Monuments Are Here

Two countries, two restaurants, one vision. At Gabriela Cámara's acclaimed Contramar in Mexico City, the welcoming, uniformed waiters are as beloved by diners as the menu featuring fresh, local seafood caught within 24 hours. The entire staff sees themselves as part of an extended family. Meanwhile at Cala in San Francisco, Cámara hires staff from different backgrounds and cultures, including ex-felons and ex-addicts, who view the work as an important opportunity to grow as individuals. A Tale of Two Kitchens explores the ways in which a restaurant can serve as a place of both dignity and community.

An obituary for Victor Jara, the Chilean folksinger who was murdered in a football stadium by the military junta during the days of the September 1973 coup.

Acclaimed artist Abdou Ouologuem delves into the legend and legacy of the richest person in the history of the world, the 14th century Malian king Mansa Musa, who has been almost entirely wiped from recorded history.

Low Kok Kee is 67. He runs a print shop in Chinatown, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Foto Pak Tai has been faithfully serving the photography and printing needs of the local community since the 1940's. With the advent of the digital age and a rapidly fluctuating appetite of the young and hip, Pak Tai is a business in decline.

Sharing her journey from child to teen activist, Georgie Stone looks back at her life and historic fight for transgender rights in this documentary.

A 16 year old girl recalls the last moments of her summer vacation, spent with friends in the Laurentians north of Montreal. She reminisces about their talks on life, death, love, and God. Shot in direct cinema style, working from a script that left room for the teenagers to improvise and express their own thoughts, the film sought to capture the immediacy of the youths presence their bodies, their language, their environment.

Internet comedian Carl Déman from the humor group JLC lived a life that looked glorious. But beneath the surface was a terrible gambling addiction that almost cost him his life. In 2019, he and other gambling addicts struggle to stay afloat in a contemporary age marinated in gambling advertising. Carl wants to ask those who make the advertising how they think and wonders why the advertising profiles now also come from the world of culture and entertainment.

The story puts İlhan Çomak at the center, even though he is not physically present in the film. It focuses on the 21 years that İlhan spent in prison and his family’s experience of those years without him. The narrative is constructed through the letters İlhan wrote and aims to describe his life, his emotions and longings. The film constructs İlhan’s history through a chronology in the prison but refrains from restricting it only to a “prisoner’s quest for justice”, and rather tells a story of the situations he finds himself in over the years and his emotions and their equivalents in life.

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Rolling Stones – Hearts for Prague

Any given Sunday of 1974 in Spain, soccer games in several stadiums, the sarcastic voice of commentators, the inevitable presence of advertising. Goal! The victors and the defeated.

Follows the story of "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the thirteen summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in his attempt to protect the grizzly bears. The film is full of unique images and a look into the spirit of a man who sacrificed himself for nature.

Ra Paulette digs cathedral-like, 'eighth wonder of the world' art caves into the sandstone cliffs of Northern New Mexico. Each creation takes years to complete, and each is a masterwork. But patrons who have commissioned caves have cut off nearly all of his projects due to artistic differences. Fed up, Ra has chosen to forego all commissions to create his own Magnum Opus, a massive 10-year project.

Adlon recounts the making of the sculpture, "Kugelkaryatide" the sphere that stood in the center of Tobin Plaza between the two towers of the World Trade Center. The film follows the sculpture from its creation as the largest bronze sculpture of recent times to the aftermath, where it now stands, heavily scarred, in Battery Park.

An autobiographical essay film structured as a letter to the director’s young daughter, "Où en êtes-vous, Bertrand Bonello?" weaves clips from Bonello’s films, excerpts from his scripts, pop songs, and snippets of original footage into a lyrical, reflexive cinematic self-portrait. "Où en êtes-vous?" is a collection initiated by Centre Pompidou, who asked directors to make retrospective and introspective films.

Kytarista

This short film examines the origins of several superstitions including crossing your fingers, knocking on wood, rabbit's feet, and breaking champagne bottles to christen ships, plus the role of superstitions in the Flying Dutchman tale.

Handbook of Movie Theaters’ History is a documentary about the history, the development in the present days and the future of movie theaters in the city of Turin, Italy. It mixes the documentary language with comedy and fiction, and is enriched by interviews to some of the most important voices of Turin cinematography. The film follows the evolution of movie theaters by enlightening its main milestones: the pre-cinema experiences in the late 19th Century, the colossals and the movie cathedrals of the silent era, the arthouse theaters, the National Museum of Cinema, the Torino Film Festival, the movie theaters system today and the main hypothesis about its future.

Behind-the-scenes documentary of one morning on the set of "Gerry" directed by Gus Van Sant.

An essay film on the editing of erotic movies.