A quiet house, an open door in the middle of the night. But peace is an illusion ‚ a son murders his father with his own hands and walks the next four hours barefoot to the police station. A crime in a village in a mountain of rural Portugal and a breach in the center of a family. (A. P.)
Life hangs by a thread. Sometimes, it is none other than an old floor lamp switch. The question (of life or death) should be: Must the light stay on or off? This exploration between hunter and prey, will be revealed with music.
Missing is probably the keyword for Reginato’s puzzle of memories. From the latin-american tower window of the Mexico City, hidden stories are launched during the troubled political period of the end of the 70’s. With rare Super 8 footage, Polvo sews this poetic essay ingeniously with guitars and ogives. (Miguel Valverde)
In a small rural town in the U.S., the construction of a large shopping center and its environmental impact are subject to a public hearing where actors and non-actors star as the people involved in the debate. Filmed in 16 mm, with a great black and white photography, this James N. Kienitz Wilkins’ film fascinates us by the great shots of gestures, glances and expressions of the participants, while we hear the pros and cons of each side. Wilkins explores thus a new way of looking and listening, a film that chronicles and documents at the same time. (C. C.)
Non scientific observations of the jumping fellows life.
While other teenagers go out on dates and get drunk for the first time, Sabine focuses single-mindedly on becoming a top athlete. Her single objective: to improve her physical prowess, no matter what the cost. Failure is not a word in her vocabulary. Even so, if she continues like this, she may be riding for a fall.
As two police officers transport a criminal, a senior policeman gets out of a van and a rookie policeman leaves alone with the prisoner. The criminal complains of a stomachache and wants to go to toilet, but the policeman ignores him. This is a funny story about a misunderstanding between an urgent criminal and rookie policeman.
People gather in Zagreb’s central square to witness live the international trial of Ante Gotovina, a Croatian Lt. Gen., hero in his country, indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. We only see people’s faces. An exercise in style about the emotional contagion in a political manifestation. (C. R.)
Within a neighborhood association in Lisbon, a group of children participating in a creative dance class. They experience their body, feelings and develop their imagination. They take us gradually into a timeless world, a jungle inside which finds its reflection in the wild gardens and suspended from the Portuguese capital.
We are invited to the house of Ragnhild Borgomanero and her deceased husband, who own the biggest private collection of fossils in Latin America. Guided by the extragant housewife and with an purposive apparatus of fixed and staged shots, we discover a place where History and stories abound. (Miguel Cabral)
The third in a series of five films entitled “Compound Eyes”, commissioned by the San Francisco Exploratorium. More than a scientific, this experimental film takes us on a journey to the macroscopic world of pollination by flies and butterflies in a transcendental and alien tone. (Rita Figueiredo)
Dr. Johannes Hagel, a German psycho-physisist, prepares to enunciate the principle of contingency through an experiment with a model train connected to a computer. A mesmerizing film about science and a narrative that absorbs us from start to finish. (C. R.)
A scientist tells us that Pluto is no longer considered a planet. The feelings of disappointment and nostalgia, and the impossibility of being able to go back to certain moments of his life, make him want to find in the story of David an answer for whatever exists beyond science and reason. (Jorge Jácome)
An struggling young cinephile filmmaker who longs to bring back the artistic quality of the cinema classics, starts earning money as a human punching bag to work off his brother’s debts to the mob. His energy and mental condition are weakening, but his toughest battle is still to come.
This milestone of the modern surrealist cinema follows the story of two girls, both named Marie, who try to understand the meaning of the world and of their life. The first scene shows them sitting in bathing suits and having a robotic conversation deciding to be bad. Throughout the film they engage in strange pranks as acts of rebellion. At the end they decide to go back and make everything right again, and that’s when a giant chandelier crushes them.
In memoriam di Alfedo Fazia Parallax Sounds explores the intimate connection between music and urban landscape in Chicago, bringing interviews with musicians who contributed to shape the vibrant Chicago underground music scene in the 90s and continue to do creative and relevant work today: Steve Albini, David Grubbs, Damon Locks, Ken Vandermark and Ian Williams. Through discussions ranging from art and politics to the differences between the condition of the artist in America and in Europe, they help us understand how different artists react to the same environment and which common traits might exist to connect such a varied artistic production.
Hybrid or fiction with a documentary basis, however we wish to name it, Pincus is an autobiographical vision of David Fenster, who used real images of interviews with his father over the years to build a narrative. In his thirties, Pincus Finster should know by now that the job is a serious thing, instead of letting his hippie friend sleep inside the houses he is responsible for remodeling, tying his own life along with the construction works. For anyone who refuses to grow up, he is quite mature when it comes to looking after his father, an Alzheimer’s patient who requires constant care. It is this paradox in limbo child-adult, and other antitheses ‚ not being able to decide between egoism and altruism, between a moving complacency and a moderate arrogance ‚ that he will fall in love with a yoga teacher (clearly using his father as bait for compassion) and seek solutions in alternative therapies for his father’s illness and his own existential crisis. The clear images of Fenster, in a documentary style, attenuate latent drama. (M. M.)
An over-ambitious beaver goes too far when he gets the chance to realise his ultimate dream. Some dreams are just too big.