How Ghibli Was Born

Follows the behind-the-scenes work of Studio Ghibli, focusing on the notable figures Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, and Toshio Suzuki.

Studio Ghibli is Japan's most successful animation studio, with helmers Hayao Miyazaki ("Spirited Away," "My Neighbor Totoro") and Isao Takahata ("Grave of The Fireflies," "The Tale of Princess Kaguya") creating a bonanza for producer/prexy Toshio Suzuki. Generously adorned with clips from their films and their influences, the docu follows Ghibli's arc from a mid-'60s rebellion against working conditions at Toei Co. to its present powerhouse position, complete with public fun park. All interviews are illuminating, but Miyazaki is teasingly confined to pic's tete-a-tete finale with esteemed French comic artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud. Meeting of the wizened European, whose imprint is on films from "Blade Runner" to "The Fifth Element," and the apparently relaxed Nipponese helmer makes an interesting contrast, and will be of special interest to Francophiles. All credits are impeccable

A documentary about the Ghibli Museum. It features Goro Miyazaki speaking with Isao Takahata about the "charm" of the museum and its various influences. Goro tours the viewer around the museum, explaining the intricate details that his father, Hayao Miyazaki made during its construction. The documentary highlights the strong European influences in the museum's architecture, featuring footage of the medieval mountainous city of Calcata in Italy and the historic port city of Genoa, which Miyazaki had visited in the past. These trips would go on to influencing the imagery seen in Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, and Spirited Away.

Stepping closer and closer to his retirement, Hayao Miyazaki has no other means, but to choose up a new director. Ghibli's given some creative freedoms in the past, but they hardly lasted. Maro, an animator of 37 years. has done a good deed of works in his prior days. Thus, Miyazaki-san decides to appoint him as a new director for the upcoming feature of 'Arrietty the Borrower'.

In Italy in the 1930s, sky pirates in biplanes terrorize wealthy cruise ships as they sail the Adriatic Sea. The only pilot brave enough to stop the scourge is the mysterious Porco Rosso, a former World War I flying ace who was somehow turned into a pig during the war. As he prepares to battle the pirate crew's American ace, Porco Rosso enlists the help of spunky girl mechanic Fio Piccolo and his longtime friend Madame Gina.

At Kichijōji Station, Tokyo, Taku Morisaki glimpses a familiar woman on the platform opposite boarding a train. Later, her photo falls from a shelf as he exits his apartment before flying to Kōchi Prefecture. Picking it up, he looks at it briefly before leaving. As the aeroplane takes off, he narrates the events that brought her into his life...

Something bizarre has come over the land. The kingdom is deteriorating. People are beginning to act strange... What's even more strange is that people are beginning to see dragons, which shouldn't enter the world of humans. Due to all these bizarre events, Ged, a wandering wizard, is investigating the cause. During his journey, he meets Prince Arren, a young distraught teenage boy. While Arren may look like a shy young teen, he has a severe dark side, which grants him strength, hatred, ruthlessness and has no mercy, especially when it comes to protecting Teru. For the witch Kumo this is a perfect opportunity. She can use the boy's "fears" against the very one who would help him, Ged.

The Yamadas are a typical middle class Japanese family in urban Tokyo and this film shows us a variety of episodes of their lives. With tales that range from the humorous to the heartbreaking, we see this family cope with life's little conflicts, problems, and joys in their own way.

The dialogue-less film follows the major life stages of a castaway on a deserted tropical island populated by turtles, crabs and birds.

The Raccoons of the Tama Hills are being forced from their homes by the rapid development of houses and shopping malls. As it becomes harder to find food and shelter, they decide to band together and fight back. The Raccoons practice and perfect the ancient art of transformation until they are even able to appear as humans in hilarious circumstances.

Intruders: Abductees Speak Out! presents an intimate portrait of self-proclaimed alien abductees who are coping with the daily turmoil of being regularly taken by entities not from this world. Are they simply mistaken or disturbed? Or are they - as some experts contend - unwitting participants in an ominous alien agenda?

Hunting memories and shooting.

A dark and visceral journey. A language that tears apart the morbid nature of the dead-old primal human eyes. No warning was given. No mercy was shown.

Shot in the US between November 1979 and September 1980 in Connecticut's South Norwalk region, this documentary focuses on the city's economic downturn and its collapse under such difficult conditions. Through raising perplexing questions about the sustainability of the then relevant popular solutions for the prevalent conditions, the film brings forward the conflicting perspectives of the local residents, former and current shopkeepers, artists, politicians, environmentalists, urban planners, and developers.

Strasbourg was home to one of three Reich Universities founded by the Nazis, known as a project close to Hitler's heart. The university, founded in 1941, is infamous for the human experiments performed on KZ prisoners by the professors of the medical faculty. What did its dean, Johannes Stein, grandfather of documentarian Kirsten Esch, know of these crimes?

French soccer fans, celebrities and athletes retrace the exhilarating events of July 12, 1998, as France earned a historic win in the World Cup final.

Les Yeux dans les bleus - Bonus Tignes c'est Foot

This deceptively quiet film presents a portrait of Aljafaris family in Ramleh and Jaffa that hovers between documentary and cinematic memoir, guided by a nimble camera moving calmly but ceaselessly around the rooms of homes inhabited, damaged and ruined. The title refers to the roof missing from the house where Aljafaris family resettled in 1948, a home unfinished, an incomplete construction project. The use of stillness and off-screen space creates a sense of suspension, of time spent waiting, of aftermath, of lives lived elsewhere. Aljafaris striking use of his cast, his family, reveals the influence of Bressons use of nonprofessional actors as models whose performances emanate from their presence, not from acting.

Il Etait Une Voix - Thierry Roland

France 98 : Nous nous sommes tant aimés