Van Van Fever

El Batería(es)

Cuban drummer Elvis García reflects on his journey from Havana to Miami, struggling to make his way in the American city as a professional musician.

Two Beats One Soul(en)

Husband and wife music producers Ray Chew and Vivian Scott Chew embark on an ambitious two week journey to Cuba to create a collaboration of sounds which originated from Afro-Caribbean roots that has evolved into what we now consider modern day Salsa music. Bringing together multiple artists from the U.S. and Cuba, the film shines a light on Cuban culture and takes the viewer through the creative process and challenges of producing an album while providing an auditory sensation that touches the soul. Featuring Eric Benét, Louie Vega and Sergio George-who has produced albums for Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony and more. Audiences will walk away feeling the passion, positive energy, triumph and love that keeps this musical marriage strong.

Suite Tortilla #59: The Celluloid Women(en)

An American lesbian in Cuba explores gender through dance and film, blending personal experiences and cultural symbols with music and Revolutionary cinema and questions how lesbians fit into Cuban cinema.

Musica!(en)

The Oscar-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman have become treasured musicologists, first with their loving biography LINDA RONSTADT: THE SOUND OF MY VOICE (2019) and then with TAYLOR MAC’S 24-DECADE HISTORY OF POPULAR MUSIC (2022). Now, they turn their cameras towards Cuba, profiling four students at the Amadeo Roldan Conservatory. Though it has long been the nation’s most prestigious music school in a music-crazy nation, the conservatory struggles to maintain instruments for their students.

Cuban Rhythm(en)

In this Pete Smith Specialties short, two professional dancers beautifully demonstrate the rumba and conga while actors humorously display some incorrect techniques for those dances.

Ibrahim Ferrer | AVO Session Basel(de)

Maracas and Bongo(en)

The film follows a young man's jealousy over his girlfriend attending a backyard party in Havana, where musical acts and dances are performed. This is the first sound (short) film made in Cuba.

Agents of the Shadows(fr)

Thirteen intelligence agents who have worked on secret missions for Frances DGSE tell their accounts of recruitment, training, and their fears and victories of acting undercover, as well as the effects on their private and personal lives.

A Gamer's Life(en)

Go behind the scenes to uncover the truths of being a professional gamer for a living. Can you really make a living from being a gamer?

Imperfect Journey(en)

Haile Gerima and Ryszard Kapuscinski travel around Ethiopia talking to people about their current situations and what needs to be done for a prosperous country.

Images of Women of the Social Corset(fr)

A man asks himself about the image of women who are offered for his gaze. A documentary about the image of women in fashion, film, and life.

Fontelonga(pt)

Fontelonga is a village of Trás-os-Montes, in the interior of Portugal. A mirror of exile in the eyes of their own people. A reflexion where memory is the last object of beauty and redemption.

Cinéastes de notre temps : Erich von Stroheim(fr)

How I Learned to Love the Numbers(de)

A New York film and at the same time the study of a young man suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The Berlin filmmaker Oliver Sechting (37) and his co-director Max Taubert (23) travel to New York with the idea of documenting the art scene there. However, the project is quickly overshadowed by Oliver's OCD, and the two directors fall prey to a conflict that becomes the central theme of their film. Encounters with such artists as film directors Tom Tykwer (Cloud Atlas), Ira Sachs (Keep the Lights On), and Jonathan Caouette (Tarnation) or the transmedia artist Phoebe Legere seem more and more to resemble therapy sessions. At last, Andy Warhol-Superstar Ultra Violet succeeds in opening a new door for Oliver.

Filmmakers of Our Time: François Truffaut or the Critical Spirit(fr)

Ingmar Bergman: The Magic Lantern(en)

The first of two documentaries about Ingmar Bergman produced to mark his 70th birthday. Includes behind the scenes "home movies" from Bergman's personal archive, interviews with Bergman recorded over his 40 years in the film industry and passages from his autobiography read by Max von Sydow and Bergman himself.

Icons(sk)

A film about Slovak icons painted in the period of the late 15th to the early 19th centuries, when original Byzantine icon was ending in Slovak folk art.

Keeping a Distance(sk)

Documentary illustrating the classic principles of Byzantine iconography on the examples of sixteen icons from a museum of ancient Greek art.

Nanook of the North(en)

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Olympia Part One: Festival of the Nations(de)

Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.