"Washington Heights" tells the story of Carlos Ramirez, a young illustrator burning to escape the Latino neighborhood of the same name to make a splash in New York City's commercial downtown comic book scene. When his father, who owns a bodega in the Heights, is shot in a burglary attempt, Carlos is forced to put his dream on hold and run the store. In the process, he comes to understand that if he is to make it as a comic artist, he must engage with the community he comes from, take that experience back out into the world, and put it in his work.
A meditation on freedom and technological approaches to manifest destiny.
Lacking a formal narrative, Warhol's mammoth film follows various residents of the Chelsea Hotel in 1966 New York City. The film was intended to be screened via dual projector set-up.
Basically an artist is also a terrorist, the protagonist thinks in an unguarded moment. And if he is a terrorist after all, then he might just as well be one. Not an instant product, but an experimental feature in which diary material is brought together to form an intriguing puzzle.
A surreal musical comedy set in a world where the avant-garde and the mainstream are reversed.
Moonwalker is a 1988 American experimental anthology musical film starring Michael Jackson. Rather than featuring one continuous narrative, the film expresses the influence of fandom and innocence through a collection of short films about Jackson, some of which are long-form music videos from Jackson's 1987 album Bad. The film is named after his famous dance, "the moonwalk", which he originally learned as "the backslide" but perfected the dance into something no one had seen before. The movie's introduction is a type of music video for Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" but is not the official video for the song. The film then expresses a montage of Michael's career, which leads into a parody of his Bad video titled "Badder", followed by sections "Speed Demon" and "Leave Me Alone". What follows is the biggest section where Michael plays a hero with magical powers and saves three children from Mr. Big. This section is "Smooth Criminal" which leads into a performance of "Come Together".
This is the only feature directed by the famed French painter and sculptor Martial Raysse. In keeping with the revolutionary spirit of the time, the movie has no plot to speak of and appears to have been largely made up on the spot. We follow the cat man into a bizarre fantasy universe presented in negative exposure that reverses color values (black is white and vice versa) and written words. The cat man steals a car and then picks up a young girl he promises to take to “Heaven.” Heaven turns out to be a country chateau inhabited by several more animal mask wearing weirdoes...
Adachi's follow-up to Bowl using the figure of a woman suffering from an unusual sexual aliment has often been taken as a controversial allegory for the political stalemate of the Leftist student movement after their impressive wave of massive fiery protests failed to defeat the neo-imperialist Japan-US Security Treaty. The ritualistic solemnity of the charged sexual scenes contribute to the oneiric qualities of Closed Vagina which Adachi would later insist was an open work, not meant to deliver any kind of deliberate political message. - Harvard Film Archive
First film by Julio Bressane shot in exile, "Memoirs" is a film about a man who repeatedly kills the same type of woman in same places, the same way. Filmed on the streets of London.
The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.
Originally edited in two versions. Version I, 70 minutes; version II, 90 minutes. (The only known existing version is not Markopoulos’s edit and contains additional titles, music and voice-over added later than 1961. 65 minutes.) Filmed in Mytilene and Annavysos, Greece, 1958. Existing copy on video, J. and M. Paris Films, Athens.
Julie, a teen who died from a PCP overdose in the early '70s, searches from beyond the grave for her younger brother Bob, who now in the '90s is an obese watch seller suffering with sucrose intolerance.
Cooper is given a decision that could help him finally make a difference or get him killed.
A huge, run-down apartment in Berlin Mitte. Two women and a man, rehearsals for a movie about love and sex, that will never be shot. Acting and reality mingle into a dangerous melange. Berlin is the shelter, love is impossible, flesh is the law.
Procedurally-generated frames slowly expand in density to visually explore the mind of a psychopathic, narcissistic teenager, up until the demise of the subject.
Each day after work, Carlos, a language school teacher, frequents the heady surroundings of his local cruising ground. One evening he encounters a teenage boy from his class named Toni, and the two engage in a brief sexual tryst. As the relationship between teacher and student begins to develop, some dark truths emerge about the young man and his mysterious group of friends.
Eleven young film-makers got together to collaborate in this atypical project. Atypical not only because of its technical specs, but because of its narrative structure. There are several scenes with only the city in common, and more as a conceptual presence at that than as a precise geography. None of those scenes contains a single "story": Each one of them is part of a larger situation that we cannot see, as though the beginning and end of each "story" had to be filled in by the audience.
CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect ...
Once known for his intellectual prowess, a retired professor (Anupam Kher) begins experiencing memory gaps and periods of forgetfulness. But while he tries to laugh it off, it soon becomes clear that the symptoms are a sign of a more serious illness, prompting his grown daughter (Urmila Matondkar) to move in as his caretaker. Meanwhile, as his mind regresses, he recalls a traumatic childhood memory involving the death of Mahatma Gandhi.
Aymeric runs into Florence, a former coworker, one evening in Saint-Claude in the Haut-Jura. She is six months pregnant and single. When she gives birth to Jim, Aymeric is there. They spend happy years together until Christophe, Jim's biological father, shows up... It could be the start of a melodrama, it's also the start of an odyssey into fatherhood.
This five part epic war drama gives a dramatized detailed account of Soviet Union's war against Nazi Germany during world war two. Each of the five parts represents a separate major eastern front campaign.
A strange meteor lands in Japan and unleashes hundreds of insect-like "Legion" creatures bent on colonizing the Earth. When the military fails to control the situation, Gamera shows up to deal with the ever-evolving space adversary. However the battle may result in Gamera losing his bond with both Asagi and humanity.
When fate brings Belfast teacher JJ into the orbit of self-confessed "low life scum" Naoise and Liam Óg, the needle drops on a hip-hop act like no other. Rapping in their native Irish, they lead a movement to save their mother tongue.
Malik, a young Parisian hustler, discovers that his stepfather Serge, a famous bank robber, has been arrested along with his accomplices. During the trial, Iris, one of the accused's lawyers, Chérif, requests Malik to accept a dangerous heist in exchange for Serge and her client's liberty. Malik must convince and reunite Chérif's former partners to accomplish this high-risk stickup.
From 1970-1977, six low budget films shown at midnight transformed the way we make and watch films.
After the tragic death of his father, 18-year-old Totone must look after his younger sister and their failing family farm. He assumes even more responsibility when he enters a cash competition for the best Comté cheese made in the western part of the French Alps.
The Venice Hongwanji Buddhist Temple had an opportunity to take part in an episode of East of Main Street, an HBO documentary series that has been produced for the past three years to celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. This year’s episode, Milestones, focuses on how different groups of Asian Americans mark the milestones throughout their lives.
A small town in Spain, October 1955. Isabel, a 35-year-old dreamer who feels like a failure because she is not married yet, becomes the new target of a group of soulless pranksters.
An ex-CIA operative is thrown back into a dangerous world when a mysterious woman from his past resurfaces. Now exposed and targeted by a relentless killer and a rogue black ops program, he must rely on skills he thought he left behind in a high-stakes game of survival.
Fran likes to think about dying. It brings sensation to her quiet life. When she makes the new guy at work laugh, it leads to more: a date, a slice of pie, a conversation, a spark. The only thing standing in their way is Fran herself.
Catch the spark after dark at Disneyland Park. And say farewell to one of the Magic Kingdom's most celebrated traditions - The Main Street Electrical Parade. Where else, but in The Main Street Electrical Parade, could you see an illuminated 40-foot-long fire-breathing dragon? And hear the energy of its legendary melody one last time? It's unforgettable after-dark magic that will glow in your heart long after the last float has disappeared.
Thoracic surgeon Evgenia Belyaeva has one month to prepare for a flight to the International Space Station, where she must operate on a crew member. Will she be up for the challenge? Can she overcome her fears and insecurities? Will she be able to perform the complicated surgery in zero gravity, and give the cosmonaut a chance to return to Earth alive?
A movie crew invades a small town whose residents are all too ready to give up their values for showbiz glitz.
1947. On a beach, Madeleine, a waitress in a hotel restaurant, mother of a little boy, meets François, a rich and cultivated student. The force of attraction that pushes them towards each other is commensurate with the secrecy that each carries. If we know what Madeleine wants to leave behind by following this young man, we discover over time, what François is desperately trying to flee by mixing Madeleine's fate with his.
Real-life young couple Wim and Floor spend an afternoon in the sunwashed rooms of a crumbling home in Belgium. In a unique twist, this artistic erotic documentary is edited in nearly real-time. In the slowness, we get the build, the sweetness, and the sexiness. Forget about fingersnapping fast editing. Slow is where it’s at.
In the third film of the Lone Wolf and Cub series, Ogami Itto volunteers to be tortured by Yakuza to save a prostitute and is hired by their leader to kill an evil chamberlain.
Summer 2019. Just graduated from Sciences Po, Madeleine leaves to prepare the orals of the ENA in Corsica with Antoine, her lover with whom she shares very left-wing political convictions. On a small deserted road, an unexpected encounter will seal their fate.