Michael Dudok de Wit was asked by the famous Japanese animation studio Ghibli, to create his first feature length animated film. This would be Ghibli's first international co-production ever. Maarten Schmidt and Thomas Doebele followed Dudok de Wit and his team during the complex creative process for over two years. He is a perfectionist that is used to making his own hand drawn animated films by himself. For this new and timely production, he was assisted by a team of 20 to 30 artists from all over Europe.
A film pioneer, Binka Zhelyazkova was at the forefront of political cinema under Bulgaria's Communist dictatorship. Though she remained faithful to the communist ideals she became an avid critic of the regime and brought upon herself the wrath of its censorship. As a result four of her nine films were shelved and released to the public only after the fall of the regime in 1989, and Binka Zhelyazkova became known as the bad girl of Bulgarian cinema. A provocative portrait that reveals the pressures and complexities that arise when art is made under totalitarianism.
Retrospective documentary featuring interviews with Ethan Wiley, Sean S. Cunningham, Arye Gross and Jonathan Stark, among others.
A short documentary about the Making Of Hitchcock's "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943).
Our Cinema
Dinosaurs Vs. Apes: DINOSAUR MOVIES and HOLLYWOOD GOES APE! have been hailed as the definitive documentaries on the prehistoric and anthropoid creatures that have appeared on the silver screen. Filled with rare movie clips, behind-the-scenes footage and interviews.
Hollywood producer Alexander Meyerheimer has hired drunken writer Richard Benson to write his latest movie. Benson has been holed up in a Paris apartment supposedly working on the script for months, but instead has spent the time living it up. Benson now has just two days to the deadline and thus hires a temporary secretary, Gabrielle Simpson, to help him complete it in time.
In 1928, as the talkies threw the film industry and film language into turmoil, Chaplin decided that his Tramp character would not be heard. City Lights would not be a talking picture, but it would have a soundtrack. Chaplin personally composed a musical score and sound effects for the picture. With Peter Lord, the famous co-creator of Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit, we see how Chaplin became the king of slapstick comedy and the superstar of the movies.
The story of how a tiny, broke Silicon Valley startup slew giants of the movie rental world, warded off Amazon and forced movie making and distribution into the digital age.
When a Hollywood star mysteriously disappears in the middle of filming, the studio sends their fixer to get him back.
A budding director endeavors to research a merciless gangster for making a film on gangsterism. But his secret attempts to conduct the research fail when he gets caught for snooping.
Set in 1973 Spain, a struggling encyclopedia salesman and his wife take advantage of an offer to make adult films. The act turns him into an aspring legit filmmaker and her into an international sex symbol.
Take a front row seat as we sit down to chat with some of the creators and stars of the best and most beloved exploitation and grindhouse films of the 1970s and 80s. Featuring interviews with John Dugan (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Craig Reed (The Re-Animator), John Russo (Night of the Living Dead), Lynn Lowry (The Crazies), Carl Crew (Blood Diner), and many more independent horror veterans.
In a local cafeteria, an unlikely trio of friends argue about how to rob the bank from across the street. It all changes when the waitress who serves them discovers their plans.
The first feature-length documentary that fully explores how the toxic social and political Canadian context after 1968 created some of the most nihilistic and imaginative Canadian cult films of the 1970s and 80s and beyond.
Based on a true story, this is a subtle tale of re-affirmation of the identity of the artist following the Armenian Diaspora. It is an encounter with his alter-ego, a dialogue with his own conscience, a gradual dawning of the truth and an authentic glance at life... themes understandable by all. The film is an episode in the life of the director, a life full of surprises, and all the more so for being a cosmopolitan Armenian-American now standing on his native soil, his ultimate source of creative energy and ideas.
Amazing, but true: Fort Lee, New Jersey (just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan), was once the epicenter of American film production. This documentary of a truly bygone era combines photographs culled from private collections, as well as restored footage from such films as Thomas A. Edison's Rescued from an Eagle's Nest and D.W. Griffith's The New York Hat, filmed at the studios in Fort Lee.
A Midwestern ingenue arrives in Hollywood to try her luck as an actress. An incompetent agent hooks her up with a production company which specializes in low budget B-movie fair, which starts being plagued by strange, deadly accidents.
Zé Rocha is a director trying to shoot his first film. He dreams of making a professional movie, and starts shooting in 35mm. But as his budget begins to fade, he changes to Black-and-White, then gradually down to 16mm, Super-8 and, in the end, to his despair, to the video format. With the help of Edna Marla, producer who is searching for the Holy Grail of a genuinely 100% Brazilian celluloid; Dona Martírio, his mother, former left-wing activist; Guará Rodrigues, an underground Brazilian movie star; and Lila Lessa, who stars in a 6 p.m. soap opera, they develop strategies and outlandish plans to win the insane battle of filmmaking in Brazil.
As a film director works on his submission for a film festival, the mounting issues during production reveal what truly unfolds behind (the scenes) what we've seen.