Republic of Silence

First part of a three-part documentary series on the making of Once Upon a Time in the West, Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone's masterpiece, released in 1968. (Followed by The Wages of Sin.)

In the sixties, Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) built a house on the remote island of Fårö, located in the Baltic Sea, left Stockholm and went to live there. When he died, the house was preserved. A group of very special cinephiles, came from all over the world, travel to Fårö in search of the genius and his legacy. (Released in 2013, edited and abridged, as Trespassing Bergman.)

Damascus, Oregon, United States. Julie Keith finds a baffling message hidden in a pack of decorative items, a desperate plea for help, written by someone imprisoned in a Chinese labor camp called Masanjia…

A meaningful account of the personal and professional life of the great Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) that explores his film legacy, with interviews with his closest collaborators and a new generation of filmmakers.

Chain-smoking artists, poets and playwrights were among the colourful array of intellectuals living in the ‘Slovo House’ in 1920s Ukraine. The communist paradise was built under Stalin's approval, but it quickly became a prison. The brutal Soviet regime spied on the inhabitants, destroying their eccentric way of life and sealing their fate. This fascinating film explores the extraordinary story of the building and its residents.

South Africa, July 11th, 1963. Several members of the African National Congress, an organization declared illegal, are arrested in Rivonia, a country house near Johannesburg. The detainees, along with Nelson Mandela, imprisoned since 1962, are charged with serious crimes for their radical activism against the apartheid regime…

A retrospective look at the five Dirty Harry films (1971-88), starring Clint Eastwood.

A collection of short films made by the Lumiere brothers, a team of pioneering filmmakers in turn-of-the-century France, narrated by Bertrand Tavernier.

Emil Nolde was a Nazi – and so what, asks contemporary German artist Daniel Richter. “It’s a moralistic debate. A debate, that mirrors the moralism and bigottery of a generation that seems to think, that the world is a moral playground.” Emil Nolde’s relationship to the Nazi-regime in the Third Reich has given rise to immense discussions within the last months. For decades the broader public had a picture of Nolde being one of the “entartete” artists as well as being prohibited painting by the Nazi-regime. Though this on the surface is true, it was the result of a great disappointment to Nolde. For years, he had strived to become “the” artist of the Thrid Reich, praising his own art as true, German, anti-French and anti-Jewish. Possible competitors within the German art world like Max Pechstein he actively denounced to the Nazi authorities.

Several high-budget epic films became Omar Sharif (1932-2015) a film star. He was an actor, but also a bridge player, a womanizer, a bon vivant; he was a man full of contradictions, who enjoyed card games more than movies; he was an eternal nomad who spent half his life in a hotel.

A fantastic journey through the world of Renato Casaro, one of the most important illustrators that the world’s film poster industry has ever known.

A nostalgic, informative history of drive-in movie theaters, featuring extensive archival photographs and interviews with Leonard Maltin, John Bloom, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Barry Corbin and many others... Drive-In Movie Memories is a film celebration of America's greatest icon of youth, freedom and the automobile. What began as an auto parts owner's business venture to make some easy money accidentally became a magical place where romance, fun and a sense of community flourished. This film chronicles the drive-in's birth and development, its phenomenal popularity with audiences of all ages, its tragic decline, and its inevitable comeback as a classic form of Americana.

A look at the life and work of Spanish filmmaker Mario Camus (1935-2021).

Counter Shot: Departure of the Filmmakers

The pianist Miguel Ángel Lozano embarks on a personal and artistic journey with the purpose of reconstructing the life of his grandmother, Maria Forteza (1910-60), singer and pioneer of Spanish sound films.

A peculiar, meticulous, vocationally archeological account of the professional life of the actor, Spanish by birth, Argentinean by adoption, Narciso Ibañez Menta (1912-2004), spiritual disciple of Lon Chaney, the new man of a thousand faces, master of horror, star of Argentinean theater, cinema and television for decades.

Barcelona, Spain, June 1977. A chronicle of a demonstration held to demand the repeal of a 1970 Francoist law criminalizing homeless, prostitutes and homosexuals.

Forty years later, Guillermo Montesinos, the actor who played José María el Cepa in The Cuenca Crime (1980), directed by Pilar Miró, returns to the various locations where the shooting of the mythical film, narrating the infamous Grimaldos case (1910), took place.

In 1956, actress and Hollywood star Grace Kelly (1929-82), then at the height of her film career, unexpectedly dropped everything to marry Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Jinx, an American journalist and friend of the future princess, accompanied her on her journey to the wedding and covered the sensational event.

An audiovisual investigation into the way Spanish cinema has represented its audience throughout history, and a tribute to those who, for over a hundred years, have inhabited the theaters, mutually nurturing their deepest dreams and aspirations.