Harlequin's Story

A red ball bounces past a cafe and a couple folks’ houses and then goes to the beach.

The seven short films making up GENIUS PARTY couldn’t be more diverse, linked only by a high standard of quality and inspiration. Atsuko Fukushima’s intro piece is a fantastic abstraction to soak up with the eyes. Masaaki Yuasa, of MIND GAME and CAT SOUP fame, brings his distinctive and deceptively simple graphic style and dream-state logic to the table with “Happy Machine,” his spin on a child’s earliest year. Shinji Kimura’s spookier “Deathtic 4,” meanwhile, seems to tap into the creepier corners of a child’s imagination and open up a toybox full of dark delights. Hideki Futamura’s “Limit Cycle” conjures up a vision of virtual reality, while Yuji Fukuyama’s "Doorbell" and "Baby Blue" by Shinichiro Watanabe use understated realism for very surreal purposes. And Shoji Kawamori, with “Shanghai Dragon,” takes the tropes and conventions of traditional anime out for very fun joyride.

"Glory Holes" are mostly found in the basements of sex shops, sex clubs, or what are commonly referred to as whore bars. The pleasure is blind, anonymous. He delights in this blindness. "She" is the engine of his fantasies, his fears, his uneasiness and her naive and vain generosity. "He" will be waiting for her every Wednesday. This short film is the first fiction film directed by Guillaume Foirest as part of his graduation thesis at ESRA Nice in 2005. The film was distributed by DVD Pocket and has made many festivals around the world .

This mostly lost film is often confused with director Paul Wegener third and readily available interpretation of the legend; Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920). In this version of the golem legend, the golem, a clay statue brought to life by Rabbi Loew in 16th century Prague to save the Jews from the ongoing brutal persecution by the city's rulers, is found in the rubble of an old synagogue in the 20th century. Brought to life by an antique dealer, the golem is used as a menial servant. Eventually falling in love with the dealer's wife, it goes on a murderous rampage when its love for her goes unanswered.

God and Satan war over earth; to settle things, they wager on the soul of Faust, a learned and prayerful alchemist.

Spot25N - Rompe el Ciclo

A green-skinned demon places a woman and two courtiers into a flaming cauldron.

Thelma and Patsy find themselves in a spooky house inhabited by a nut who is a mechanical genius and has made a robot who does everything. The inventor manipulates the robot's control board from a hidden room. The girls are soon in a panic. Patsy gets into an argument with the robot and loses the match of wits. Blackie Burke, an escaped convict, is using the house as a hideout, and this adds to the problems the girls already have.

A melodrama about a painter who is infected with syphilis, refuses treatment, turns to the use instead of narcotics, and withers away.

Scrat tries to finish his rather large collection of acorns when things start going nutty.

A sad story about how a working-class man tries, and succeeds, to become a writer, but finds difficulty in fitting into that world.

In 15th century France, a gypsy girl is framed for murder by the infatuated Chief Justice, and only the deformed bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral can save her.

A collective of office girls and their tribulations in the male world, female solidarity, the place of women in the labor and civil rights struggles and the conflict between love and work.

A documentary about a 15-day river-rafting trip on the Colorado River aimed at highlighting water conservation issues.

Madrid, Spain. A mutilated man, a war veteran, walks, leaning on a crutch, through the stadium of the Ciudad Universitaria, a place that still preserves in walls and buildings the terrifying traces of one of the bloodiest battles of the Spanish Civil War.

A silent amateur comedy about a Lebanese immigrant who returns home after trying his luck in the United States of America.

Three men hammer on an anvil and pass a bottle of beer around. Notable for being the first film in which a scene is being acted out.

The timid youngest son of the most important family in town must use his wits to win the respect of his strong father and the love of a beautiful new woman in town.

Jamil, a soldier in the Bedouin defense forces during a war between Syria and Turkey, deserts his regiment but later returns to save children of a missionary’s orphanage who are at risk of being enslaved or killed by the Turks.

Caught off-guard by Indian mutineers, a British soldier saves his last bullet for his daughter, lest she be taken.