Austrian visual artist Josef Dabernig always brings a delightfully fresh, odd-angled approach to cinema, and this competitor at Oberhausen is no different. A clever, droll opposition of haunted architecture à la Last Year at Marienbad, lingering guests played by family & friends, and a fatal story.
We continue our partnership with the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, one of the premiere venues for the art of the short film, to show a selection of the best from the International Competition of the 2017 festival. We begin with a stunning prize-winning doc made in a volcano’s shadow.
From Alien and Paris, Texas to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, there’s little disputing that Harry Dean Stanton is one of the most distinct character actors to ever grace American cinema. This intimate and rare docu-portrait of the man attempts to unfurl his mysterious essence and tangled past.
We close our series dedicated to Moretti’s early comedies with a self-inquiry into filmmaking, political ennui, and men’s relations with their mothers. Sound familiar? Yet this film only expands on those which came before it with a more intimate confessional style aimed at the state of modern Italy.
We continue our excursion into the world of Nanni Moretti’s comedies with this early work which delicately unfurls the lives of its young characters—their anxieties, politics and romantic ambitions—with a graceful sense of humor distinct to the director. A slight yet key work in Moretti’s oeuvre.
If you only know Palme d’Or winner The Son’s Room, our triple bill of Nanni Moretti’s early comedies will be a special treat. Shot on Super 8, this debut feature already boasts a perfect balance between autobiography, social commentary and satire, launching what would become the Moretti touch.
With remarkable variety of form and a graceful touch, this expansive yet tremendously sensitive debut by Huang Ya-li is an epic and detailed immersion into a remarkable group of writers in Taiwan. Spanning three decades of political turmoil and war, we movingly watch their struggle to create art.
Jeff Lipsky has quietly delivered a few of the strangest independents in recent years, and the beguiling and un-categorizable Molly’s Theory of Relativity is no exception. A portrait of a relationship? A family drama? A philosophical quandary? Or perhaps it’s just unsolvable–it is for you to decide.
A quick-witted, and spirited youth movie from France, Hélène Zimmer’s film may not be anything new in terms of subject matter, but what it lacks in narrative invention it makes up for with an expressive sense of humor and an accuracy to the experience of young women. A unsung gem.
Straight from Human Rights Watch Film Festival, one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights, comes this intimate and powerfully human reportage by two filmmaking sisters. It provides an essential and fresh perspective of an on-going crisis.
The journey of a dream chased—and a dream awakened. A beautiful tale—and true story—spun from archival material telling of the infectious hopes and idealism of mid-century communism joyously loved and chased and then confronted with reality.
Our final group portrait by Becker is tragically his final film—dying after its completion at the age of 53—but also his best known and greatest. A singular prison escape film—based on a true story and made in collaboration with a participant—five inmates must stick together in order to break out.
Our next immersion into the vibrant group dynamics of French master orchestrator Jacques Becker turns from the crimes of Paris to high fashion. An energetic, remarkably realistic portrayal of the cultural scene in the 1940s, its legacy can be felt in everything from Funny Face to Saint Laurent.
Jacques Becker, best known as an assistant to Jean Renoir, is in fact a consummate, under-known auteur particularly attuned to group dynamics, whether of lovers, artists or—as in this classic crime film—gangsters. Becker guides an unbeatable cast in this brilliant, world-weary genre masterpiece.
We’ve partnered with the ongoing Human Rights Watch Film Festival to bring you this award-winning documentary from its selection. An unflinching view of the direct experiences of two Syrians amidst civil war, this is political cinema at its most compelling and immediate.
Behold the distance between 1950, when Max Ophüls made his classic adaptation of Schnitzler’s play, and 1964, when Roger Vadim (……And God Created Woman), riding New Wave fervor, adapted the same! Ribald and brazen rather than elegant—and starring new generation icons Jane Fonda and Anna Karina.
Persecution exists everywhere, but the cultural context can radically change its tenor, as it does in Tanzania with those who have albinism. This doc reveals the country’s superstitiously violent attitude, telling the powerful stories of two children, victims of under-acknowledged discrimination.
Lav’s Golden Leopard winner in Locarno is an epic remembrance of a period of transition that marked the traumatic time of dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ rule. The film’s structure unfurls with slow power, growing increasingly complex, political, and emotional over its five-and-a-half hour story.
Embrace your inner animal in this dreamily morphing Indonesian film that competed in the Berlinale. Using Jakarta’s zoo as a cinematic playground—akin to Jia Zhangke’s amusement park-centered The World—for animals, magic, and love, whimsical mythology turns to longing as a girl turns into an adult.
A quintessential import for all you Francophiles out there (we know who you are, and you are one of us!) coming from the director of L’auberge espagnole and Russian Dolls. This César-nominated drama stars that duo’s charming Romain Duris, alongside Juliette Binoche and Fabrice Luchini.
The late piano genius Oleg Karavaichuk used to walk around the Hermitage like a ghost, a bit as if he owned the palace. In an attempt to portray his singular brilliance, Venezuela-born, Spain-based Duque has made a tender, otherworldly film about freedom, timelessness, and the fragility of beauty.
15 years and one world war later, Carné, Arletty and Gabin re-unite, and while the result isn’t the classic that is Le jour se lève, it is still an undeniable pleasure to see these two together again. Watching great actors age on-screen, chemistry intact, is one of the beguiling pleasures of cinema.
In this week’s double feature we see a brilliant collaboration—between director Carné & icons Arletty and Jean Gabin—across the decades, beginning with this masterpiece of the 1930s. An obvious influence on film noir, Carné beautifully draws out the fatal romanticism embodied in his gorgeous stars.
Okay, the title is a cheap attention-getter, but the subjects of this doc are certainly deserved of attention, a wouldn’t-believe-it-unless-you-see-it pair of Dutch sisters of the night. By turns raucous, tragic, charming and introspective, the film pays homage to a unique history of sex work.
The last film in our retrospective on Philippe Garrel (and the last ever shot by Raoul Coutard) sees this highly personal director—whose dramas flirt with autobiography, reveries and memories recast in celluloid—explore the emotional turmoil of a movie production whose story is undeniably personal.
An eloquent dramatic inquiry into life during the Civil War and slavery, Chris Eska’s film is the independent alternative to Django Unchained (also from 2013) due to its complex consideration of the racial politics of the time. A difficult yet entirely necessary work of historical filmmaking.
“A bubbling fountain of imagination and sorrow collected in a single person,” we wrote of the fascinating sightless heroine of Norwegian screenwriter Eskil Vogt’s feature debut. A sensitive, intriguing leap to the director’s chair by the screenwriter of Oslo, August 31st and Louder than Bombs
An icon of the American West and of the vibrant promise of the Bay Area, the Golden Gate bridge has its own infamous side as a magnet for suicide attempts. Eric Steel’s film is a powerful documentary of observation (and of some intervention) of man-made achievement and its unique locus desperation.
With Weddings and Babies, Morris Engel continued his investigation into the politics of relationships in addition to further developing the refreshing new aesthetics of his independent cinema. The result? A marvelous observational vision of romantic struggle, led by two unforgettable performances.
Before Breathless or Shadows helped invent independent cinema, there was Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin. Together they pioneered the use of shooting on location, non-professional actors and handheld cinematography to weave intimate humanist portraits of working class life in New York City.