Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer

1979. Flicking through pictures from a Soviet magazine, 15-year-old Martim dreams of building a new society. His radical communist parents send him to study at Astrakan for one year. In her new film, Catarina Mourão captures with tremendous precision the moment a middle-aged man passes his story on to his son, thus shedding the taboo of his ineffable experience.

A portrait of the Spanish director Lorenzo Llobet Gràcia (1911-76), one of the outsiders of Spanish cinema, and the story of his masterpiece, a cult work that tells the story of a self-taught filmmaker who was born under the sign of the shadows, lights and chiaroscuro of cinema.

This documentary by independent filmmaker Ken Harrison provides a look into the contemporary Texas art world of the mid-‘70s. Shot in 1975, Jackelope is loosely divided into three segments, each focusing on three young artists: James Surls, George Green, and Bob Wade. The documentary captures each artist in the more casual moments of their lives, capturing their ideas about art, the artistic process, Texas, and other topics in the process.

An account of the life of the Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653), the first female artist to get international acclaim, recognized as a modern icon, due to her personality and her unyielding defense of her professional integrity.

A journey into the mind of French actor and director Jean-Pierre Mocky (1929-2019), author of films both playful and profound, of an impressive richness.

An episode of Cinéastes d'aujourd'hui, a series of director portraits by the Francophone Community. Lafosse had then just completed Les Chevaliers blancs.

From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.

In the sixties, Peter Handke was one of the first to show how the business works: the writer as angry young man and pop star of the literary scene. As soon as he was on the bestseller lists, he turned his back on the hype. For many years, he has lived and worked in his house in a Parisian suburb, more quietly and more hospitably. Peter Handke's precise, free gaze becomes perceptible in his texts, his conversations, the cosmos of his notebooks.

Counter Shot: Departure of the Filmmakers

Filmmakers Ibrahim, Suliman, Eltayeb and Manar, close friends for many years, left their motherland in the sixties and seventies to study film abroad and founded the Sudanese Film Group in 1989. After years of distance and exile, they are reunited, hoping to finally make their old dream come true: to bring back cinema to Sudan by reopening the Halfaia Cinema, a dilapidated theater in Khartoum.

A look at the life and work of the iconic US actor Charlton Heston (1923-2008); the embodiment of many mythic heroes who was both a staunch defender of the Civil Rights movement during the sixties and a spokesman for the National Rifle Association in his later years. The extraordinary and controversial public and personal career of one of the greatest film personalities of all time.

An account of the life and work of legendary Japanese actor Toshirō Mifune (1920-97), the most prominent actor of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema.

In 2024, Abdelkrim Baba Aissa, aged 75, engages in a series of filmed interviews with Algerian journalist Thoria Smati. They address the chronology of the rich and committed career of this self-taught Algerian actor, director, producer and screenwriter, who made his debut on Algerian television as an assistant director then at ONCIC as a director in the years 70.

A moving and very funny portrait of the personal and professional life of the magnificent French comedian Louis de Funès (1914-83), as well as a detailed analysis of his masterful acting technique.

This is not merely another film about cinema history; it is a film about the love of cinema, a journey of discovery through over a century of German film history. Ten people working in film today remember their favourite films of yesteryear.

A look at the different masculinities portrayed in Spanish cinema through time. (A sequel to “Barefoot in the Kitchen,” 2013.)

A journey through the meteoric rise and tempestuous story of the legendary American actor Al Pacino, from the Bronx of New York to worldwide stardom.

Marco Paolini interviews Mario Rigoni Stern about—among other things—his well-known experience as a soldier on the Eastern front during WWII, culminating in the infamous retreat of the Italian troops, the difficult reintegration into civilian life after the war, his relationship with his literary work and with his ancestral land, the Asiago Plateau.

In his time of greatest splendor, the singer Miguel 'Bambino' Vargas Jiménez (1940-99) was the last frontier of flamenco, an immense musical genre that he developed and brought closer to large audiences: an artist of artists, the idol of the roadside bars, whose inimitable style, scenic magnetism and heartbreaking personality made of his figure a myth, a king without a kingdom, a giant of the popular music of the 20th century.

Documentary about the Belgian artist Frits Van den Berghe.