Published in Paris in 1954, Story of O was an immediate bestseller and literary scandal: an elegantly written S&M fantasy that had all the hallmarks of being an autobiographical account by the pseudonymous Pauline Réage. In 1994 Dominique Aury, a mild-mannered, dowdy editor for France’s prestigious Gallimard press, revealed her authorship. Pola Rapaport explores Aury's inspiration, recreating the world of '50s literary Paris and setting it against dramatic sequences that bring the infamous book to life. The author as well as various French intellectuals expound on the thorny relationship between sexuality and power, submission and freedom, liberation and non-being.
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Published in Paris in 1954, Story of O was an immediate bestseller and literary scandal: an elegantly written S&M fantasy that had all the hallmarks of being an autobiographical account by the pseudonymous Pauline Réage. In 1994 Dominique Aury, a mild-mannered, dowdy editor for France’s prestigious Gallimard press, revealed her authorship. Pola Rapaport explores Aury's inspiration, recreating the world of '50s literary Paris and setting it against dramatic sequences that bring the infamous book to life. The author as well as various French intellectuals expound on the thorny relationship between sexuality and power, submission and freedom, liberation and non-being.
2005-04-01
4.5
In 1945, at the end of World War II, Neus Català returns to France, where she recalls her life under the Nazi yoke.
While awaiting the next fuel truck at a middle-of-nowhere Arizona rest stop, a traveling young knife salesman is thrust into a high-stakes hostage situation by the arrival of two similarly stranded bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty—or cold, hard steel—to protect their bloodstained, ill-gotten fortune.
A 1988 documentary film directed by Alexander Sokurov, about the later life and death of Soviet Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The film was originally intended to mark the 50th birthday of Tarkovsky in 1982, which would have been before his death. Controversy with Soviet authorities about the film's style and content led to significant delays in the production.
18th century Austria. Villages surrounded by deep forests. A woman is sentenced to death after killing a baby. Agnes is marrying her loved one and candidly prepares herself for a spouse life. Soon after, her head and heart start to feel heavy. Day after day, she is increasingly trapped in a murky and lonely path leading to evil thoughts. Maybe not just thoughts…
Eve used to be one of the most famous rose creators in the world. Today, her company is on the verge of bankruptcy. On top of that, her secretary Vera has hired three outcasts with absolutely no gardening skills. Though they have nothing in common, they come up with the most crazy plan that could change their lives forever...
Ernesto lives in depression and decides to hire a hit-man to end his own life. However, his plan takes an unexpected turn when he meets Rita, whose love gives him a new reason to live.
The Bouvier-Sauvages, a large aristocratic family, meet the much more modest Martin family when their children's wedding is announced. For the occasion, the future bride and groom offer their parents DNA tests, which will reveal their true origins. The results are totally unexpected and will make the effect of a bomb.
The triumphant underdog story of the University of Washington men's rowing team, who stunned the world by competing at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
During a crack epidemic two narcotics agents hunting for a cop killer. Hoping for leads, Moran and Thorton pay off a junkie informant. To provide for his wife and son, Moran involves the stool pigeon in a deadly scheme. This causes the partners to come under the scrutiny of a suspicious internal affairs agent.
A legendary secret service agent comes out of hiding and returns to France to help the son he's never met get out of trouble.
As John T. Wrecker continues his task of protecting a group of refugees from a virus, the threat of something new and even more dangerous grows ever closer in the form of monstrous mutants.
The evil Djinn is back at again, this time wreaking havoc on the students of Illinois' Baxter University. His victim is a beautiful, innocent and studious teenage girl named Diana Collins who accidentally opened up the Djinn's tomb and released him.
In the 1860s, fiercely independent French-Canadian Vivienne Le Coudy embarks on a journey with Danish immigrant Holger Olsen, attempting to forge a life together in the dusty town of Elk Flats, Nevada. When Holger decides to go fight for the Union in the burgeoning Civil War, Vivienne must fend for herself, which isn't easy in a town controlled by a corrupt mayor.
Beautiful half-breed Pearl Chavez becomes the ward of her dead father's first love and finds herself torn between her sons, one good and the other bad.
A newly reunited father and son grapple with new beginnings after tragedy, but can they manage to fill the void left by a beloved wife and mother?
In 1968, art students Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell made a trippy photo collage for their musician friends Syd, David and Roger. The resulting album and album cover, A Saucerful of Secrets, helped launch two careers: that of Pink Floyd, one of the 70s megabands, and of Hipgnosis, which, over the course of the next 25 years, designed a stream of iconic album covers.
Seville, 1977. At a time when homosexuality is a crime, Reme, a traditional mother moved by the love of her son, an adolescent aspiring artist, will become involved in the Andalusian LGBTQ+ movement, paradoxically born in the bosom of the Church.
Desperate to fit in at school, Sam rejects her East Indian culture and family to be like everyone else. However, when a mythological demonic spirit latches onto her former best friend, she must come to terms with her heritage to defeat it.
When his aging mob boss is whacked, Charlie Swift, a loyal friend and hired gun, will stop at nothing to destroy the upcoming crew that took him out.
1972 in Haute-Savoie (France) : the Bertrand's farm, with a hundred dairy cows owned by three bachelor brothers, is filmed for the first time. In 1997, they were the subject of Gilles Perret's first movie, as they let their farm to their nephew Patrick and his wife Hélène. Nowadays, 25 years later, Gilles Perret take another look at this farm, managed by Hélène who will step down. Through their words, an intimate, social and economic history of the rural world.
An hour-long workout with a BDSM theme on a NYC rooftop, taught by a variety of instructors.
At the consulting service for immigrants at the Avicenne Hospital in suburban Paris, we observe the sorrow and powerlessness of the immigrants who come here.
The Bapst Brothers: Romain, Maurice and Jacques – whom we will also meet in The Gruyere Chronicle (produced in 1990) – are peasants and carriers and work with their father. In autumn and winter, they bid for the community’s wood, cut down the pine trees and bring down the logs through the snowy woods by horse-drawn sleigh.
How Germany was when its people entered the nightmare of World War II? Despair and fear lead a hungry population to follow the chilling call of just one man to world domination. A real-life horror story, an ominous tale of violence and deception, which takes place from 1919 to 1934. (Entirely made up of restored, colorized archival footage.)
October 2003, Alma and Lila Levy are excluded from the Lycée Henri Wallon in Aubervilliers solely because they were wearing a headscarf. What follows is a deafening political and media debate, justifying in most cases the exclusion of girls wearing head-scarves to school. February 2004, a law was eventually passed by the National Assembly. "A thinly veiled racism" is about this controversy since the affair of Creil in 1989 (where two schoolgirls were excluded for the same reasons) and attempts to "reveal" that maybe what hides behind is the desire to exclude these girls. This film gives them a voice as well as others - teachers, community activists, feminists, researchers - gathered around the group "A School for You-All" fighting for the repeal of this law they consider sexist and racist ... This movie was censured in Septembre 2004 in France.
"Race d’Ep!" (which literally translates to "Breed of Faggots") was made by the “father of queer theory,” Guy Hocquenghem, in collaboration with radical queer filmmaker and provocateur Lionel Soukaz. The film traces the history of modern homosexuality through the twentieth century, from early sexology and the nudes of Baron von Gloeden to gay liberation and cruising on the streets of Paris. Influenced by the groundbreaking work of Michel Foucault on the history of sexuality and reflecting the revolutionary queer activism of its day, "Race d’Ep!" is a shockingly frank, sex-filled experimental documentary about gay culture emerging from the shadows.
The duel between Pierre Péan and Edwy Plenel revisits some of the great moments of French political life and tells the story of more than 30 years of journalism in France. From distrust to attack, from revenge to caricature, the two icons of French journalism, Pierre Péan and Edwy Plenel, have always been at war. Everything opposes them: their working methods, their vision of the profession and even their way of being. Pierre Péan has always worked alone, in secret, while Edwy Plenel was looking for his place in the collective, heading for the upper echelons of the media... In the 1980s, both men became stars of journalism. In the 1990s, with his best-selling investigations, Péan invented his own independent business model, while Plenel became editor of Le Monde. Their exceptional careers have changed the way news is reported in France
In a series of long interviews, 12 prime ministers talk about their experience in the upper echelons of power. The function of prime minister, torn between the president and the parliament, appointed without necessarily being elected but responsible for everything, is at the center of debate. With the exception of Jacques Chirac (1974-1976 and 1986-1988), deliberately left out because of his image as French President, those who governed France for the past 35 years agreed to discuss the exercise of power, as seen through archive footage, but also how they experienced it personally. Filmed in the same studio and sitting in the same chair, 12 French prime ministers talk freely about their time in office, from their appointment until their resignation.
In 2002, serial killer Patrice Alègre was sentenced to life imprisonment for five murders. Gendarme Roussel, the main investigator of this case, believes that he will make him confess to other unsolved crimes in Toulouse. Two ex-prostitutes give a series of names of presumed accomplices of the killer, among them Dominique Baudis, then president of the CSA. He decides to face the case alone. Around him, it is silence: not an official support of his political family. Almost twenty years later, we return to the Baudis affair to try to understand it, with the testimonies of Pierre and Benjamin Baudis, his sons, François Hollande, Camille Pascal and the main protagonists.
This is the unlikely story of 21 ministers and prime ministers who have crossed or are crossing the french Fifth Republic today. Twenty-one politicians who, from one day to the next, find themselves at the head of a ministry by the grace of a President of the Republic and his Prime Minister. The formation of the government, conflicts of attribution, reshuffles, rumours of appointments, evictions, casting errors: it is all the capricious backstage of the games of power examined here under the angle of confidence and which sheds light on the prestigious but unknown function of minister. An original and instructive political saga on the reality of those who hold or have held this prestigious position.
A tribute to the cartoonist and filmmaker Chaval, aka Yvan Francis Le Louarn.
Documentary directed by W.K. Border, that which dives into the aspects of contemporary Gothic subculture, vampirism, and BDSM culture. Filmed in 1997 in California.