Image Makers: The Adventures of America's Pioneer Cinematographers

A look at avant-garde filmmaker Marie Menken.

As a visually radical memoir, CAMERAPERSON draws on the remarkable footage that filmmaker Kirsten Johnson has shot and reframes it in ways that illuminate moments and situations that have personally affected her. What emerges is an elegant meditation on the relationship between truth and the camera frame, as Johnson transforms scenes that have been presented on Festival screens as one kind of truth into another kind of story—one about personal journey, craft, and direct human connection.

A bunch of British working class amateur filmmakers with nothing left to lose tackle one of Hollywood's greatest musicals in order to save their beloved Club. Britain’s oldest amateur filmmaking club struggles to survive, as its members grow old amid flickering memories and hardships. In the northern industrial town of Bradford, England, a handful of diehard amateur filmmakers desperately cling to their dreams, and to each other, in this warm and funny look at shared artistic folly that speaks to the delusional dreamer in us all.

Documentary on the Thriller, Noir, Fantasy, Science Fiction genders in the Greek cinema for the last 50 years. It is a collage of authentic scenes and trailers of 50 films as presented by 4 girls, bearing the name of the gender they represent. 50 years (1959-2009), 50 films, 45 directors, script writers, authors, critics, producers.

The story of Rudy Ray Moore, who created the iconic big screen pimp character Dolemite in the 1970s.

Documentary about a bankrupt Jordanian entrepreneur and an unemployed Irish actress who hatch a plan to scam £2.5m off the British taxman by faking the production of a £20m movie. But they are found out, arrested and then bailed. While out on bail, they decide to prove their innocence by actually making a film. They hire a former nightclub bouncer, now a self-made micro-budget gangster film director. In 2011, Paul Knight makes their movie for under £100,000 with a cast of soap and gangster movie stars including Danny Midwinter, Marc Bannerman and Loose Women's Andrea McLean. The film's title is A Landscape of Lies. But the cinematic alibi does not convince the jury when the trial runs in 2013. The producers are convicted of tax fraud and given long sentences.

Four Belgian-Moroccan filmmakers in their thirties produce their latest film. Since adolescence they have managed to produce over thirty low-budget movies in which they often have played the main characters. Their movies are not only the sum of their fears and desires, but also a way of projecting an image of themselves towards their own community and the outside world. When one of them decides to radically change his life, their friendship and the future of their common cinema goals are threatened.

It’s a story that made headlines: “Festival Film Banned!” In the late 1960s, the majority of films screened in Australia were censored in some way or another. DELETE the lovemaking. CUT the ‘Open Mouth Kissing’. REMOVE the fondling of the breast sequence. Deemed too ‘inappropriate’ and ‘morally corrupting’ for Australian eyes, these scenes were hacked from feature films and locked away in government archives. When young Sydney Film Festival director David Stratton attempted to program a Swedish film that the censors believed contained ACTUAL sex, a scandal erupted. In a mash-up of never-before-seen banned clippings, SMUT HOUNDS tells the story of how seventy-seven seconds of celluloid scandalised a government and transformed Australian cinema.

Frank Connor, stills photographer on The Elephant Man, discusses his work on the film as well as the evolution of his career, with some very interesting comments about the 'old days' and David Lynch's working methods.

Initially, Ambivalent Future was intended as a film about the production of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Bright Future". But director Fujii has taken the "behind the scenes"-concept to unprecedented heights with this unique documentary offering a close look into the world of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, the auteur. Scenes from the surprisingly low key and relaxed production of "Bright Future" are of course sprinkled liberally throughout the documentary, but between these we are treated to interesting and revealing interviews with actors, producers and Kurosawa's many other collaborators. And perhaps the most surprising thing of all is how much of Kurosawa there is, talking candidly about his working methods and the philosophy behind it all.

In 1981, iconic Turkish film director escapes jail to France, his last work re-creating with other exiles the prison lives they left behind.

NOTFILM is a feature-length experimental essay on FILM -- its author Samuel Beckett, its star Buster Keaton, its production and its philosophical implications -- utilizing additional outtakes, never before heard audio recordings of the production meetings, and other rare archival elements.

Lloyd Kaufman and the Troma Team struggle against incompetence, conflict and "the man" in order to complete their latest piece of art, Terror Firmer. The documentarians hold nothing back in the fight for truly independent cinema.

In the film we find some scrap of slow motion they see a Monica Vitti trying to cry, a meeting between Antonioni and Grifi, a film shot in the concentration camp of Auschwitz with a survivor who recounts those awful moments, a glimpse of Palestine today, Grifi's reflections on the prison.

Gina Carano in Training

Within the framework of the “Half a Century of Locarno, Thoughts on the Future” project, seven directors, Idrissa Ouedraogo among them, have the chance to express their vision of the future of the film industry by means of a short film. “The state of the film industry the world is a vast issue,” says the director from Burkina Faso. “I would rather speak about my films, about African films and their relationship with the world”.

A look at the legendary Czech sound designer and his profession. Editor and documentary filmmaker Adéla Špaljová has her father Ivo Špalj talk about his life, career, and working methods. Over the course of his long life, sound designer Ivo Špalj (*1940) has collaborated on hundreds of films and become a mentor for at least one generation of men and women behind the mixing board. This gentle documentary also shows “Engi” (as he is known to his colleagues) again working with Jan Švankmajer, whose films he has lent their typical, dense, and sophisticated sound mix.

A documentary of uncompromising, outlaw, cult underground filmmaker Jim Van Bebber, covering his life from 2010-2015 while he tries to make a comeback and make a new exploitation film after years of struggling to work.

In this documentary about low-budget filmmaking in upstate New York, you'll learn how affordable digital-video technology has changed the lives of the artists behind action flicks, monster movies, nonfiction stories, and comedies. "Every Pixel Tells a Story" introduces viewers to a wide range of independent filmmakers, all of whom prove that with a little ingenuity, access to the right technology, and plenty of tenacity, filmmakers can still practice their craft 3,000 miles from Hollywood. In fact, "Every Pixel Tells a Story" is an example of what can be accomplished on digital video. Producer-director Peter Hanson shot and edited the movie in a matter of weeks using a camcorder, a computer editing system, and a $30 microphone from Radio Shack, all while spending a fraction of what the documentary would have cost had it been shot on film.

A documentary on the life and career of Victor Fleming, director of such iconic movies as The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.