Hand Catching Lead

Working closely with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Sunflowers goes beyond a ‘virtual exhibition’, delving into the rich and complex stories behind each of the paintings to unveil the mysteries of the sunflowers. What did the flowers mean to Van Gogh, and why do they resonate so much with audiences today? With a striking portrayal of the artist by actor Jamie de Courcey and fascinating insights from art historians, botanists and everything in between, the film offers a unique insight into Van Gogh’s life and artwork.

Warsaw's Central Railway Station. 'Someone has fallen asleep, someone's waiting for somebody else. Maybe they'll come, maybe they won't. The film is about people looking for something.

Scene 23, Slow pan The wind whistles over the dykes of the Willebroek Canal. Armand sighs. The viewer should feel goose bumps under their thick sweater. Make it clear that at this moment, Armand is craving a cup of Borain coffee. Scene 456, Armand's farm Armand puts down his coffee cup. Through the window, he sees a beautiful Romanian refugee with AIDS playing the cello in the beet field. Behind Armand, his wife, a former RTBF announcer, commits suicide by hitting herself with hot potatoes. Scene 2,347, sublime landscape of Flanders Armand can't take it anymore: will he choose the position of deputy for the Vlaamse Blok or that of puppeteer subsidized by the CUCF? No one can say.

In this film, Laerte conjugates the body in the feminine, and scrutinizes concepts and prejudices. Not in search of an identity, but in search of un-identities. Laerte creates and sends creatures to face reality in the fictional world of comic strips as a vanguard of the self. And, on the streets, the one who becomes the fiction of a real character. Laerte, of all the bodies, and of none, complicates all binaries. In following Laerte, this documentary chooses to clothe the nudity beyond the skin we inhabit.

Emerson Hayes is a 60-year-old sculptor who lives in a caravan and works from an old shed in the back corner of her daughter’s coastal egg farm. When she is informed that her most acclaimed and last remaining work on public display is being replaced, she seeks a new home for it with family friend Lena, who curates a prestigious contemporary gallery. Lena, however, demands that Em present a fresh new work if she is to be considered for exhibition. As Em struggles to break out of her artistic rut, she is forced to reckon not only with her place in the art world, but with her entire identity.

A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

Before Words

Brian Clarke is one of Britain's hidden treasures. A painter of striking large canvases and the designer of some of the most exciting stained glass in the world today, he is better known abroad - especially in Germany and Switzerland - than in his own country and more widely recognised among critics, collectors and gallery owners than he is by the general public. In this visually striking documentary portrait made by award-winning film-maker Mark Kidel, Clarke returns to Lancashire where he grew up as a prodigy in a working class family and charts his meteoric rise during the punk years and eventual success as a stained glass artist working with some of the world's great architects, including Norman Foster and Arata Isozaki - and producing spectacular work in Japan, Brazil, the USA and Europe. Contributors include his close friend and architect Zaha Hadid, architect Peter Cook and art historian Martin Harrison.

A young scientist is kidnapped and taken to a house where his former mentor, a professor, is conducting experiments on shrinking humans.

A man entranced by his dreams and imagination is lovestruck with a French woman and feels he can show her his world.

Clouds 1969 by the British filmmaker Peter Gidal is a film comprised of ten minutes of looped footage of the sky, shot with a handheld camera using a zoom to achieve close-up images. Aside from the amorphous shapes of the clouds, the only forms to appear in the film are an aeroplane flying overhead and the side of a building, and these only as fleeting glimpses. The formless image of the sky and the repetition of the footage on a loop prevent any clear narrative development within the film. The minimal soundtrack consists of a sustained oscillating sine wave, consistently audible throughout the film without progression or climax. The work is shown as a projection and was not produced in an edition. The subject of the film can be said to be the material qualities of film itself: the grain, the light, the shadow and inconsistencies in the print.

A wealthy Japanese patron, enamored with Rousseau, offers an atypical and versatile filmmaker the opportunity to freely adapt Jean-Jacques Rousseau's epistolary novel into a film. The filmmaker brings together three young actors in a deserted palace above Clarens and begins shooting. Rousseau's tragedy then reverberates through the contemporary characters.

The multi-talented outsider artist Richard McMahan is on a quest to painstakingly re-create thousands of famous and not-so-famous paintings and artifacts–in miniature.

A portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.

A 13-minute documentary film depicting life in Prague.

A stream of mysterious rituals and symbols are encountered as a young boy journeys to school in the fantastical world of Kshya Tra Ghya.

Johnny Minotaur is a lyrical explosion of taboos: incest, intergenerational desire, pansexuality and autoeroticism are a few of the issues Charles Henri Ford grapples with through mythopoeic, sensual imagery, recitations of his diaries and a philosophical debate featuring an impressive narration by such artists as Salvador Dali, Allen Ginsberg, Warren Sonbert and Lynne Tillman.

The story of a Soviet military serviceman and a male Georgian dancer. An anti-violence film about the awakening of human instinct in an invader

A tramp tries to earn money by playing the violin, but he’s soon facing off against the jealous competition.

'Pedro', Liora Spilk's debut feature, paints a humorous and emotional portrait of Pedro Friedeberg, a Mexican plastic artist who became famous in the sixties for the creation of the hand chair. Between grumblings, ironies, reflections on art and disagreements, 'Pedro' achieves an endearing portrait of Friedeberg, and at the same time presents a tribute to friendship and creation.