Variations on a Life

A tale of people unfolds under the night sky. These doomed couples and lost individuals begin journeys and attempt to find resolution in their lives. Love is observed from a distance, sadness is in the air. With little sympathy for the loss and destruction caused to the characters, the stories progress and become neatly woven into a minimalistic portrayal of modern life.

Something bad happened to Agnes. But life goes on… for everyone around her, at least.

Island of Java, 1942, during World War II. British Major Jack Celliers arrives at a Japanese prison camp, run by the strict Captain Yonoi. Colonel John Lawrence, who has a profound knowledge of Japanese culture, and Sergeant Hara, brutal and simpleton, will witness the struggle of wills between two men from very different backgrounds who are tragically destined to clash.

In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who have escaped to Earth seeking their creator for a way to extend their short life spans.

A mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feed his urge for violent action.

A woman on the run from the mob is reluctantly accepted in a small Colorado community in exchange for labor, but when a search visits the town, she learns that their support has a price.

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

Set in the changing world of the late 1960s, Susanna Kaysen's prescribed "short rest" from a psychiatrist she had met only once becomes a strange, unknown journey into Alice's Wonderland, where she struggles with the thin line between normal and crazy. Susanna soon realizes how hard it is to get out once she has been committed, and she ultimately has to choose between the world of people who belong inside or the difficult world of reality outside.

Celess and Tina play the game too well to be considered your average gold diggers. And they're winning too. But when the jaw-dropping secret they both share is exposed, the same shovel that got them out of the dirt could very well bury them.

During World War II in North Africa, a group of British commandos disguised as Italian soldiers must travel behind enemy lines and destroy a vital Nazi oil depot.

Gudrun has modeled her amateur German terrorist group after the 1970s Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof Gang). She attempts to imitate her heroes by kidnapping the son of a wealthy industrialist and hopes to negotiate leftist demands from the father. When Gudrun’s not spouting leftist verses (including during a hilariously brilliant fuck session), she’s trying to convince her all-male gang to abandon their heterosexuality, which she believes is the result of mass delusion.

A Swedish pastor fails a loving woman, a suicidal fisherman and God.

William Tell just wants to play cards. His spartan existence on the casino trail is shattered when he is approached by Cirk, a vulnerable and angry young man seeking help to execute his plan for revenge on a military colonel. Tell sees a chance at redemption through his relationship with Cirk. But keeping Cirk on the straight-and-narrow proves impossible, dragging Tell back into the darkness of his past.

Five months after the maternal death of his partner, a man is at a crossroads with how to raise their baby.

In 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programmer Mark Zuckerberg begins work on a new concept that eventually turns into the global social network known as Facebook. Six years later, Mark is one of the youngest billionaires ever, but his unprecedented success leads to both personal and legal complications when he ends up on the receiving end of two lawsuits, one involving his former friend.

A aspiring novelist operates a tiny neighborhood bookstore. His wife is a talented painter. Their marriage is disintegrating, and they are about to sign their divorce papers. Meanwhile, the legendary Casanova and his lover Lavinia are characters trapped inside of a 17th-century children's book. The tragedy of the impending divorce triggers the release of Casanova and Lavinia from the confines of the children's pop-up book.

A kindly occupational therapist undergoes a new procedure to be shrunken to four inches tall so that he and his wife can help save the planet and afford a nice lifestyle at the same time.

This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar, a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda. When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.

Before leaving for Rome with his mother, five year old Natan is taken by his father, Jorge, on an epic journey to the pristine Chinchorro reef off the coast of Mexico. As they fish, swim, and sail the turquoise waters of the open sea, Natan discovers the beauty of his Mayan heritage and learns to live in harmony with life above and below the surface, as the bond between father and son grows stronger before their inevitable farewell.

a 32-minute color film by Gwen Brown, featuring precious footage of Living Theatre productions “Mysteries” and smaller pieces, “Paradise Now” and “Frankenstein.” “The fusion of Brown’s freewheeling direct cinema and the Living Theatre’s performance for revolutionary change (amidst the heydays of both) unite as a dynamic concoction of the era, yielding for the viewer a shifting terrain of both critical insight and ecstatic zeal, not as a vacant nostalgia for a pre-commodified radicality, but as tactical inspiration for future days.” – Andrew Wilson (Artist’s Access Television)