USA – 2004 – 163 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY THOM ANDERSEN
LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF is an essay on how the movies have depicted Los Angeles a city symphony in reverse — a symphony with many directions and speeds. A critical history — and counter-history — of Los Angeles via clips from an eclectic list of movies. Many of them are well known (Chinatown, Blade Runner, L.A. Confidential); others are rarer finds (The Exiles, Bush Mama, Killer of Sheep).
USA – 2007 – 81 MIN – COLOUR / BLACK & WHITE - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY JOE SWANBERG
Alex, Tim, and Chris view the women in their lives through the dimensions of a computer screen or the lens of a camera-phone, as they struggle to balance their online fantasies and addictions with the demands of real life.
USA – 2010 – 84 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY MIKE OTT
When her car breaks down on a site-seeing tour of California, a Japanese student winds up stranded in a small desert town.
Exhilarated by a sudden sense of freedom, she extends her stay and finds friendship, romance, and what promises to be a new home. But as she pulls back the layers on this unlikely paradise, she discovers a different America than the one in her dreams.
JAPAN / FRANCE – 2012 – 109 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN JAPANESE WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
A FILM BY ABBAS KIAROSTAMI
An old man and a young woman meet in Tokyo. She knows nothing about him, he thinks he knows her. He welcomes her into his home, she offers him her body. But the web that is woven between them in the space of twenty-four hours bears no relation to the circumstances of their encounter.
FRANCE / KYRGYZSTAN / GERMANY / NETHERLANDS – 2010 – 80 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN KIRGHIZ WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
A FILM BY AKTAN ARYTM KUBAT
They call him "Svet-ake" ("Mr. Light"). The electrician is responsible for bringing more than just light to the people around him. Like moths, everybody is drawn to his kindness: those with short circuits in their electricity, and those with short circuits in their marriage, those who have taken all the power in the city, and those who have given up the will to live. He helps everyone and is everywhere. He doesn't even shy from breaking the law, rewinding an old and lonely pensioner's electricity meter so that he doesn't owe the State, but rather the State owes him.
USA / CANADA – 2014 – 118 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY KAT COIRO
From director Kat Coiro, and writers Kat Coiro and Krysten Ritter comes L!FE HAPPENS, a comedy centered on three young women – Kim (Krysten Ritter), Deena (Kate Bosworth) and Laura (Rachel Bilson) – who all live under the same roof in Los Angeles. When one of Kim’s one-night-stands results in an unexpected pregnancy, things take a sudden turn for the trio.
FRANCE / UNITED KINGDOM / USA – 2012 – 87 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY LUCIEN CASTAING-TAYLOR & VÉRÉNA PARAVEL
LEVIATHAN is a feature-length film about men at sea and fish on boats. It offers an appreciation for the sensory experience, labor, and political and ecological stakes of one of the oldest endeavors that has been an important part of human history since the Paleolithic. Shot off the coast of the mythic city of Moby Dick, with eleven cameras swapping hands between the filmmakers and fishermen, in an effort to create a form of collective experimentation that gives free reign to the perspectives of both fishermen and their catch, the film seeks to capture the many ways in which human, animal, and machine; beauty and horror; and life and death all merge in uncanny ways in the world of contemporary commercial fishing.
USA – 2010 – 112 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY MICHAEL EPSTEIN
As the world remembers John Lennon on what would have been his 70th birthday, and the 30th anniversary of his death, LENNONYC takes an intimate look at the time Lennon, Yoko Ono and their son, Sean, spent living in New York City during the 1970s. LENNONYC features never-before heard studio recordings from the Double Fantasy sessions, never-before-seen outtakes from Lennon in concert, and home movies that have only recently been transferred to video. Featuring exclusive interviews with Ono - who cooperated extensively with the production and offers an unprecedented level of access - and with artists who worked closely with Lennon during this period (including Elton John and photographer Bob Gruen), LENNONYC paints a revealing portrait of the legend’s momentous years in Manhattan, the final years of a remarkable life cut remarkably short.
FRANCE – 2011 – 93 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN FRENCH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
A FILM BY AKI KAURISMÄKI
Marcel Marx, a former author and a well-known Bohemian, has retreated into a voluntary exile in the port city of Le Havre, where he feels he has reached a closer rapport with the people serving them in the occupation of the honourable, but not too profitable, of a shoe-shiner. He has buried his dreams of a literary breakthrough and lives happily within the triangle of his favourite bar, his work, and his wife Arletty, when fate suddenly throws in his path an underage immigrant refugee from the darkest Africa.
2013/ 88 MINUTES / ENGLISH AND SPANISH WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
A FILM BY RAYA MARTIN AND MARK PERANSON
STARRING: ALEX ROSS PERRY, GABINO RODRÍGUEZ, IAZUA LARIOS WITH THE AMICABLE PARTICIPATION OF RENÉ REDZEPI
A filmmaker (Alex Ross Perry), along with his local guide (Gabino Rodríguez), traverse the Yucatán in the days leading up to the “end of the world” with the idea of making his last movie. They look at possible locations, journeying to Chichen Itza on December 21, encountering a surrealistic gathering of New Agers and Mayan mystics. They meet a local TV reporter (Iazua Larios), who the filmmaker casts in his psychedelic Western. After the film is shot, the misunderstood and egomaniacal filmmaker decides to remain in Mexico, editing his masterpiece, forever.
USA – 2011 – 95 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY BILL HANEY
In the valleys of Appalachia, a battle is being fought over a mountain. It is a battle with severe consequences that affect every American, regardless of their social status, economic background or where they live. It is a battle that has taken many lives and continues to do so the longer it is waged. It is a battle over protecting our health and environment from the destructive power of Big Coal.
USA – 2014 – 105 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH & JAPANESE
A FILM BY DAVID ZELLNER
In this darkly comedic odyssey, Academy Award nominee Rinko Kikuchi (Babel, Pacific Rim) stars as Kumiko, a frustrated Office Lady whose imagination transcends the confines of her mundane life. Kumiko becomes obsessed with a mysterious, battered VHS tape of a popular film she’s mistaken for a documentary, fixating on a scene where a suitcase of stolen cash is buried in the desolate, frozen landscape of North Dakota. Believing this treasure to be real, she leaves behind Tokyo and her beloved rabbit Bunzo to recover it – and finds herself on a dangerous adventure unlike anything she’s seen in the movies.
USA – 2011 – 84 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY VIKRAM GANDHI
Kumaré is an enlightened guru from the East who builds a following of loyal disciples in the West. But Kumaré is not real. He is an American filmmaker named Vikram Gandhi, who has transformed himself into Kumaré as the centerpiece of a social experiment designed to explore and test one of the world's most sacred taboos.
AUSTRALIA – 2006 – 104 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY SHANE JACOBSON
GERMANY – 2008 – 93 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN GERMAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
A FILM BY CHRISTIAN PETZOLD
Jerichow, a town in Germany’s northeast lies in an impoverished area with few jobs to be had. Following his mother’s death Thomas returns to his hometown, a former soldier who has been dishonourably discharged from the army. He has inherited his mother’s house and wants to renovate it and look for job.
USA – 2010 – 93 MIN – COLOUR / BLACK & WHITE - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY TAMRA DAVIES
This thoroughly engaging documentary, charts the meteoric rise and fall of the inimitable New York painter with rock-star status and one of the leading lights of late-20th-century art. The film is centered on a rare interview that director and friend Tamra Davis shot with Basquiat over twenty years ago. Much can be gleaned from insider interviews and archival footage, but it is Basquiat's own words and work that powerfully convey the mystique and allure of both the artist and the man.
USA – 2003 – 88 MIN – COLOUR / BLACK & WHITE - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY CHAD FREIDRICHS
JANDEK ON CORWOOD is the 88-minute documentary that explores this man, his world and his music. Jandek released his first album, Ready for the House, in 1978 on his own record label, Corwood Industries (he is, of course, the only artist on this label). The release went relatively overlooked until a review by Phil Milstein appeared in Op magazine in 1980. Bolstered by that slight measure of notice, Jandek set about releasing at least one album per year over the next quarter century of his unique brand of cacophonous rock and suicide-note blues.
FRANCE – 2008 – 94 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN FRENCH
A FILM BY SERGE BROMBERG
In 1964, Henri-Georges Clouzot chose Romy Schneider, age 26, and Serge Reggiani, 42, to be the stars of L’ENFER. It was an enigmatic and original project with an unlimited budget that was to be a cinematic “event” upon its release. But after three weeks of shooting, things took a turn for the worse. The project was stopped, and the images, which were said to be “incredible,” would remain unseen. These images, forgotten for over half a century, were recently found and are more breathtaking than legend had predicted. They tell us of a unique film about madness and jealousy, filmed in the first-person, the story of an ill-fated film shoot, and of Henri-Georges Clouzot, who had given free reign to his filmmaking genius. Never has Romy been so beautiful and hypnotic. Never will an auteur be as close and as passionately linked to a hero he has created.
UNITED KINGDOM – 2007 – 94 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN ENGLISH
A FILM BY ZAK PENN
FEATURING WERNER HERZOG, ZAC PENN, KITANA BAKER, GABRIEL BERISTAIN, MICHEAL KARNOW, JOHN BAILEY, ROBERT O'MEARA AND JEFF GOLDBLUMY
In the Summer of 2003, acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog set out to make a documentary about Scotland's infamous Loch Ness, purported home of a prehistoric creature known as "Nessie." Herzog's stated intent was "to explore the origin and the necessity of the monster" rather than to look for the creature itself. The film was to be called "Enigma of Loch Ness."
At the time Herzog began production, noted cinematographer and filmmaker John Bailey was already directing a documentary about him, tentatively called "Herzog in Wonderland." This would not be the first time that Herzog would be profiled while making a film, but it would perhaps be the last.
CHINA – 2010 – 118 MIN – COLOUR - FEATURE - IN MANDARIN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES
A FILM BY JIA ZHANGE KE
Shanghai has hosted all kinds of people – revolutionaries, capitalists, politicians, soldiers, artists, and gangsters. Shanghai has also hosted revolutions, assassinations, love stories.
After the Chinese Communists’ victory in 1949, thousands of Shanghaiers left for Hong Kong and Taiwan. To leave meant being separated from home for thirty years; to stay meant suffering through the Cultural Revolution and China’s other political disasters.
Eighteen people from these three cities — Shanghai, Taipei and Hong Kong — recall their lives in Shanghai. Their personal experiences, like eighteen chapters of a novel, tell stories of Shanghai lives from the 1930s to 2010.
An eternally wandering soul returns to Shanghai and, walking along the banks of the Huangpu River, awakens to all the changes the city has undergone.
