Right at the heart of the debates on the discrimination of women in the film industry, this documentary raises questions, while offering a voice to women and their cinema. Catherine Breillat, Claire Denis, Mira Nair, Margarethe Von Trotta, Ulrike Ottinger, Micheline Lanctot, Rakshnan Bani-Etemad, María Novaro but also the names of the less visible directors of the general public. Joining the filmmakers are the voices and comments of producers, film specialists and archivists through whom our images are meticulously preserved.
This documentary interweaves celluloid and voice recordings by Maya Deren, and colleagues who knew her firsthand: Jean Rouch, Jonas Mekas, Alexander Hammid, Cecile Starr etc. Maya Deren (1917-1961) was an experimental filmmaker. In the 1940s and 1950s she made several influential avant-garde films, such as Meshes of the Afternoon (1943). Images from this and her other work are used in this documentary. You can also hear her voice, as well as accounts by contemporaries such as Jean Rouch and Jonas Mekas.
Friends and admirers of iconoclastic film director Sam Fuller read from his memoirs in this unconventional documentary directed by Fuller's only child, Samantha.
Emir Kusturica views himself as a rock musician and believes that he became a world-famous filmmaker by pure chance, as he shoots his movies only in between concert tours with the “No Smoking Orchestra” band. At these little pinpoints of time he gets “Palms d’Or” at Cannes, “Golden Lions” in Venice, builds his own villages, a power plant and a piste and regrets not becoming a professional football player. Kusturica’s own living is very much similar to his movies, where shoes are polished with cats, death is treated like a story from tabloid press, and life is a miracle...
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Documentary about a bankrupt Jordanian entrepreneur and an unemployed Irish actress who hatch a plan to scam £2.5m off the British taxman by faking the production of a £20m movie. But they are found out, arrested and then bailed. While out on bail, they decide to prove their innocence by actually making a film. They hire a former nightclub bouncer, now a self-made micro-budget gangster film director. In 2011, Paul Knight makes their movie for under £100,000 with a cast of soap and gangster movie stars including Danny Midwinter, Marc Bannerman and Loose Women's Andrea McLean. The film's title is A Landscape of Lies. But the cinematic alibi does not convince the jury when the trial runs in 2013. The producers are convicted of tax fraud and given long sentences.
Behind the chaos and creativity of the making of 2003's THE MANSON FAMILY directed by Jim Van Bebber. This feature-length documentary was included on the film's unrated DVD and Blu-ray releases from Severin Films.
An intimate look at cinematographic creation, this visual essay shares with us secrets of the legendary Canadian animator Norman Mclaren and his personal view of filmmaking.
Steve Coogan, an arrogant actor with low self-esteem and a complicated love life, is playing the eponymous role in an adaptation of "The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" being filmed at a stately home. He constantly spars with actor Rob Brydon, who is playing Uncle Toby and believes his role to be of equal importance to Coogan's.
A fascinating glimpse into Truffaut’s creative process and how his life informed his art, told from the perspectives of those who knew him best.
A short documentary about the making of D. W. Griffith's controversial 'The Birth of a Nation'.
A documentary exploring the birth, death and resurrection of illustrated movie poster art. Through interviews with a number of key art personalities from the 70s and 80s, as well as many modern, alternative poster artists, “Twenty-Four by Thirty-Six” aims to answer the question: What happened to the illustrated movie poster? Where did it disappear to, and why? In the mid 2000s, filling the void left behind by Hollywood’s abandonment of illustrated movie posters, independent artists and galleries began selling limited edition, screenprinted posters — a movement that has quickly exploded into a booming industry with prints selling out online in seconds, inspiring Hollywood studios to take notice of illustration in movie posters once more.
A look at the legendary Czech sound designer and his profession. Editor and documentary filmmaker Adéla Špaljová has her father Ivo Špalj talk about his life, career, and working methods. Over the course of his long life, sound designer Ivo Špalj (*1940) has collaborated on hundreds of films and become a mentor for at least one generation of men and women behind the mixing board. This gentle documentary also shows “Engi” (as he is known to his colleagues) again working with Jan Švankmajer, whose films he has lent their typical, dense, and sophisticated sound mix.
A short documentary on the Francis Ford Coppola musical One From the Heart.
A look at Kevin Smith's life and career from his childhood in New Jersey, to the day they cemented his footprints at the world famous TCL Chinese Theater, with a flock of famous folks testifying on Silent Bob's behalf!
On-set documentary on the making of Ingmar Bergman's The Touch.
Four Belgian-Moroccan filmmakers in their thirties produce their latest film. Since adolescence they have managed to produce over thirty low-budget movies in which they often have played the main characters. Their movies are not only the sum of their fears and desires, but also a way of projecting an image of themselves towards their own community and the outside world. When one of them decides to radically change his life, their friendship and the future of their common cinema goals are threatened.
Lloyd Kaufman and the Troma Team struggle against incompetence, conflict and "the man" in order to complete their latest piece of art, Terror Firmer. The documentarians hold nothing back in the fight for truly independent cinema.
A documentary about the comedy director and producer Judd Apatow.