Chris Marker’s The Case of the Grinning Cat (Chats perchés) follows the appearance of the yellow M. Chat graffiti across Paris in the early 2000s, using it as a lens to reflect on art, protest, and politics in the post-9/11 era. Blending street imagery with footage of global and local unrest, the film serves as a playful yet pointed companion to Marker’s earlier A Grin Without a Cat.
Clips from assorted television programs, B-movies, commercials, music performances, newsreels, bloopers, satirical short films and promotional and government films of the 1950s and 1960s are intercut together to tell a single story of various creatures and societal ills attacking American cities.
Director Nikita Mikhalkov documents the history of Russia from 1980 to 1991 by annually asking his daughter Anna such questions as "What do you love the most?", "What scares you the most?", "What do you want above anything" and "What do you hate the most?"
A psycho-geographic journey through London and its history, as undertaken by an unseen narrator and his companion, Robinson, at the time of the 1992 general election.
In the pantheon of predators, it's one of the greatest discoveries since the T-Rex: a snake 48 feet long, weighing in at 2,500 pounds. Uncovered from a treasure trove of fossils in a Colombian coal mine, this serpent is revealing a lost world of giant creatures. Travel back to the period following the extinction of dinosaurs and encounter this monster predator.
Morir en Madrid brings together several papers on the Spanish Civil War and integrates capturing different points of view, intended to represent the continuity of the suffering of the Spanish during the Franco regime. The death of Federico Garcia Lorca, Guernica, the defense of Madrid, the International Brigades, are some of the items comprised in this document.
High on shock and light on cultural relativism, this mondo collection of video strangeness features assorted dead (or dying) people, a sex change operation, inexplicable sex acts, and a bunch of other stuff the producers' could get the rights to cheaply.
Shot during the summer of 1970 at Fort Knox, Kentucky, Frederick Wiseman’s film Basic Training focuses on a group of men going through infantry training, showing how they are turned from civilians into soldiers. As well as being a unique portrait of the US army at work, the film is also a fascinating snapshot of a time and place at a defining moment in American history.
A surreal journey of a displaced spirit as he wanders in the interminable darkness through the temporal landscape of a quaint and isolated feudal-era fishing village. Guided by a series of faintly illuminated rooms, the wandering spirit comes upon ancient souls who take on physical forms as they recount their personal stories of daily existence, loss, and tragedy in the peasant community. Intrigued by his initial visit to a curiously distracted elderly woman, the spirit returns to her home in order to ask a fundamental question - "What is happiness?" - an existential query that is innocently answered with innate humility and accepted unknowingness.
A fascinating pictorial history of a New York City bar whose customers, from the hard-drinking working class Irish to the coiffed African American gay male, continually transform its focus during its 10-year reign.
Kate and Will Spicer's brother, Tom, has Fragile X Syndrome, the most common form of inherited learning disability. He is also a massive fan of Lars Ulrich from Metallica. They made a promise to Tom that they would get him to meet Lars. Tom's dream is their promise. Together they went on a Mission to Lars.
Shot by movie maestro Peter Whitehead, this film features rare full length performances from the classic late 60's Pink Floyd line-up at Sound Techniques London & material from the legendary '14 hour Technicolor Dream' extravaganza in April '67 at Alexandra Palace.
Members of the controversial group NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association) discuss why their organization supports "boys and men who have or desire engagements in sexual or emotional relationships."
Jia Zhangke travels with painter Liu Xiaodong from China to Thailand as they as they meet everyday workers in the throes of social turmoil. Liu Xiaodong is well-known for his monumental canvases, particularly those inspired by China's Three Gorges Dam project. Jia Zhangke visits Liu on the banks of Fengjie, a city about to be swallowed up by the Yangtze River. The area is in the process of being "de-constructed" by armies of shirtless male workers who form the subject of Liu's paintings. Liu and Jia next travel to Bangkok, where Liu paints Thai sex workers languishing in brothels. The two sets of paintings are united in their subjects' shared sense of malaise in the face of the dehumanizing labor afforded them.
The film is a study of Anton Szandor LaVey, leader of a cult of devil worshipers in San Francisco. He and his Church of Satan are shown performing a black mass, in which a nude woman serves as an altar and a boa constrictor wraps itself around a naked witch. Newsreel footage is included in which LaVey's neighbors are interviewed about the lion which he kept in his house until complaints resulted in the animal's removal to a zoo. The ideology of the Church of Satan is discussed--guilt rejection, sexual freedom, and self-indulgence.
FIGHTVILLE is about the art and sport of fighting: a microcosm of life, a physical manifestation of that other brutal contest called the American Dream...
NEAR DEATH is a film about the Medical Intensive Care Unit at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital. The film is concerned with how people face death. More specifically the film presents the complex interrelationships among patients, families, doctors, nurses, hospital staff and religious advisors as they confront the personal, ethical, medical, psychological, religious and legal issues involved in making decisions about whether or not to give life-sustaining treatment to dying patients.