Filmmakers in Action

Delving into a century of genre films that by turns utilized, caricatured, exploited, sidelined, and finally embraced them, this is the untold history of black Americans in Hollywood through their connection to the horror genre.

Heute Programmwechsel

March 27, 1977. At 2:00 in the afternoon, a thick fog rolled into the usually quiet Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. On the runway sat two fully loaded jumbo airliners. An explosion at a nearby airport had redirected air traffic to the undermanned airfield at Tenerife. Within three hours 583 people would be dead. This film reconstructs the moments leading up to the tragedy.

A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

Spanish filmmaker David Trueba travels to New York to interview Woody Allen, who reviews his filmography and his many personal and artistic concerns.

Who, apart from moviegoers, knows Alice Guy (1873-1968) today? However, she was the first woman behind the camera and the first female director and producer of fiction films in history.

Wayne Adam Ford is a convicted serial killer on Death Row. Victoria Redstall is a model who trained to be a cop. Together, and against all odds, Ford and Redstall take us on a roadtrip into the mind of a serial killer and attempt to find the identity of his first victim. All that remained of her was a dismembered torso.

Filmmakers Ibrahim, Suliman, Eltayeb and Manar, close friends for many years, left their motherland in the sixties and seventies to study film abroad and founded the Sudanese Film Group in 1989. After years of distance and exile, they are reunited, hoping to finally make their old dream come true: to bring back cinema to Sudan by reopening the Halfaia Cinema, a dilapidated theater in Khartoum.

Tongpan is a 1977 Thai 16 mm black-and-white docudrama that re-creates a seminar that took place in Northeast Thailand in 1975 to discuss the proposed Pa-Mong Dam on the Mekong. Interwoven are sequences depicting a poor farmer, Tongpan, who had lost his land to another dam some years before, and his struggles to make ends meet.

In his time of greatest splendor, the singer Miguel 'Bambino' Vargas Jiménez (1940-99) was the last frontier of flamenco, an immense musical genre that he developed and brought closer to large audiences: an artist of artists, the idol of the roadside bars, whose inimitable style, scenic magnetism and heartbreaking personality made of his figure a myth, a king without a kingdom, a giant of the popular music of the 20th century.

The life and career of legendary Hollywood glamour portrait photographer George Hurrell is profiled by his contemporaries including other photographers and actors he has shot.

This documentary goes beneath the surface of our favorite films, seeking to better understand the way we view love, relationships, and romance. From clumsy meet cutes to rain-soaked declarations of love, these films reflect our experiences but are often just as problematic as they are comforting. Helped by a chorus of critics, actors, and filmmakers, and original songs by her band Summer Camp, director Elizabeth Sankey embarks on a journey of investigation and self-discovery.

The story of the Londoners recruited to be freedom fighters during the South African apartheid during the 1960s.

An account of the life of the Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), the first female artist to get international acclaim, recognized as a modern icon, due to her personality and her unyielding defense of her professional integrity.

Documentary detailing the extensive number of shots long lost from constant film re-cutting of 1925's great silent cinema classic Battleship Potemkin in the last 80 years, and how many of those shots have been returned.

In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's performances and films punctuate interviews with artists, critics, friends and foes to create an engaging portrait of the artist. Widely known for his banned queer erotica film Flaming Creatures, Smith was an innovator and firebrand who influenced artists such as Andy Warhol and John Waters.

Ten years after an enormous open-pit gold mine began operations in Malartic, the hoped-for economic miracle is nothing more than a mirage. Filmmaker Nicolas Paquet explores the glaring contrast between the town’s decline and the wealth of the mining company, along with the mechanisms of an opaque decision-making system in which ordinary people have little say. Part anthropological study, part investigation into the corridors of power, Malartic addresses the fundamental issue of sustainable and fair land management.

O Filme da Minha Vida

A collection of restored prints from the Lumière Brothers.

Billy Yeager is a musician, singer-songwriter, filmmaker, activist, humanitarian and an all around living breathing performance artist. He has written and recorded over 2600 songs, produced 6 films and been discovered many times by several well known artists, yet most of his works are extremely hard to find and are considered to be very valuable by serious collectors, but if it can't change the world, the artist wants no part of it. Turning his back on the music and film industries, Yeager retreats into the desert to make his films and create his music.