Lloyd Kaufman and the Troma Team struggle against incompetence, conflict and "the man" in order to complete their latest piece of art, Terror Firmer. The documentarians hold nothing back in the fight for truly independent cinema.
Get the scoop on the legendary actor-director-New Yorker John Cassavetes straight from the mouth of his friend, peer and co-star Peter Falk (Columbo) in Paul Joyce’s documentary, Out of the Shadows: The Films of John Cassavetes. Falk lays bare the quirks and gifts of the director of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and A Woman Under the Influence, and star of De Palma’s The Fury and Tarantino favourite Mikey and Nicky, in this outright and honest interview.
A look at the life, work and importance of Czech filmmaker Karel Zeman (1910-89), a genius of world cinema, a wizard of special effects, revealing his sources of inspiration and his revolutionary filming techniques.
An essay film by filmmaker and archivist Sari Braithwaite, [Censored] offers an overview of film censorship in Australia, told through an ever-changing collage of images compiled from the footage that was cut from films released domestically between 1958 and 1971.
Hosted by Christopher Lee, this documentary examines the different actors who have portrayed Dracula over the years.
Diving Deep: The Life and Times of Mike deGruy, tells the story of Mike deGruy, an irrepressibly curious and enthusiastic underwater filmmaker who died suddenly in 2012. DeGruy filmed the oceans for more than three decades becoming as famous for his on camera storytelling as for his glorious, intimate visions of the sea and the creatures who live in it. Inspired to share his legacy as a filmmaker and storyteller, and to spread his mission for protecting the ocean, his wife and filmmaking partner Mimi deGruy returned to the edit room to produce Diving Deep: The Life and Times of Mike deGruy.
Pioneer filmmaker J. Stuart Blackton was intrigued by the idea of a film about the history of the movies as early as 1915. He finally released a 52-minute feature called The Film Parade that was shown in New York and favorably reviewed by "Variety" in 1933. He continued tinkering with the film for the rest of the decade, and later filmmakers and distributors used Blackton's footage for stock or to produce their own variously titled and truncated versions. -UCLA Film & Television Archive
The history of Frankenstein's journey from novel to stage to screen to icon.
Bearing Witness Native American Voices in Hollywood
Renouer avec le vivant
A behind-the-scenes look at the eleven-year process it took to make The Painted Bird. The narratives of director Václav Marhoul and actor Petr Kotlár weave their way through the various stages of the film's creation, offering their subjective views from the beginning to the last flap of a year-and-a-half long shoot.
Spain, 1960. French student Monique Roumette lives in Madrid on a scholarship. Thanks to a friend who works in the production company Uninci, she has the privilege of attending the shooting of Viridiana, a film directed by Luis Buñuel.
Initially, Ambivalent Future was intended as a film about the production of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Bright Future". But director Fujii has taken the "behind the scenes"-concept to unprecedented heights with this unique documentary offering a close look into the world of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the auteur. Scenes from the surprisingly low key and relaxed production of "Bright Future" are of course sprinkled liberally throughout the documentary, but between these we are treated to interesting and revealing interviews with actors, producers and Kurosawa's many other collaborators. And perhaps the most surprising thing of all is how much of Kurosawa there is, talking candidly about his working methods and the philosophy behind it all.
Díky, pane Kříženecký
Two great filmmakers discuss the evolution of film, 70mm and Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight".
In 1982, Wim Wenders asked 16 of his fellow directors to speak on the future of cinema, resulting in the film Room 666. Now, 40 years later, in Cannes, director Lubna Playoust asks Wim Wenders himself and a new generation of filmmakers (James Gray, Rebecca Zlotowski, Claire Denis, Olivier Assayas, Nadav Lapid, Asghar Farhadi, Alice Rohrwacher and more) the same question: “is cinema a language about to get lost, an art about to die?”
A documentary about the cultural effect of film censorship, focusing on the tumultuous times of the teens and early 1920s in America.
In the early nineties, before the massive gentrification of many of New York's then slums, several young people from very disparate backgrounds left their broken homes and ventured onto the brutal streets of the city. United by their love of skateboarding, they formed a family and built a unique lifestyle that eventually inspired Kids, a groundbreaking and outrageous film directed by photographer Larry Clark and released in 1995.
How did Marilyn Monroe become one of the greatest sex symbols of all time? What drove a prudish little Californian girl, who was not especially pretty nor exceptionally talented, to become this incredibly striking platinum blonde superstar? How did she become the icon capable of balancing innocence with raw sensuality, whilst continuing to captivate the masses to this day? How did she achieve this? And what price did she pay?
A film about the career and methods of the master silent comedy filmmaker.