The Ploy

Ostia is a fascinating short film directed by Julian Cole and produced for the Royal College of Art, which reconstructs the events leading up to the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Ostia relocates the proceedings to London and stars Derek Jarman as Pasolini. The film features an evocative dream sequence which is accompanied by poignant excerpts from Pasolini’s own poetry, as read by Jarman.

A short documentary exploring the ongoing relevance and power of 'Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma'.

A documentary about Pier Paolo Pasolini and his film 'Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma'.

Philo Bregstein tells us this film looks at Pasolini's life and art to explain why he died. The film traces Pasolini's life chronologically - family roots, hiding during World War II, teaching, moving to Rome, being arrested and acquitted many times, publishing poems, getting into film, being provocative, and being murdered. Interviews with Alberto Moravia, Laura Betti, Maria Antonietta Macciocch, and Bernard Bertolucci are inter-cut with readings of Pasolini's poems and with clips from four films - primarily the Gospel According to St. Matthew - to illustrate his changing ideas and points of view. Bregstein makes a case for Pasolini's being lynched.

Portrait of Pier Paolo Pasolini and his literary and cinematographic activity in the proletarian Rome.

Behind the scenes footage of Pasolini and crew filming 'Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma'.

On the run from an asylum for the insane, two girls embark on a surreal journey with a group of traveling erotic dancers.

A man returns to a city to try to track down a woman he met six years earlier.

A notable opera singer tries to commit suicide because of a emotional breakdown. While hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic, her daughter cautiously approaches the man she considers to be the blame for the state of her mother in order to gain her revenge.

A young refugee travels from Russia to America in search of her lost father and falls in love with a gypsy horseman.

A college senior, Jesse, attempts to rescue his girlfriend Selene from the vicious cult that ambushed them along a lonely mountain road.

The film begins following the British victory of the first Opium War and the seizure of Hong Kong. Although the island is largely uninhabited and the terrain unfriendly, it has a large port that both the British government and various trading companies believe will be useful for the import of merchandise to be traded on mainland China, a highly lucrative market.

When Singapore surrendered to the Japanese in 1942, the Allied POWs, mostly British but including a few Americans, were incarcerated in Changi prison. Among the American prisoners is Cpl. King, a wheeler-dealer who has managed to establish a pretty good life for himself in the camp. King soon forms a friendship with an upper-class British officer who is fascinated with King's enthusiastic approach to life.

An intense and imaginative artist, revered Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh possesses undeniable talent, but he is plagued by mental problems and frustrations with failure. Supported by his brother, Theo, the tormented Van Gogh eventually leaves Holland for France, where he meets volatile fellow painter Paul Gauguin and struggles to find greater inspiration.

Tung Tung just graduated from the police academy, encountering a Vietnamnese assassin on his first day on work. Tung in order to break through obstacle in his mind decides to join SDU. Among the teammates, Coolman feels resentment toward Tung, which he doesn't understand. Later he discovers Coolman is actually his step brother. Tung actively tries to get close to Coolman, but is rejected. When training reaches its last stage, Coolman and Tung's team reencounters the Vietnamnese assassin on a deserted island.

A fictional story within the historical context of the disastrous flood that engulfed the Dutch coastal province of Zeeland in 1953. When their farmhouse is destroyed by the flood, teenage mother Julia gets separated from her baby boy, whom she kept hidden in a box. She is saved from drowning by a young air force lieutenant, who agrees to go help looking for Julia's little son.

Milarepa depicts the humble beginnings of the man who was to become Tibet's greatest saint. A true story based on centuries-old oral traditions, a youthful Milarepa is propelled into a world of sorrow and betrayal after his father's sudden death. Destitute and hopeless, he sets out to learn black magic - and exact revenge on his enemies - encountering magicians, demons, an enigmatic teacher and unexpected mystical power along the way. But it is in confrontation with the consequences of his anger that he learns the most. Photographed in the stunning Lahaul-Spiti region of Northern India, Milarepa offers a provocative parallel to the cycle of violence and retribution consuming today's world.

An innocent and naive young woman arrives in Los Angeles to make it as a big-name actress, only to suffer though the pain and humiliation of the casting couch routine again and again thus getting a first hand look at Hollywood at its worst.

In World War II Germany, two young men, one, an ardent Nazi, and the other, a secret anti-Nazi, are in love with the same woman, the daughter of a wealthy banker. The two join the Army, and the young woman becomes a nightclub singer. Eventually she joins the Army too, to entertain the troops, but circumstances soon result in her entire world being changed.