Four Haikus(2024)

Rosaura(de)

This film visualizes humanity’s quest to relentlessly pursue goals. In the human fight for progress, the march forward cannot be stopped, even when individual people become weary and die. This animated short is based on a poem by the Chilean filmmaker and poet Juan Forch. Chilean painter Hernando León created the design.

Wit(en)

A renowned professor is forced to reassess her life when she is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer.

80000 Thoughts(da)

80,000 Thoughts is a poetic autobiographical and fictional film about testing oneself and one's possibilities—sexually, gender-wise, and bodily—conveyed through dance, music, poetry, and images. It is also a personal story about the narrator's traumas and memories, her love affair and one-time crush, God, drugs, missing her mother, and violence and abuse. Director Michele Mwikali Lauritsen deftly employs crackling prose to position her film in the impossible—and refreshing—position between the gallery-smart contemporary art of the time and a more accessible and popular format.

Do Útero Ao Túmulo(pt)

Sunnyside(en)

Ninety-year-old sound artist and comedian Henry “Sandy” Jacobs lives a quirky existence at the end of Sunnyside Drive, a steep and winding dirt road washed by fog from the Pacific Ocean. Sixty feet down the hill lives his eccentric 84-year-old friend and neighbor, architect and former Frank Lloyd Wright collaborator Daniel Liebermann. These extraordinary old men, influential artists in the 1950s and ’60s, continue, each in their own way, to search the world for perfection. Sunnyside takes us to an extraordinary place, a microcosm with its own distinctive rhythm and remarkable inhabitants. It is a film about creativity, the capacity to dream and, ultimately, the transience of life.

Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love(en)

Tara and Maya are inseparable, with the same tastes, habits, and hobbies. Years later, the two have matured but have maintained their friendship. Tara marries local prince Raj Singh, who succeeds the throne as the sole heir. After the marriage, Raj seeks another female to satisfy his sexual desires, with his sights settling on Maya, putting a perhaps unforgivable strain on a longtime friendship.

A Knight's Tale(en)

William Thatcher, a knight's peasant apprentice, gets a chance at glory when the knight dies suddenly mid-tournament. Posing as a knight himself, William won't stop until he's crowned tournament champion—assuming matters of the heart don't get in the way.

A Fanatic Heart: Geldof On Yeats(en)

A biography of the poet W. B. Yeats and his contribution to the Irish independence movement as a Protestant nationalist.

Voce dei Canti(it)

On the occasion of the bicentenary of the birth, Carmelo Bene returns to the verses of the poet from Recanati. In this film the most beautiful poems by Giacomo Leopardi (La Ginestra, Il Canto Notturno, Le Ricordanze, A Silvia, L'Infinito ...), but also some passages from the Moral Operettas, as well as the unfinished Project for a hymn at Ahrimane, follow one another with deep and moving simplicity, with a quiet immediacy that causes the void of every other voice: therefore the listenere is ensnared in the pauses, bewitched by the unexpected descents of silence. The voice assumes a dark and ancestral tone in which the words seem to find their original nuances.

Tales of the Deity's Lover(nl)

Various clips of jellyfish accompanied by the narration of two poems concerning a deity's lover.

My Neighbors the Yamadas(ja)

The Yamadas are a typical middle class Japanese family in urban Tokyo and this film shows us a variety of episodes of their lives. With tales that range from the humorous to the heartbreaking, we see this family cope with life's little conflicts, problems, and joys in their own way.

Poetry Angel(ja)

After Tsutomu Tamaki graduated from high school, he has worked at his family farm and raises ume (plum). He becomes interested in a class for “poetry boxing” and decides to take the class. There, he meets a female high school student who has her own problem.

Ocean's Arrival(en)

On the winter solstice, four friends reunite at their family's beachside cabin after years apart. From the ocean, a mysterious stranger arrives seeking refuge, eventually pitting the friends against one another. Fantasy, fear, and reality blend together as the days unfold.

Stealing Beauty(en)

Lucy Harmon, an American teenager is arriving in the lush Tuscan countryside to be sculpted by a family friend who lives in a beautiful villa. Lucy visited there four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with an Italian boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted.

Leopardi(it)

In 19th-century Italy, Giacomo Leopardi channels his debilitating illness and isolation into poetry.

Three Haiku Videos(en)

A collection of three short “video haikus” by Chris Marker. Yanka / Tchaika observes the Seine beneath a bridge; Owl Gets in Your Eyes features Catherine Belkhodja with an owl superimposed in flight; and Petite Ceinture pays homage to the Lumière brothers by filming empty train tracks along Paris’s disused railway.

Testament of Youth(en)

Testament of Youth is a powerful story of love, war and remembrance, based on the First World War memoir by Vera Brittain, which has become the classic testimony of that war from a woman’s point of view. A searing journey from youthful hopes and dreams to the edge of despair and back again, it’s a film about young love, the futility of war and how to make sense of the darkest times.

Poetry Is an Island, Derek Walcott(en)

Intimate portrait of poet, playwright, painter and filmmaker Derek Walcott, set in his beloved native island, St Lucia.

Retratação(en)

Fernando Lemos, a Portuguese surrealist artist, fled from dictatorship to Brazil in 1952 searching for something better. The movie follows the last moments of his journey and the struggle for the preservation of his legacy, trying to fulfill his last great desire: to be a good dead man.

Haiku #1(fr)

"he gasps for a breath entwined, then on their back rests, eyes gaze at the sky".