A Useful Life

Ivanhoe Martin arrives in Kingston, Jamaica, looking for work and, after some initial struggles, lands a recording contract as a reggae singer. He records his first song, "The Harder They Come," but after a bitter dispute with a manipulative producer named Hilton, soon finds himself resorting to petty crime in order to pay the bills. He deals marijuana, kills some abusive cops and earns local folk hero status. Meanwhile, his record is topping the charts.

During the last years of Franco's dictatorship, Fernando, an old republican exile, returns to his home in a small Castilian village and befriends Aurora, a young and attractive teacher.

Raimundo, film producer, asks financial aid to his friend and producer J.C. to evaluate his own project. J.C. conditions his support to a change in Raimundo's style. Raimundo will have to make a movie aimed to the general audience and following the old producer's book: violence, sex, non-actors and slum. Raimundo does what he says, but an unexpected fact threatens the film's conclusion.

A documentary chronicle of one of our greatest directors.

A young aspiring screenwriter takes a ride along to research his script. But this is no ordinary ride along: he’s researching for a gangster film. And he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

Sussex, England, 1938. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, Thomasina and Martha Hanbury, two ingenious sisters, create LOLA, a miraculous machine.

A beautiful fugitive draws a shy film buff out of his shell while she hides in the museum — the cavernous interiors of the Mole Antonelliana in Turin, Italy — where he works as night watchman.

Dr. Clayton Forrester figures he can rule the world if he deadens his subjects' brains by making them endure terrible movies. Exploiting his access to nearby satellite-dwellers Mike Nelson and his robot pals, Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo, Forrester makes them watch "This Island Earth", a cheesy 1950s spaceship film. But when Mike and friends make funny comments throughout the movie and others that follow, Forrester's plan looks increasingly flimsy.

Hollywood, 1930s. Tod Hackett, a young painter who tries to make his way as an art director in the lurid world of film industry, gets infatuated with his neighbor Faye Greener, an aspiring actress who prefers the life that Homer Simpson, a lone accountant, can offer her.

In a rundown area of Buenos Aires, at the dawn of the 1980s, Adrian LeDuc owns both a struggling movie theater and a shabby apartment building filled with eccentric, squabbling tenants. To make ends meet, Adrian takes in a roommate, Jack Carney, but soon begins to suspect that the quiet American is responsible for a series of political assassinations that are rocking the city.

José Sirgado is a low-budget filmmaker whose heroin addiction distorts his perspective of the real world. Although he is a depressed and unstable individual, his mood improves when he receives the mysterious films of Pedro, with whom he shares his passion for cinema.

On a dark and rainy night, a historic and regal Taipei cinema sees its final film: 1967 martial arts feature "Dragon Inn". As the film plays, the lives of the theater's various employees and patrons intersect, and two ghostly actors arrive to mourn the passing of an era.

In 1939, boy-wonder Orson Welles leaves New York, where he has succeeded in radio and theater, and, hired by RKO Pictures, moves to Hollywood with the purpose of making his first film.

Paula, a young supporting character, studies at the Main Character School and dreams on graduating to become a lead.

Recalling his childhood and relationship with his mother, a film student tries to understand the origin of his love for cinema and tragedies.

London, 1956. Genius actor and film director Laurence Olivier is about to begin the shooting of his upcoming movie, premiered in 1957 as The Prince and the Showgirl, starring Marilyn Monroe. Young Colin Clark, who dreams on having a career in movie business, manages to get a job on the set as third assistant director.

A group of college students, led by Claudia, decide to investigate a local tower that has figured prominently in disturbing reoccurring dreams Claudia has been having. They are suspended from school for their antics, but Claudia learns from one of the female staff members that the person in the dream is a student who killed herself years before and that the headmistress has seen her ghost.

Madrid, Spain, 1975. Sandra, Lina and Eva are three beautiful women who work as actresses in erotic movies. After meeting during a shoot, they become friends and begin to share experiences, concerns and successes in an era of increasing openness, although true freedom is still far away and demands a price hard to pay.

Clarice wants to make a film about Jonathan, an unexpected and surprising filmmaker.

César Neira, an almost forgotten Spanish actor, gets involved by chance with Teresa, a teacher from a small village in the province of Cáceres, who has won a radio contest. The prize is a trip to Madrid to experience just for a fortnight the life of the famous and wealthy people.