John Berry

The making of FRANCES, a retrospective documentary.

While hiking in the countryside near a coastal town in Normandy, two young lovers have a spat and separate. The woman is run down by a ghostly Land Rover and disappears. Meanwhile, her beau comes to a big old house where he is taken in by an old and lonely man. It doesn't take long for the young man to realize that his host is wacko and terrified of dying and is willing to take extreme measures to prevent this from happening. Though billed as a thriller, director Michael Ferry chose to focus on the inner thoughts and fears of the protagonists rather than exciting action sequences. All of the violence occurs off screen.

From Czarist Russia's Moscow Art Theatre to Hollywood's biggest film, narrator Gregory Peck joins an A-list of Hollywood stars to take us through the odyssey of two Russian born Hollywood legends: The great acting teacher Michael Chekhov and the amazing director George Shdanoff.

André Fragman, nicknamed "Fairbanks" after his childhood idol by his film projectionist father, returns home from military service. He meets and falls in love with Marie, an aspiring actress who is rehearsing for a stage production of 'Alice in Wonderland'. All his attempts to find a job and a way out end up in failure, his friends Étienne and Jean-Pierre are powerless to help him, and the dreamy yet desperate hero loses his mind.

An American film-star and an unknown British actress meet on set in Rome. She is angry when he refuses to speak to her journalist father, but later they have a passionate relationship.

Portrait de groupe is a film series of filmed portraits that shows all kinds of groups gathered under family pretexts, friendly or professional, in a single fixed, wide shot (style: family photo) and silent of 3 minutes and 20 seconds.

Three young women at a hair salon all like the son of the clothing store proprietors across the mall. Although Robby is selfish and shallow, he's appealing to Lili, the salon's manager, who's trendy and also the salon-owner's moll; to Mado, who's innocent and sweet; and to Pascale, who's intelligent but passive and downcast. Robby's dad tells him to grow up and see beyond the mercurial Lili, so he proposes suddenly to Mado. She's delighted, but the day before the wedding, Lili returns to give Robby another look. In the background, a Yank who was a soldier in France in World War II returns to Paris and tries to recapture the love of his wartime sweetheart, Robby's mom.

A rich woman and a calculating insurance agent plot to kill her unsuspecting husband after he signs a double indemnity policy. Against a backdrop of distinctly Californian settings, the partners in crime plan the perfect murder to collect the insurance, which pays double if the death is accidental.

This film was not intended to stand by itself, but was designed as the cinematic aspect of Welles' Mercury Theatre stage presentation of William Gillette's 1894 comedy about a New York playboy who flees from the violent husband of his mistress and borrows the identity of a plantation owner in Cuba who is expecting the arrival of a mail order bride. The film component of the performance was ultimately never screened due to the absence of projection facilities at the venue. Long-believed to be lost, a workprint was discovered in 2008 and the film had its premiere in 2013.

During the 1950s, in Portuguese Mozambique, small-time American hustler, ex-soldier, ex-boxer and adventurer Johnny Jordan is looking for a new gig. His opportunity comes in the form of a local shipping tycoon and importer Moreno who offers Johnny a job after Johnny saves Moreno from an armed mugger on the waterfront.

Inside the Blue Note nightclub one night in 1959 Paris, an aged, ailing jazzman coaxes an eloquent wail from his tenor sax. Outside, a young Parisian too broke to buy a glass of wine strains to hear those notes. Soon they will form a friendship that sparks a final burst of genius.

Hyacinth, a former matador who lives miserably with his nephew Pepote, receives a letter reminding him that, as agreed a few days before, he must participate in a bullfight to be held that same afternoon.