Hands Scraping

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.

A veteran high school teacher befriends a younger art teacher, who is having an affair with one of her 15-year-old students. However, her intentions with this new "friend" also go well beyond platonic friendship.

A high-speed drive through the streets of Paris.

After a dreadful incident coupled with an ungovernable paroxysm of violence, a butcher will fall into a downward spiral that will burn to the ground whatever dignity still remained in him.

A man is being haunted by a masked stranger. The only language used in the movie comes from three (inter) title cards and a few sentences of sermon-like talk in Danish. Some of the talk is modified citations from the bible and similar sources.

A boy grows a seed into a flower while the world around him marches on.

Otto Betulle

A solitary man works in a tall office building. The only moment in his drab life that's out of the ordinary each year seems to be opening the birthday card and gift from his mother. Usually it's a tie, but one year it's an accordion. It goes into the closet with his many ties. A year or two later, he discovers what happens to the papers he processes every day. His discovery sends him first to the building's top floor, then to his closet.

"I especially hope to inspire young women, because I often feel like so much emphasis is put on how beautiful you are, and how thin you are, and not a lot of emphasis is put on what you can do and how smart you are. I'd like to change the emphasis of what's important when looking at a woman." Filmed in San Francisco in 2000, Margaret Kilgallen (1967-2001) discusses the female figures she incorporated into many of her paintings and graffiti tags. Loosely based on women she discovered while listening to folk records, watching buck dance videos, or reading about the history of swimming, Kilgallen painted her heroines to inspire others and to change how society looks at women. Three of Kilgallen's heroines—Matokie Slaughter, Algia Mae Hinton, and Fanny Durack—are shown and heard through archival recordings. Kilgallen is shown tagging train cars with her husband, artist Barry McGee, in a Bay Area rail yard and painting in her studio at UC Berkeley (source: Art21).

A pawnbroker's assistant deals with his grumpy boss, his annoying co-worker and some eccentric customers as he flirts with the pawnbroker's daughter, until a perfidious crook with bad intentions arrives at the pawnshop.

A tailor's apprentice burns Count Broko's clothes while ironing them and the tailor fires him. Later, the tailor discovers a note explaining that the count cannot attend a dance party, so he dresses as such to take his place; but the apprentice has also gone to the mansion where the party is celebrated and bumps into the tailor in disguise…

Hermitage: The Power of Art

A middle aged woman is desperately wondering in the streets looking for her daughter. A man finds her before she does.

Using an array of gloves in different styles and from different historical periods, the film is a short history of the cinema - from silent movies via pastiches of Buñuel and Fellini and Close Encounters of the Third Kind to a futurist junkyard where tin cans become animated police cars in a city of urban decay.

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.

In this unique, compelling film, those who knew him speak freely, some for the first time, to reveal the many mysteries of Francis Bacon.

A documentary-style capturing of the life of Ab, a young struggling artist trying to find her way, all while dealing with unwanted company.

From Brooklyn to the Bronx, Soho to Greenwich, Union Square to Wall Street... Join us and the friends, collaborators and gallery owners who supported Jean-Michel Basquiat throughout his life. The first ever recognized graffiti artist, who saw international success as a neo-expressionist painter in the 80s, Basquiat is a true contemporary hero who died at the peak of his career.

The film is a study of nature and significance of the hands in cinema. Besides review of movements and actions, which creates an independent story, it reveals interactions and interdependence of cinematic traditions of various authors, countries and periods

1984, Franco-German border. A Berlin gallery owner transports the flagship sculpture from his collection for a major exhibition. Faced with the object, the French customs officer hesitates: is it really a work of art?