Thee Backslacpkping With Media

The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.

As the filmmaker pursues a creative career, she goes looking for others in similar positions to explore what her decision entails. Mixing experimental art and documentary film, the work explores the real and imaginary boundaries of creativity.

Lucía and Valeria take out three Tarot cards that reveal the first two dishes of a menu that takes them from Embún, Spain to Llanquihue, Chile; the towns of their grandmothers. Among improvised still lifes, maps and video calls, the friends try to discover the meaning of the third card through a ritual that connects both continents.

Part lyrical document, part farce, Animals Under Anaesthesia: Speculations On the Dreamlife of Beasts explores the imaginary unconscious minds of animals. Images of sex, death and the natural world are made manifest in the murky and disquieting dreams of a dog, a cat, a pig and a rabbit.

Pelle vegetale. Un'intervista

Is building our own starship Enterprise possible? Will we ever travel between the stars as easily as they do in Star Trek? JJ Abrams' new feature, Star Trek Into Darkness, hits the screen in a golden age of scientific discoveries. HISTORY is there, giving viewers a deep look behind the scenes, on the set, and into the science–amazing new exoplanets, the physics of Warp drive, and the ideas behind how we might one day live in a Star Trek Universe.

The Iranian filmmaker Narges Kalhor, daughter of a former advisor of Ahmadinejad's, has been living in exile in Germany for four years. When she hears that the fellow Iranian rapper Shahin Najafi, who is also living in exile in Germany, faces death threats and has to hide because of one of his songs, she doesn't hesitate and has to find him. On her search she encounters fear everywhere. Narges Kalhor has to face her inconvenient memories of suppression, hatred and anger for her past in Iran.

When Francois Truffaut approached Alfred Hitchcock in 1962 with the idea of having a long conversation with him about his work and publishing this in book form, he didn't imagine that more than four years would pass before Le Cinéma selon Hitchcock finally appeared in 1966. Not only in France but all over the world, Truffaut's Hitchcock interview developed over the years into a standard bible of film literature. In 1983, three years after Hitchcock's death, Truffaut decided to expand his by now legendary book to include a concluding chapter and have it published as the "Edition définitive". This film describes the genesis of the "Hitchbook" and throws light on the strange friendship between two completely different men. The centrepieces are the extracts from the original sound recordings of the interview with the voices of Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, and Helen Scott – recordings which have never been heard in public before.

Water as a physical and metaphysical metaphor and background of human existence. A docu-fictional essay between the Brazilian Sertão-deserts and the Northern-German flood areas of Dithmarschen. Dramas and day-by-day-observations in times of climate change.

A tribute to the late, great French director Francois Truffaut, this documentary was undoubtedly named after his last movie, Vivement Dimanche!, released in 1983. Included in this overview of Truffaut's contribution to filmmaking are clips from 14 of his movies arranged according to the themes he favored. These include childhood, literature, the cinema itself, romance, marriage, and death.

Le Club: Claude Jade

Photographic and sound story, through the encounter of characters with their stories of a time without end.

Every weekend for six years, Jessica takes a bus from NYC, where she lives and works as a set decorator, to Boston, her hometown, where she cares for her dad, Aloysius, who is 87 and has advanced Alzheimer's disease.

Plastic Galaxy explores the ground breaking and breathtaking world of 'Star Wars' toys. Through interviews with former Kenner employees, experts, authors, and collectors, the documentary looks at the toys' history, influence, and the passions they elicit today.

Director Chung Ji-Young criticizes the thought that older directors have difficulties in making certain movies. Actress Yoon Jin-Seo agonizes over her identity as an actress. In 2009, before the movie "Unbowed" was made, they met and planned a documentary about Korean movies, including the processes a Korean movie goes through and difficulites. "Ari Ari the Korean Cinema" is a documentary with interviews of Korean directors, actors and actresses.

The Vietnam War during the JFK years and beyond. Made in 1972 in the filmmaker's apartment, without documentary footage of the war, metaphors are created through the animation of images and objects, and through guerrilla skits. By rejecting the authority of traditional documentary footage, the anarchist spirit of individual responsibility is established. This is history from one person's point of view, rather than a definitive proclamation.

"All Inclusive" tells the story of seven women who are going on holidays to Morocco, getting out of the hotel and confronting women from Morocco. They will look for their own way of life in the desert, confront their world, looking at the reality that surrounds them.

Knokke, Belgium. A small mundane coastal town, home to the beau-monde. To compete with Venice and Cannes, the posh casino hosts the second ‘World Festival of Film and the Arts’ in 1949, organised in part by the Royal Cinematheque of Belgium. To celebrate cinema’s 50 year existence, they put together a side program showcasing the medium in all its shapes and forms: surrealist film, absolute film, dadaist films, abstract film,… The side program would soon become a festival in its own right: ‘EXPRMNTL’, dedicated to experimental cinema, and would become a mythical gathering of the avant-garde…

Two women – one passive and resigned, the other aggressive and domineering – interact in various locations in New York city. The film explores the dynamic between them before ending with a showdown at the roller-coaster on Coney Island.

An experimental docu-fiction short from hours of collected material shot by the director. Different scenes, from drunk parties with friends to shots of the Dutch landscape during a train ride, are cut together to see if a narrative story can be constructed from nothing but randomly shot footage.