Tragic Error

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 .

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

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.

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.

A gang of crooks evade the police by moving their operations to a small town. There the gang's leader encounters a faith healer and uses him to scam gullible public of funds for a supposed chapel. But when a real healing takes place, a change comes over the gang. Lost film, only the most famous scene has survived.

Through a series of auditions, a young actor in New York City struggles with his identity.

Tōjin Okichi is a 1930 film by Kenji Mizoguchi based on the novel by Gisaburo Juichiya. Only 4 minutes have survived. The fragment has been published on DVD coupled with The Downfall of Osen (1935) by Digital MEME in 2007.

A Spanish soldier falls under the spell of a fiery gypsy girl named Carmen. His obsession with her leads to his ruin.

Against the backdrop of New York City of the early 1850s, a young woman -- naively seeking to win the love she reads about in the romance novels she devours -- finds one prospect in an earnest denizen of the Bowery, and another in an elegant young aristocrat. Focusing on the bygone era's fashions, the novelty of the bicycle-built-for-two, and an inventor's quest for the horseless carriage, the film gently stirs the audiences' nostalgia for simpler times.

The young Anselmus Aselmeyer fulfilled a long cherished dream: He travels to Venice, the city of his dreams. Once there, the porter Pipistrello directs him immediately to the hotel of his boss, and Anselmus lands in the middle of a wedding party. Mestre Mangiabene, a wealthy oilman, marries the beautiful but completely depleted Marchesina dei Bisognosi. But the secretly loves an officer.