What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.
Social & External
Documentary on Les Charlots, known as The Crazy Boys in the English-speaking world, a group of French musicians, singers, comedians and film actors who were popular in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s.
A Mauritanian worker, Sidi, works in France. Like most immigrant workers, he is employed to do the most difficult and dangerous jobs. Sidi and his comrades are exploited systematically and permanently, as much by their employers as by their own countrymen who are constantly able to offer false working papers, slums where immigrants buy at high cost their right to sleep. But faced with racism and economic exploitation, immigrant workers communicate, organise...
May Pang lovingly recounts her life in rock & roll and the whirlwind 18 months spent as friend, lover, and confidante to one of the towering figures of popular culture, John Lennon, in this funny, touching, and vibrant portrait of first love.
A film about the career and methods of the master silent comedy filmmaker.
Algiers. From the port to the souks, passing through the Jardin d'Essai, Dominique Cabrera transports us to the land where she was born, on the other side of the Mediterranean "where the sea is saltier". If most of the pieds-noirs left Algeria in the summer of 1962, some -a minority- remained. By going to meet them, the director makes her own inner journey.
Writer and historian Dr Helen Castor explores the life - and death - of Joan of Arc. Joan was an extraordinary figure - a female warrior in an age that believed women couldn't fight, let alone lead an army. But Joan was driven by faith and today, more than ever, we are acutely aware of the power of faith to drive actions for good or ill. Since her death, Joan has become an icon for almost everyone: the left and the right, Catholics and Protestants, traditionalists and feminists. But where, in all of this, is the real Joan - the experiences of a teenage peasant girl who achieved the seemingly impossible? Through an astonishing manuscript, we can hear Joan's own words at her trial and, as Helen unpicks Joan's story and places her back in the world that she inhabited, the real human Joan emerges.
Chambord, the most impressive castle in the Loire Valley, in France, a truly Renaissance treasure, has always been an enigma to generations of historians. Why did King Francis I (1494-1547), who commissioned it, embark on this epic project in the heart of the marshlands in 1519? What significance did he want the castle to have? What role did his friend, Italian genius Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) play? Was he the architect or who was?
Utilizing potent TV interviews and many forgotten performances from his 30-year career, we are immersed into Frank Zappa’s world while experiencing two distinct facets of his complex character. At once Zappa was both a charismatic composer who reveled in the joy of performing and, in the next moment, a fiercely intelligent and brutally honest interviewee whose convictions only got stronger as his career ascended.
A renowned painter and a free-thinker, Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun is still considered ahead of her time. Follow the artist's adventures over the course of her nearly 90-year life in this captivating docudrama.
A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.
The perfect body as an object of cult worship. Based on the mass sports and body worship movement of the 1920s, the film propagates physical training and shows in stylized documentary scenes aspects of physical hygiene, gymnastics, sports and dancing as well as scenes in which supposed sportsmen of antiquity pose naked.
The opening of the Kiel Canal in Germany by Kaiser Wilhelm II on 20 June 1895.
The film uses stop-frame animation to create maps on the screen, and showed the then-current military situation in the Dardanelles, using various maps to assist understanding. Small cardboard cut-outs show the deployment of men and ships. Intertitles explain tactics, and shelling explosions are illustrated by clouds of cotton wool.
An evocative portrait of people having orgasms, lingering on the silent classical face of ecstasy.
Frank Scheffer's (collage like) documentary on the American composer and rock guitarist Frank Zappa, as broadcast by VPRO in the Netherlands April 22,2007. Most of what’s on here is seen before, particularly in Roelof Kier’s 1971 documentary and/or Scheffer’s own documentary “A present day composer refuses to die”. But there is some new stuff too, particularly interviews with Denny Walley, Haskell Wekler, Elliot Ingber and Bruce Fowler.
Exploring the wit, work and world of Joe Orton through his own words, and the testimony of those who knew him and worked with him.
The French team —on home soil— was always going to be in contention for the title of World Champion. It did not disappoint its fans. France '98 was not short on drama or controversy, in equal measure and this is captured most effectively on this film. The 1998 film was shot on Super 16 mm film and includes the most complete and extensive coverage ever, with each match being filmed from more angles than any previous film.
In France’s last presidential election, Marine Le Pen, a right-wing candidate, won over 30 per cent of the vote after an attempt to rebrand a party long associated with her controversial father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. See how three of her supporters faced similar obstacles in changing the narrative.
The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.
Pépé le Moko, one of France's most wanted criminals, hides out in the Casbah section of Algiers. He knows police will be waiting for him if he tries to leave the city. When Pépé meets Gaby, a gorgeous woman from Paris who is lost in the Casbah, he falls for her.
Set in 1959, Diner shows how five young men resist their adulthood and seek refuge in their beloved Diner. The mundane, childish, and titillating details of their lives are shared. But the golden moments pass, and the men shoulder their responsibilities, leaving the Diner behind.
Dah and Jocelyn come from former French colonies to coach their rooster, "S'en fout la mort", for an illicit cock-fight in the basement of a restaurant.
Kids being raised by same-sex couples are growing in numbers worldwide. We are in a Gayby-Boom. But who are these kids? What do they think about having same-sex parents? And do they face different issues to other kids? At a time when the world is debating marriage equality, these questions are more pertinent than ever. Told from the perspective of the kids, Gayby Baby is intimate and sometimes humorous account of four children and their families.
Short documentary directed by Jean Vigo about the French swimmer Jean Taris. The film is notable for the many innovative techniques that Vigo uses, including close ups and freeze frames of the swimmer's body.
On a hot Sunday morning, Nathalie Sanchez, an unemployed hair stylist, walks across the Causses plateau in search of a shepherd. When she finds one, he tells her that he has lost his flock. They walk together and while chatting they meet several times a shepherd's son turned outlaw, Carol Izba. The latter, despite being pursued by a famous bounty killer, Pool, proves unable to leave the region...
A portrait of the daily life of justice, the day-to-day petty crime in Bogotá, a city accustomed to violence and inequality. Each story, a trifle, a social reality that Colombian law always tries to punish.
A documentary ostensibly about Anna, a young drug addict taken off the streets by one of the filmmakers. Through her they attempt to explore the social issues from their hippie perspective, instead they create a revealing, uncomfortable self-portrait and inadvertently raise questions about documentary film-making.
A group of people traveling on a stagecoach find their journey complicated by the threat of Geronimo, and learn something about each other in the process.
James Bond is sent to investigate the connection between a North Korean terrorist and a diamond mogul, who is funding the development of an international space weapon.
In 1962 Hong Kong, neighbors Su Li-zhen (Mrs. Chan) and Chow Mo-wan (Mr. Chow) discover their spouses are having an affair. As they spend time together, they develop feelings for each other, but their relationship remains chaste and unspoken, reflecting societal constraints and their own moral compass.
Two leading computer scientists work toward their goal of Technological Singularity, as a radical anti-technology organization fights to prevent them from creating a world where computers can transcend the abilities of the human brain.
In his second year of fighting crime, Batman uncovers corruption in Gotham City that connects to his own family while facing a serial killer known as the Riddler.
As Agnes slowly dies of cancer, her sisters are so immersed in their own psychic pains that they are unable to offer her the support she needs.
Five years after a zombie outbreak, the men and women of R-Division hunt down and destroy the undead. When they see signs of a second outbreak, they fear humanity may not survive.
The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer's role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.
Upon waking from the dream of a theater peopled entirely by numerous Buster Keatons, a lowly stage hand causes havoc everywhere he works.
A woman with psychic powers has a vision of a murder that took place in a house owned by her husband.
After a doctor kills his mistress and himself while researching the mysterious previous owner of his Boston home, his colleague, Dr. Norman Boyle, takes over his studies and moves his family into the Boston mansion. Soon after, Boyle's young son Bob becomes plagued by visions of a young girl, who warns him of the danger within the house.
