REM

To mark the 30th anniversary of L'Étrange Festival, Gaumont is opening up its archives to offer the best of its most secret, bizarre and crazy images, digitized for the first time. A unique program featuring black magic, surrealistic happenings, world records, the evolution of feminism, wild bets, vanished places, forgotten inventions and other delights.

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.

The original 54-minute documentary, as broadcast by Channel Four on 20 June 1984, after which the animated links by the Quay Brothers were recompiled as a separate short.

Fame driven Ken Dean becomes the subject of a documentary when he attempts to start a pornography company. Following the failure of the company, Ken uses his father's religious music to start a Christian rock band but finds himself trapped in a gay conversion cult.

British surrealist Leonora Carrington was a key part of the surrealist movement during its heyday in Paris and yet, until recently, remained a virtual unknown in the country of her birth. This film explores her dramatic evolution from British debutante to artist in exile, living out her days in Mexico City, and takes us on a journey into her darkly strange and cinematic world.

Surrealist master Luis Buñuel is a towering figure in the world of cinema history, directing such groundbreaking works as Un Chien Andalou, Exterminating Angels, and That Obscure Object of Desire, yet his personal life was clouded in myth and paradox. Though sexually diffident, he frequently worked in the erotic drama genre; though personally quite conservative, his films are florid, flamboyant, and utterly bizarre.

This controversial film from director Glauber Rocha records the funeral of his friend, major Brazilian painter Emiliano Di Cavalcanti.

Documentary about the making of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

A documentary about surrealist artist Salvador Dali, narrated by Orson Welles.

Canceled short film.

In this thought-provoking documentary, filmmaker Madeline Hunt-Ehrlich delves into the rediscovery of Edmonia Lewis's monumental sculpture, The Death of Cleopatra (1876).

An omnium-gatherum of film, poem, and song excerpts contextually juxtaposed in an attempt to explore masculinity, alienation, and identity in a post-industrial society.

Through interspersed conversation and prose, this experimental documentary follows a poet and a neuroscientist as they explore the definition of love, what it means, and why it matters.

An in-depth look at artist/filmmaker David Lynch's movies, paintings, drawings, photographs, and various other works of art. Features interview footage and commentary by family members, friends, fans, and people he's worked with, as well as behind-the-scenes antics of some of his most critically praised efforts.

Rare glimpse into the fascinating mind of one of cinema's greatest directors. Footage was gathered over a two year period and documents David Lynch's many creative interests as well as his passion for filmmaking. It’s “abstract trip” which reveals new aspects of the personality and the cinematographic vision of one of the exceptional authors of contemporary cinema. Personal portrait of David Lynch and his creative universe.

Welcome to the funbubble! Over 2 hours of bizarre entertainment. Meet Shaye Saint John, former supermodel who now has no arms or legs and her special friend Kiki (a burnt doll). This series of shorts documents the daily collision of Shaye's glamorous fantasies with the realities of the physical limitations of her everyday life. These films with their juxtaposition of child-like imagery can be genuinely disturbing without a hint of blood, violence, nudity, cursing, or off-color subject matter of any sort. Watching Shaye do her schtick is akin to watching a segment of one of John Waters' early flicks. There is no question about the fine line between maddness and genius here -- it's madness, plain and simple, dizzying in its detachment to reality. Depending on your outlook, Shaye Saint John is either a true testimony to the power of art to rise above adversity or these films are hidden footage from a ward for the criminally insane!

Lion vs The Little People is a documentary comedy about the greatest internet hoax of all time. In 2005, a hoax news post masquerading as a bonafide BBC news website article, announced a fight had taken place between a lion and an army of 42 fighting dwarfs. The hoax spread like wild fire across the internet before eventually being accepted to be fake. While the article’s veracity has been diminished, the myth lives on in this outrageous deadpan comedy.

Mix of surrealist images of bubbles and smoke with some documentation of the world lived by Man Ray and Lee Miller.

There is a gap separating the surrealism from the Interwar period and that of the post-war era, and that is the way this movement would understand racial difference. At first, the other or "primitive" was the opposite of the bourgeois subject. In this documentary, Sarah Maldoror interviews one of the most influential surrealist poets from the former surrealism, while at the same time we witness the movement's anachronist views regarding the affirmation of other identities.

This free-form film is a self-portrait, which revisits more than 40 years of the author’s filmography and questions the major stations of his life, while capturing the political tremors of the time.