In 2014, Tsai Ming-Liang was invited to make a film for the MarseilleFID, Marseille International Film Festival. Since he was not familiar with Marseille, he decided to make a film as tourist, capturing the beautiful Mediterranean sunshine in the late summer of that year. He also invited famous French actor, Denis Lavant, to appear alongside Lee Kang-Sheng playing Xuanzang. "Journey to the West" was invited to be the opening short film at the Berlin International Film Festival the same year.
Off the coast of Marseille, near a rocky cliff, a Greek ship was discovered at a depth of forty meters in Mediterranean waters, loaded with amphorae and other pottery. The cargo has been lying on that sandy stretch of seabed for more than two thousand years. The documentary follows the dives of divers who recover cups, vases, plates and jars still full of wine. We are also witnessing new recovery systems, with the use of compressed air.
Riina - Le verità nascoste
In May of 1982 Julio Cortázar, the Argentinean writer and his companion in life, Carol Dunlop set out in their VW bus on a journey along the highway from Paris to Marseille that, for each of them, was to be their final one. Twenty-five years later, Océane Madelaine and Jocelyn Bonnerave set out to undertake the journey again.
La fabbrica fantasma - Verità sulla mia Bambola
Compilation of newsreel footage of atrocities, murders, natural disasters, aircraft accidents, and other spectacles involving violent death or extremes of human suffering
They're the real 'goodfellas': 'Joe Dogs' Iannuzzi, Tommy DelGiorno, 'Big Dom' Lofaro. For the first time on television, Mafia turncoats give personal accounts of life inside the Mob. In this shocking documentary, five high-ranking informants tell tales of murder, brutality, greed and vanity--and why they broke the Sicilian code of honor. The first generation of the American Mafia stood on the foundation of loyalty and a code of silence. The second and third generations traded their Sicilian traditions for government protection and instant personal gain. MOB STORIES presents five chilling narratives from five members of the underworld, most of whom are overwhelmed with fear and paranoia with the exception of “Fat Jackie”, a loyal lifelong mobster. Father and son team, Alan and Marc Levin, direct and produce an honest and personal portrayal of the demise of the Mafia.
The story of one of the most powerful Mob bosses of all time, Salvatore “Totò” Riina. After becoming the head of the Corleonesi family in 1974, he came to dominate Italian organised crime through a ruthless campaign of violence and terror that continued even after his eventual arrest and imprisonment.
Valérie Jouve is a weel-known photographer, and Grand Littoral is her first film. Out the outskirts of Marseille, in a landscape criss-crossed by motorways, railways and srubland paths, some figures that seem to be from her famous photos passby and bump into each other. They act as our guides in a tour without beginning or end. How do you look at a place without taking possession of it? How do you describe characters without confining them within a given plot? How do you make the transition from still shots to moving pictures? this brief, musical film leaves us asking these and other unresolved questions.
Richard Kuklinski was a devoted husband, a loving father...and a ruthless killer. A decade after HBO last visited him in prison, the convicted murderer, who freely admits having whacked more than 100 people in cold blood, takes viewers back inside his cold, calculating mind. In this follow-up to America Undercover's 1992 film The Iceman Tapes: Conversations with a Killer, Kuklinski provides all-new insights about his exploits as one of the Mafia's most notorious assassins...and reveals some shocking confessions for a number of previously unsolved murders.
Detroit Mob Confidential explores the history of Detroit's La Cosa Nostra Family, which, in many ways, is the most successful crime family in the United States. Detroit's family has had only 2 Dons, the current boss has served for 30 years and is the longest serving mob Don in America. The documentary consists of interviews with multiple FBI agents and Federal prosecutors as well as several mafia associates from the 1950's and 1960's. Topics such as the Detroit "Combination's" (as the Family is known) infiltration of Las Vegas casinos and their centrality to the disapearance of Jimmy Hoffa are discussed.
An extensive overview of organized crime operations in and infiltration of the Las Vegas casino and gaming industry, covering the years 1931-1987.
At the age of 8, Darrell overheard the details of his grandfathers murder, while hiding in the basement kitchen. The murder of James Fusaro had gangland signs, the newspapers shouted. As the news continued and rumors spread, the humiliation, shame, and fear of more violent attacks by Mafia, silenced the Fusaros. This silence was not without consequences; it became malignant and destroyed the family. By the time Darrell was 18, his close-knit Italian-American family, who celebrated so many good times together in their grandparents basement kitchen, was no more. In the documentary, The Basement, we witness this regular guy do extraordinary things through his acceptance, generosity and sense of humor.
Los Angeles District Attorney’s office professes to protect the residents of Los Angeles County by prosecuting violent and dangerous criminals and seeking justice for all. But there is a dark side to the LA DA’s operations, when it is utilized by powers-that-be to persecute whistleblowers, violate the civil rights of U.S. citizens and stop investigations of criminal elements.
Godfathers investigates the mob like no other documentary before it. From the mass immigration of Italians at the end of the 19th century to money laundering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2000, this up-to-date, feature-length production offers a unique perspective on the history of the Mafia as seen through the eyes of an Italian journalist. With newly discovered footage from Italian archives and rare interviews from both sides of the law, Godfathers probes the psychology, the sociology, and the economics behind this powerful yet secretive society. Some of the biggest names in mafia history are introduced, and the ways in which their political savvy helped them orchestrate many of history's major events is explained.
Visible from the sky scrapers of San Fransisco's financial district, Bayview is a deadly ghetto. Most of the young people here won't live to see their 25th birthday. At the age of 12, Devin Melvin was already armed and dangerous, but at age of 16 he has traded his gun for a camera and documents life inside one of America's deadliest ghettos. Prisoners of the Ghetto (2006) is a documentary TV-film by writer/director Walter Tauber.
A documentary about an extraordinary life of Ken Eto. The only Japanese American member of the Chicago mob, Ken survives three shots to the head from assassins sent by his boss. He enters the federal witness protection program and helps the government's efforts to fight the syndicate. He arrest gangsters and corrupt politicians, including former Governor of Illinois, George Ryan. Ken was a second generation Japanese American, who ran away from strict preacher father in California at the age of 14. He was interned in Minidoka, Idaho, and subsequently became a gambler, as well as an owner of bars and restaurants in Chicago. He was a chick magnet and also a ruthless operator who was feared by those who knew him.
In the late-80s and early-90s, two prosecutors went after the mob in Sicily. Archival footage, gruesome photographs and new interviews are shown.
Made in the form of an extended news report and narrated by journalist Dina Čolić-Anđelković, the film presents a snapshot of the chaotic Belgrade criminal underworld in the early 1990s which sprung up against the backdrop of Yugoslav wars. The film is composed of fragments from interviews with individuals directly involved with criminal activities either through perpetrating them or through trying to stop them.
Documentary about four maffia-like friends based in Amsterdam.