First and Last

In Belleau Wood, France, during the Great War, a soldier named John writes a letter home to his wife Sara in Milwaukee. He writes that her picture "helps me remember what it was like to be me." He tells her about sorties into No Man's Land, and that they have orders tonight to charge. Then, his letter becomes a report of that charge: toward an armed German soldier who doesn't fire, even when John reaches him and jumps into the trench beside him. What happens next brings silence and an end to the letter.

Wounded and left for dead, a British soldier embarks on a daring escape from a booby-trapped German dugout.

Stop-motion short by Massimo Ottoni. Follows the story of some soldiers during the Great War in an Austrian trench on the Italian front.

Heroic Struggle in Snow and Ice is a 1917 Austro-Hungarian propaganda newsreel film produced by Sascha-Film for the Imperial and Royal War Press Headquarters. The film is hand-colored and presented in two parts. It depicts the fighting on the Alpine Front between Italy and Austria-Hungary.

It is the early 1930s and the command of the Japanese Imperial Navy determines to construct the world's biggest and most formidable battleship, Yamato. One of the admirals, Yamamoto Isoroku, disagrees. He recruits the upstart and mathematics' expert Tadashi Kai who discovers there are discrepancies between the official cost estimates and the actual figures. They soon find out that they have stumbled upon a conspiracy.

A head on confrontation, no help from their allies, army versus army, nation versus nation. 11 months of fighting, over 2 million soldiers mobilised and 300,000 dead. We look back at this insane battle that was to become the bloodiest chapter of WWI.

1914-1918 - Der moderne Krieg

On the 23rd August 2004 The Great War Society undertook a charity march in full period uniform to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the opening moves of the Great War 1914-1918 Over the following five days our troops marched from Mons in Belgium to St. Quentin in France in remembrance of the soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force. The march was in honour of the men who fought the famous Fighting Retreat which stemmed the German advance and ultimately turned the tide of the war. Filmed in Super 8 black and white, Brass Monkey is the first documentary by William Hamper

1918, shortly before the end of the Great War, an Austrian soldier passes the barrier of the Italian lines and escapes. He is very young, alone, scared. During his journey in that enemy land, so similar to his own, the thoughts of the terrible experience on the front alternate with childhood memories. Along the way, death takes him and puts him back into the flow of nature, to which he has always felt he belonged.

U.S. Navy Lieutenant George Blenton becomes drunk at an official reception, and his fiancee, Jane Ravenslee, the captain's daughter, breaks their engagement. After war is declared, George, entrusted with a secret code book to deliver to an English admiral, drinks and loses the book which German spies recover. During a private court-martial he is offered a pistol for suicide. After drinking again, he fires a shot, but still lives. Put ashore on the island of Tafofu "to rot," George, hating the U.S., moves in with Lehua, a half-white who tries to wean him from drink.

For the first time in a documentary feature, the prestigious House of Dior opened its doors to show the wonders of perfume creation. Travelers at heart, Arthur de Kersauson and Clément Beauvais followed François Demachy for two years and over 14 countries, from Grasse to the other side of the world, in his search for inspiration and the most precious raw materials.

1960s Chicago, a baby is kidnapped from a hospital. Fifteen months later, a toddler is abandoned. Could he be the same baby? In a tale of breathtaking twists and turns, two mysteries begin to unravel and dark family secrets are revealed.

As a teenager in the '90s, Soleil Moon Frye carried a video camera everywhere she went. She documented hundreds of hours of footage and then locked it away for over 20 years.

A young woman goes on an anonymous journey to her late husband's hometown Leshan, a small city in Sichuan province. There, she meets an old friend, a local theatre actress preparing for an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's The Good Person of Szechwan (Sichuan). In a home-place unfamiliar, the traveling woman meets the imaginary. Ghosted by Shen Te the protagonist of the play, the actress loses the self at the intersection between fiction and reality. Unprepared, the filmmaker loses control of her camera. Together, they drift into a polyrhythmic experience of stasis.

Nightclub performer makes a comeback.

A look at the current state of the world, from the hand of six intellectuals and scientists who reflect on the present and postulate about the future.

Mr. Bachmann And His Class explores the close bond between an elementary school teacher and his students. His unconventional methods clash with the complex social and cultural realities of the provincial German industrial town they live in.

Trailblazing artists, activists, and everyday people from across the spectrum of gender and sexuality defy social norms and dare to live unconventional lives in this kaleidoscopic view of LGBTQ+ culture in contemporary Japan.

A road trip comedy about a pig that is about to lose her virginity amid a brewing war.

The Black Audio Film Collective’s seventh film envisioned the death and life of the African American revolutionary as a seven part study in iconography as narrated by novelist Toni Cade Bambara and actor Giancarlo Espesito. The stylized tableaux vivants that memorialise Malcolm’s life referenced the early 20th century funeral photography of James Van der Zee’s The Harlem Book of the Dead and the elemental static cinematography of Sergei Paradjanov’s The Colour of Pomegranates.