young Parisians are forced to deal with the fragility of life and love. For Ismael, this means negotiating through the advances of Julie's sister and a young college student – one of which may offer him redemption.
7.0Jerry Mulligan is an exuberant American expatriate in Paris trying to make a reputation as a painter. His friend Adam is a struggling concert pianist who's a long time associate of a famous French singer, Henri Baurel. A lonely society woman, Milo Roberts, takes Jerry under her wing and supports him, but is interested in more than his art.
6.9Mute Hee-Jin is working as a clerk in a fishing resort in the Korean wilderness; selling baits, food and occasionally her body to the fishing tourists. One day she falls in love with Hyun-Shik, who is on the run from the police, and rescues him with a fish hook when he tries to commit suicide.
6.8Venice, 1596. Bassanio begs his friend Antonio, a prosperous merchant, to lend him a large sum of money so that he can woo Portia, a very wealthy heiress; but Antonio has invested his fortune abroad, so they turn to Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, and ask him for a loan.
6.8Teenagers living in small-town Oregon take a boat trip for a birthday celebration. When they get an idea to play a mean trick on the town bully, it suddenly goes too far. Soon they're forced to deal with the unexpected consequences of their actions.
6.6During the Cold War, an American scientist appears to defect to East Germany as part of a cloak and dagger mission to find the formula for a resin solution—but the plan goes awry when his fiancee, unaware of his motivation, follows him across the border.
7.5Interview of Ayako Fujitani and her dad Steven Seagal.
A short documentary, looking at life in Passaic, New Jersey, whilst the film Be Kind Rewind (2008) is being shot there.
Insomnies is an impressionistic look at the city at night, avoiding the clichés of commercial or tourist films and suggesting instead a lifestyle rhymed by windshield wipers and the music of The Honeymoon Killers. The film is flashing back-and-forth and ultimately leaves, like an arabesque of light and colour made of lines, curves and angles.
0.0This is the story of Kaori Kawabuchi, a samurai sword performer, singer and motion capture actor. An inspiring woman keeping alive ancient traditions and spirituality in modern Japan.
0.0A self portrait filmed with a modified PXL 2000 Camcorder. The camcorder itself records on to audio cassette tape. The tapes themselves are recycled which means I have recorded over them several causing them to slowly degrade.
6.0A short featurette available on the DVD for Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), released in January 2004.
6.7Edwin’s Restaurant is determined to become one of America’s top French restaurants, with a staff unlike any other in the country. Brandon Edwin Chrostowski prepares to open his Cleveland, Ohio fine dining establishment with a staff composed nearly entirely of recently released prisoners in search of an opportunity to get their lives back on track. They sign up for a classical French food boot camp to learn the ins and outs of fine wine, sauces, and more.
"Adrift" is shot on the arctic island of Spitzbergen and in Norway. It combines time-lapse photography with stop-motion animation of the landscape. Through camera-angles and framing the film gradually dislocates the viewer from a stable base where one loses the sense of scale and grounding.
7.0Base jumper Jeb Corliss sustained grave injuries on a crash in South Africa. Through rehab, Jeb relearns the sport to tackle mountains in Europe.
5.2Spain, 1968. An analysis of the political and social situation of the country, suffocated by the boot of General Franco's tyrannical regime. (Filmed clandestinely in Madrid and Barcelona during the spring of 1968.)
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.
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.
6.7After Kosovo's independence the first internationally recognized sports federation was the one of Table Tennis. Two local Ping-Pong enthusiasts see this as a great opportunity and start self-financing the training sessions for young players.
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.
A short documentary depicting the daily lives of old country widows.