Vowellet - An Essay by Sarah Vowell(2005)

Flow(en)

way(en)

San Francisco filmmaker Konrad Steiner took 12 years to complete a montage cycle set to the late Leslie Scalapino’s most celebrated poem, way—a sprawling book-length odyssey of shardlike urban impressions, fraught with obliquely felt social and sexual tensions. Six stylistically distinctive films for each section of way, using sources ranging from Kodachrome footage of sun-kissed S.F. street scenes to internet clips of the Iraq war to a fragmented Fred Astaire dance number.

Heavenly Touch(tl)

Jonard is having trouble making ends meet. His mother is suffering from depression, and he and his sister are forced to quit school in order to take care of her. One day, Jonard meets up his friend Rodel, and Rodel introduces him to the world of massage parlors. Rodel teaches him massage, and brings him to Heavenly Touch, a syndicate-run massage parlor that mostly caters to homosexuals.

An Ideal Father(fr)

Michel, the jovial owner of the only café in a small Normandy town, sees his life turned upside down when his teenage daughter is murdered. The community has his back but soon rumor spreads and Michel is singled out. From the ideal father, he becomes the ideal culprit.

Sonic & Shadow Lovely Lavat(fa)

Sonic sends TikToks to his husband Shadow everyday but Shadow never respond, Sonic thinks his husband Shadow doesn't love him and don't care about him, they fight and Shadow makes Sonic cry and now Shadow doesn't know what to do.

Lion(en)

The lion has to become more physically fit. The gazelle does not think he is capable of doing so.

Raiders of the Lost Library(ru)

While digging one of the many tunnels for the Moscow metro, Soviet workers unearth ruins of a dungeon. The site is closed, the metro tunnel is diverted, and amidst the bustle no one notices the tunnel workers’ foreman pocketing a little ‘souvenir’ – a book-sized frame made of precious metals featuring an inscription in an unknown language. Decades later, the foreman’s grandson Ilya, who works as a courier, discovers the ancient relic in a pile of old junk. Oblivious to the true value of the family heirloom, he soon learns about it from a mysterious stranger. The relic is the key to the secret location of the priceless ancient library that belonged to Ivan the Terrible. What Ilya doesn’t know is that the search for the lost library has been going on for centuries, and now very powerful people are after him. Ilya and the mysterious stranger decide to try their luck in finding the library.

Old Man Junior(en)

Morbius 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.

Pimpinero: Blood and Oil(es)

When Juan, a young gasoline smuggler, is forced to work for a mysterious organization in the desert bordering Colombia and Venezuela, his girlfriend Diana embarks on a journey to uncover the secrets that inhabit this no-man’s-land.

Secrets of Palace coup d'etat. Russia, 18th century. Film №5. Second Bride Emperor(ru)

As a result of a successful conspiracy against Menshikov, Peter II is prematurely recognized as an adult and is in a hurry to be crowned in Moscow. The Dolgoruky brothers gather for this celebration. There were eight of them - all-powerful and influential representatives of the ancient Rurikovich family - and among them the beautiful Ekaterina, the daughter of the huntsman Alexei.

National Family(es)

Don Poli, the patriarch of a family embedded in politics, faces the change of party in his state - after a hundred years in power - losing all his privileges. Humiliated and angry, he threatens to disinherit his family and leave to rebuild his life. This forces his children (Kippy, Ramses and Belén) to take extreme measures to ensure their future, causing everything that could go wrong to turn out worse.

Mad(en)

A matriarch past the point of a nervous breakdown, her two daughters that don't give a damn, and the heat-seeking missiles of resentment they toss at each other.

Panda Plan(zh)

International action star Jackie Chan is invited to the adoption ceremony of a rare baby panda, but after an international crime syndicate attempts to kidnap the bear, Jackie has to save the bear using his stunt work skills.

Transmorphers: Mech Beasts(en)

20 years after the events of Transmorphers, a newer, more advanced species of alien robot descends on a rebuilt Earth, threatening once again to destroy the planet.

Sikandar Ka Muqaddar(hi)

After an unsolved diamond heist, a hard-nosed cop’s pursuit of his key suspect turns into obsession, until they finally face each other — and the truth.

The Price of Money: A Largo Winch Adventure(fr)

Largo Winch, devastated by the kidnapping of his son, realizes that if he finds those responsible for his bankruptcy, maybe he'll see his son again.

Sugarcane(en)

An investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school in Canada ignites a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve.

J the Film(bs)

'J' tells the story of a man who lives an isolated life before encountering a woman that will open up, for a while, his controlled world. In 'J', time is at first an internal condition and, as the story unfolds, the effect of a mysterious mirror, where solitude is a condition of space itself and nearness and love are but a position of an impossible witness. Can space hold all the memories of a life without witnesses?

The Silent Hour(en)

While working a case as an interpreter, a hearing-impaired police detective must confront a group of criminals trying to eliminate a deaf murder witness in her apartment building.

Stranger in the City(en)

Aspects of a London day, including prostitutes on street corners, a striptease show and the 2i's Coffee Bar.

To Stay Alive: A Method(en)

Iggy Pop reads and recites Michel Houellebecq’s manifesto. The documentary features real people from Houellebecq’s life with the text based on their life stories.

Land Without Bread(es)

An 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.

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat(fr)

A 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.

Twenty Years After(en)

This short celebrates the 20th anniversary of MGM. Segments are shown from several early hits, then from a number of 1944 releases.

Visions of Europe(en)

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Quest for the Ring(en)

H.P. Lovecraft - Ipotesi di un viaggio in Italia(it)

A documentary about the possible ties between H.P.LOVECRAFT and the Polesine region (Italy), stimulated by the casual discovery of a mysterious manuscript attributed to the great American horror writer died in 1937.

The Joys and Sorrows of Young Yuguo(en)

16-year-old Yuguo, who has a passion for Eastern European romantic poetry, makes a pilgrimage from his home in China to the foothills of Romania’s Carpathian Mountains.

To Be or Not to Be: Klingons and Shakespeare(en)

The story behind the translation and performance of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in Klingon.

The Green Fog(en)

A tribute to a fascinating film shot by Alfred Hitchcock in 1958, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, and to the city of San Francisco, California, where the magic was created; but also a challenge: how to pay homage to a masterpiece without using its footage; how to do it simply by gathering images from various sources, all of them haunted by the curse of a mysterious green fog that seems to cause irrepressible vertigo…

Grandpa's in the Tuff Shed(en)

It adroitly tells the story of a "counter culture" young man who when his grandfather dies, packs the body in dry ice, and stores him in a Tuff Shed, waiting for the time when advances in modern medicine can bring him back to life. I am not making this up. Then our young men gets deported back to Norway on unrelated charges. Then, quite a while later, people look up and take notice ... "Hey ... there appears to be a frozen dead guy in that shed over there."

Black Sun(pt)

Underscored by French film legend Delphine Seyrig’s evocative recitation of a Henri Michaux poem, Maureen Fazendeiro’s film is a mysterious, multi-textured portrait of eclipse spectators in Portugal.

Au coeur de Nikita(fr)

A documentary that captures some moments on set of filming of Luc Besson's "Nikita".

Return to Crystal Lake: Making 'Friday the 13th'(en)

Locations: Looking for Rusty James(es)

A personal meditation on Rumble Fish, the legendary film directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983; the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, where it was shot; and its impact on the life of several people from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay related to film industry.

The Imperial Lullaby(it)

The armies of Fascist Italy conquered Addis Ababa, capital of Abyssinia, in May 1936, thus culminating the African colonial adventure of the ruthless dictator Benito Mussolini, by then lord of Libya, Eritrea and Somalia; a bloody and tragic story told through the naive drawings of Pietro Dall'Igna, an Italian schoolboy born in 1925.

The Long Shadow of Dirty Harry(en)

An in-depth look at Dirty Harry (1971), featuring interviews with such film artists as Michael Madsen, 'Hal Holbrook', John Milius, 'Shane Black' and John Badham.

Night and Fog(fr)

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Brasilia, Contradictions of a New City(pt)

In 1967, de Andrade was invited by the Italian company Olivetti to produce a documentary on the new Brazilian capital city of Brasília. Constructed during the latter half of the 1950s and founded in 1960, the city was part of an effort to populate Brazil’s vast interior region and was to be the embodiment of democratic urban planning, free from the class divisions and inequalities that characterize so many metropolises. Unsurprisingly, Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova (Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 1968) revealed Brasília to be utopic only for the wealthy, replicating the same social problems present in every Brazilian city. (Senses of Cinema)