MALEREI HEUTE means painting now, and the films starts when, in In the summer of 1998 Stefan Hayn started painting water-color paintings of the billboards put up in the urban landscape of Berlin. From the outset, each sheet was a «take» of a documentary film, which records the economical, political and interpersonal changes that become obvious on the «public» images from 1998 to 2005.
Cui Shunji is a Chinese woman of Korean ancestry. A single mother bringing up a young son, she lives away from her hometown, and makes a living by selling Kimchi, a Korean style pickle. An unlicensed vendor, she is constantly on the run, pursued by the local commercial prosecutor. Kim is also an ethnic Korean. He and Cui fall in love, but Kim is a married man; their love can only be an underground affair. Police officer Sergeant Wang is Cui’s regular customer. Taking pity on her, he helps her get a business permit. Life seems promising for Cui. When their love affair is disclosed, Kim, under pressure to save his marriage, claims that Cui is a prostitute. She is arrested and subsequently raped in a police station by the drunken and soon-to-be married Sergeant Wang. Released from custody, Cui, in the face of shame and humiliation, continues her pickle business. Sergeant Wang and his fiancé also continue to buy from her. The fiancé even orders pickles from her for their wedding. Her son’s death sends her into total despair. She puts poison in the pickles destined for Sergeant Wang’s wedding.
What iz time? How do we travel through? What iz a moment? Who or what iz the short-time mob? Lisbon 94 faces dramatik weather-time changes. Everything and everyframe minglez at the center of thizz film-time
Aki who works at a design company, and Tetsuro who is a restaurant owner, have been living together for several years. They respect each other’s independence, and have a generally carefree relationship. One morning Tetsuro receives a phone call from Shun, his 8-year-old son. Tetsuro’s ex-wife has been hospitalised with a broken leg following an automobile accident. Tetsuro brings his son to the home he shares with Aki. Aki is, at first, furious that she was not consulted before Shun arrived on her doorstep. Later, she accepts the task of caring for the boy. The new living arrangement brings unexpected stress. Aki must now handle many new chores in the house; while balancing numerous responsibilities at work. It all begins to wear on her nerves. Shun becomes homesick and runs away to his mother’s apartment. Aki begins to look for a new place to live, on her own, as she fears she will break down if she doesn’t get away.
Random or staged shots of people and settings in urban London are arranged and abstracted, double-exposed and solarized. The result is a dense texturefilled with layers and associative dimensions. The absurd concrete city landscape is visualized through the unspoilt and naked eye of the camera in a concentrated mosaic of images and sounds.
Me and You and Everyone We Know is a poetic and penetrating observation of how people struggle to connect with one another in an isolating and contemporary world. Christine Jesperson is a lonely artist and Eldercab driver who uses her fantastical artistic visions to draw her aspirations and objects of desire closer to her. Richard Swersey (John Hawkes), a newly single shoe salesman and father of two boys, is prepared for amazing things to happen. But when he meets the captivating Christine, he panics. Life is not so oblique for Richard’s seven-year-old Robby, who is having a risqué internet romance with a stranger, and his fourteen- year-old brother Peter who becomes the guinea pig for neighborhood girls‚Äî practicing for their future of romance and marriage.
This film by Gosta Werner has been called one of the very few Swedish short films deserving to be labelled a classic. It is a suggestive and visionary portrayal of a human sacrifice in the Bronze Age. The sacrifice, wich takes place on a dark and snowy night, is undertaken to ensure the return of sun and warmth.
Three characters linked by the mythical Maria Maddalena – Mary Magdalene… Tony Childress, an infamous, egotistical and obsessive actor/director is playing the lead role of Jesus in his controversial new film This is my blood. When the shoot wraps, Marie Palesi, his lead actress, is left alone in Jerusalem, drained, empty. ‘Selfless’. Into the void within her is poured the spirit of Mary Magdalene, and Marie embarks on a profound journey towards enlightenment. Meanwhile, in New York City, tv journalist Ted Younger begins his own quest for spiritual truth through his documentary about the life of Christ. When the premiere of Tony’s film becomes the target of bomb threats by the vengeful religious Right, the lives and paths of these three characters come dramatically together.And, in the end, a questions lies: does deeper faith lead to an ultimate form of love or to religious mania?
How does artist Matthew Barney use 45,000 pounds of petroleum jelly, a factory whaling vessel and traditional Japanese rituals to create his latest art project? Barney plowed the waters off the coast of Nagasaki to film his massive endeavor, Drawing Restraint 9. The documentary Matthew Barney: No Restraint journeys to Japan with Barney and his collaborator Bjork, as the visual artist creates a narrative sculpture telling a fantastical love story of two characters that transform from land mammals into whales.
At the dawn of this new millennium, and for the first time in the history of mankind, the majority of the individuals will be living in an urban milieu. Bombay, Mexico City, Moscow and New York, four examples of overpopulated metropolises, are monsters both seductive and repellent. The contradiction insinuates itself into the daily lives of those who populate these megacities, and who, day in day out, struggle for survival. These people maybe poles apart, both geographically and culturally, but there are close parallels in their daily existence, such as prostitution, homelessness, crime and drug addiction. But they also have in common resilience and hope, courage and dignity. Because this is not only a document about work, poverty, violence, love and sex. This is also a film about the beauty of people.
When you close your eyes for a minute and imagine to fly don’t you think ‚ somewhere out there to exist also as a bird?
Six drummers participate in a well planned musical attack in the suburbs. As an elderly couple leave their apartment the drummers take over.
Alex’s move abroad forces his parents, who know nothing about computers, to suddenly dive into the mysterious world of the Internet.
MirrorMask is the story of Helena, a fifteen-year-old girl working for her family circus, who wishes—quite ironically—that she could run away from the circus and join real life. But such is not to be the case, as she finds herself on a strange journey into the Dark Lands, a fantastic landscape filled with giants, Monkeybirds and dangerous sphinxes. Helena searches for the Mirrormask, an object of enormous power that is her only hope of escaping the Dark Lands, waking the Queen of Light and returning home.
At home alone one night, Mr. Lazarescu feels unwell. An ambulance finally arrives that takes him on an incongruent odyssey. Various contradictory diagnoses are pronounced and treatment is incessantly delayed. The doctors remain cool and obstinate while Mr. Lazarescu descends deeper into the Bucharest night.
The world of the hell riders in their wooden barrel: men and motorbikes, speed and stunts, gasoline and adrenaline. A dying fairground attraction, portrayed in a thrilling homage with 5000 rounds per minute.
A documentary in 17 movements, in which testimonies and the guitar define the genius, the bravery and the modesty of Carlos Paredes. In PERPETUAL MOVEMENTS ‚ A TRIBUTE TO CARLOS PAREDES a dialog is established between a guitar and a SP8 camera, in an aesthetic which evocates the memory of old family pictures, full of intimacy, revealed in the sharing of simple stories of life. The Carlos Paredes’s concert in Auditório Carlos Alberto, in Oporto, 1984, is the starting point for the unfolding of prison stories, resistance, success and amateurism, stories marked by simplicity and passion. Here we learn about how Paredes plays a song for the hotel’s receptionist, who mourns about not being able to attend to the concert that has just taken place. Or the way he uses a comb to exercise the guitar when he was in prison. The testimony of friends and colleagues lets us understand a bit more about who this man was, a man who, in spite of the privations, would never complaint, and who as left us a genius work of incontestable value, not only for the beauty of his compositions and his interpretation, but also for the dimension that it gave to the Portuguese Guitar – raising it to the class of an autonomous instrument in place of being a mere accompaniment for others – and transforming it into a symbol of Portuguese music beyond-frontiers. Remains the sensation of liberation that his art is capable to produce, and the mystics of the work he has left, full of deep enthusiasm and nostalgia for the future.
Featuring fierce rivalry, stopwatch suspense, and larger-than-life personalities, MURDERBALL is a film about tough, highly competitive rugby players. Quadriplegic rugby players. Whether by car wreck, fist fight, gun shot, or rogue bacteria, these men have been forced to live life sitting down. In their own version of the full-contact sport, they battle each other in custom-made gladiator-like wheelchairs, pursuing gold medals and proving to themselves and to anyone who sees them in action that there is life after disability. From the gyms of middle America to the Olympic arena in Athens, Greece, MURDERBALL tells the story of a group of indomitable, world-class athletes unlike any ever shown on screen. It will smash every stereotype you ever had about gimps and cripples. It is a film about family, revenge, honor, and the triumph of love over loss. But most of all, it is a film about standing up, even after your spirit, and your spine, have been crushed.