Polka Graph

Documentary on Frank Zappa.

A contemporary take on the 17th-century genre of the pastiche, this delightful Baroque fantasy brings together some of the greatest arias and ensembles by Handel, Vivaldi, Rameau, Purcell, and other composers with a new English libretto by Jeremy Sams, inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The all-star cast is headed by David Daniels as Prospero, Joyce DiDonato as Sycorax, Danielle de Niese as Ariel, Luca Pisaroni as Caliban, and the legendary Plácido Domingo as Neptune. Early music specialist William Christie conducts this dazzling world-premiere production, designed and directed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch.

Cinderella has to stay home while her evil stepsisters go to the ball. You know the rest except everyone here is a penguin (even the mice that become the "horses") and the lost slipper is more like a swimming flipper.

The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.

A semi-fictionalized documentary about a day in the life of Australian musician Nick Cave's persona.

Animated clay paintings tell the true story of the last house on a sinking island in the Chesapeake Bay, a large and important estuary and waterway in Maryland, on the East Coast of the United States. In an Old-Time Music ballad, the house sings of its life and the creatures it has sheltered during its lifetime journey from tree, to timber, to home, to an ultimate return to nature. It contemplates time, environmental change, and the rise of the seas.

Beyond Silence is about a family and a young girl’s coming of age story. This German film looks into the lives of the deaf and at a story about the love for music. A girl who has always had to translate speech into sign language for her deaf parents yet when her love for playing music grows strong she must decide to continue doing something she cannot share with her parents.

Naked, on the back of a sheep, soft office worker Willie rides trough the forest. His body is still in the office, but his mind wanders between dangerous flowers, li-los and an imaginary friendship for a soft sheep.

It's 1961, two years after the original Grease gang graduated, and there's a new crop of seniors and new members of the coolest cliques on campus, the Pink Ladies and T-Birds. Michael Carrington is the new kid in school - but he's been branded a brainiac. Can he fix up an old motorcycle, don a leather jacket, avoid a rumble with the leader of the T-Birds, and win the heart of Pink Lady Stephanie?

A sweeping multigenerational story set against the backdrop of the raw, roaring New York City of the late 1980s; adoption, teen pregnancy, drugs, hardcore punk rock, the unbridled optimism and reckless stupidity of the young—and old—are all major elements in this heart-aching tale of the son of diehard hippies and his strange odyssey through the extremes of late 20th century youth culture.

The adventures of two amiably aimless metal-head friends, Wayne and Garth. From Wayne's basement, the pair broadcast a talk-show called "Wayne's World" on local public access television. The show comes to the attention of a sleazy network executive who wants to produce a big-budget version of "Wayne's World"—and he also wants Wayne's girlfriend, a rock singer named Cassandra. Wayne and Garth have to battle the executive not only to save their show, but also Cassandra.

A look at the lives of 19th-century composers Clara and Robert Schumann.

In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Satrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.

A documentary on the once promising American rock bands The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. The friendship between respective founders, Anton Newcombe and Courtney Taylor, escalated into bitter rivalry as the Dandy Warhols garnered major international success while the Brian Jonestown Massacre imploded in a haze of drugs.

Martina and Lupita are two housemaids who steal shoes and clothes from their boss Marcela, trying to impress Lupita's boyfriend. When Marcela founds out about the robbery, she and her friend Marifer go looking for them to retrieve her stuff and bring them to justice. "What did you tell God?" is a comedy that uses Juan Gabriel's songs.

Documentary that follows the lives of two pirates and their community on the Somali coastline; what are the incentives of the pirates, why did they become pirates, how did they grow up in a country with political chaos, war and extreme poverty? The narrative structure is built around two interweaving story-lines; one depicting the "present", the daily lives of the pirates and their community, and the second in the "past", revealing through epic animation, the unfolding of a recent hijacking.

An abstract experimental short film from Jordan Belson.

Film about the Bahian singer dives into the moment when shy Gracinha becomes Gal Costa, during the violent, innovative and mind-blowing years that helped shape Brazil's greatest singer.

The scene is set in front of a French chateau. The camera chases improbable incidents across the screen. Many are constructed out of one of Jordan's favorite engravings illustrators: Poyet. Duels occur on a tight rope. Heavier-than- air machines fly (and sometimes crash). Below guns spear exploding spheres. The timing of the animation is exquisite, existing in an atmosphere balanced between frenzy and delight.

Silhouette fairy tale film about a man who wins his true love with the help of the "wee folk".