The Wasp Boutique

Documentary about Giger's work for the movie Alien (1979).

A day in the life of Mr. Istvan and Ms. Magdi, neighbors for many years, is narrated by the building of Budapest where both live. The walls surrounding them reveal their small passions, stories and routines.

A talented tap dancer who can't get an audition uses his prowess at playing craps to gain ownership of a musical show, making himself the star.

It's midnight in a graveyard. The principal characters are spooks, ghosts, bats, bells, and, at the end, the sun. As midnight strikes, 12 spooks appear, then two ghosts. They move to the music's rhythm. Against the black night, they are blue and yellow. Bats appear as does a xylophone of bones. Mist rises, spooks swirl. A bell tolls. The sky turns light blue, the ghosts' dance slows. Then black night returns bringing intimations of frenzy. Bones play snare drums; spooks peek out of square graves. Scary faces appear. Frenetic movement takes over. A rooster crows and all return to earth as the sun's light appears.

A fictional documentary that portrays the city of Dakar, Senegal, as we hear the conversation between a Senegalese man (the director, Djibril Diop Mambéty) and a French woman, Inge Hirschnitz. As we travel through the city in a picturesque horse drawn wagon, we chaotically rush into this and that popular neighborhood of the capital, discovering contrast after contrast: A small African community waiting at the Church's door, Muslims praying on the sidewalk, the Rococo architecture of the Government buildings, the modest stores of the craftsmen near the main market.

This film takes a candid, inside look at the world of juvenile delinquency. We are shown the tough existence on the streets of Montreal, but it could be any city in North America. Some boys as young as ten years of age talk about their lives of crime, the things that are important to them, and the hopes they hold for the future.

Teenage Babylon presents the aftermath of three teenage suicides through the medium of what purports to be 1960s vintage black and white police file footage. The film's haunting images, evoking teenage love gone wrong, are counterpointed by a series of saccharine torch songs, celebrating falling in love and the end of a masquerade. Through a kind of bathetic synthesis, the dialectic of Eros and Thanatos, love and death, is consummated in the 'morgue' of the forensic archive.

In the kingdom of Florestan, a weak Prince Henry is ousted from power by his calculating cousin, Prince Basil. While exiled in Paris, Henry learns that the people are suffering under the tyranny of Basil's corrupt monarchy and decides to return to his homeland. Posing as the chauffeur of a traveling playboy--who is in reality Henry's manservant--he manages to make it across the border unmolested. But how will he be able to reclaim the throne?

Produced by the Highway Safety Foundation in 1964, this shocking film deals with a subject quite taboo for its time. The short serves as a dramatized warning, ending with graphic case studies.

Ensemble for Somnambulists was a film Maya Deren made while teaching a workshop at the Toronto Film Society. It was never completed, and is officially "unpublished," but this title has been restored and it screens occasionally along with her other films. It is sort of a preliminary sketch for The Very Eye of Night. ~ David Lewis, Rovi

The Chaperone tells the true, previously untold story of a lone school teacher who fought off an entire motorcycle gang while chaperoning a middle school dance in a church basement in 1970s Montreal, Canada. Told from the first person unscripted perspective of the school teacher and DJ who were there that night, The Chaperone recreates the whole scene using hand drawn animation, miniature sets, puppets, live action Kung Fu and explosions all done in stereoscopic 3D. With over 10,000 hand drawings (many of which were colored in crayon by hand), an original blaxploitation score and featuring a cast of over 200 people, The Chaperone is an unconventional approach to documentary shorts.

Short featuring musician Eubie Blake and his orchestra, singer Nina Mae McKinney, and young tap dancers Fayard and Harold Nicholas.

BOSTON FIRE finds grandeur in smoke rising eloquently from a city blaze. Billowing puffs of darkness blend with fountains of water streaming in from offscreen to orchestrate a play of primal elements. The beautiful texture of the smoke coupled with the isolation from the source of the fire erases the destructive impact of the event. The camera, lost in the immense dark clouds, produces images for meditation removed from the causes or consequences of the scene. The tiny firemen, seen as distant silhouettes, gaze in awe, helpless before nature’s power.

Lively holiday in Blackpool, with jazz accompaniment.

An animated film about the British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who spearheaded numerous engineering marvels of the early 19th century - including the Thames Tunnel, the Great Western Railway, and the Great Eastern steamship (for 40 years the world's largest steamship). Various styles of animation are used to depict events in his colorful life.

Animation. The theme is Weightlessness. Objects and characters are cut loose from habitual meanings, also from tensions and gravitational limitations. A lyric Eric Satie track accompanies the film. Such a portrait seems necessary from time to time to remind us that equilibrium and harmony are possible, and that we will not dissolve into a jelly if we allow ourselves to relax into them: A horseman rides through the landscape, through the town, but never arrives anywhere in particular. An acrobat swings on a rope above a canal in Venice, and is content just to swing there. Nothing threatens to disturb them. This film is a total contrast to the Kafka-like oddities of Eastern European animation. —Canyon Cinema

Educational film about solar energy, told with striking imagery and animation.

Follows the Cuban leader into the home of a 93 year old acquaintance of Jose Marti, who is now blind and who takes the duration of the film to realize who his illustrious interviewer actually is.

Refutation of All the Judgements, Pro or Con, Thus Far Rendered on the Film "The Society of the Spectacle"

Students in Lyon.