Oblivion: The Original Texts

Man of Marble

A young Polish filmmaker sets out to find out what happened to Mateusz Birkut, a bricklayer who became a propaganda hero in the 1950s but later fell out of favor and disappeared.

The We Should Game

Fame driven Ken Dean becomes the subject of a documentary when he attempts to start a pornography company. Following the failure of the company, Ken uses his father's religious music to start a Christian rock band but finds himself trapped in a gay conversion cult.

Les Suppliques

Since the defeat, the Nazis, who were the masters of the occupied zone, and the French State, which had been ruling the so-called free zone since Vichy, ordered the Jews to take a census. From the spring of 1941, whether they had been French for several generations or naturalized for a few years, foreigners who had taken refuge in France or stateless people who had been driven out of their country, they were put on file, arrested or threatened at any time. Some wrote to the administration, or directly to Marshal Pétain, who seemed to them to be the last resort. These requests are called Suppliques. Men, women, sometimes children, tried as best they could, by all means, to loosen the trap. They address themselves to their executioners, but they do not know it.

Leningrad. Stimmen einer belagerten Stadt

It was one of the great crimes of the Second World War: from 1941 to 1944, a total of 872 days, the siege and starvation of Leningrad by the German Wehrmacht on Hitler's orders lasted. Over a million people fell victim to the blockade, most of them dying of hunger. Countless of these starving people wrote diaries with the last of their strength, and cameramen filmed in the paralyzed city. Evidence from the hell of the siege, many of the film recordings, but above all the written memories on which this documentary on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation is based, remained under lock and key after the war. The voices of those who had suffered through this terrible time should not be heard by anyone, because they did not fit the pathos of the Leningrad heroic song that was officially sung. Most of the recordings come from women. The writers feared neither the enemy nor the Communist Party or Stalin, who often proved incompetent in providing for the population.

Les Oiselles

Sam shoots a documentary about her aunt, Danièle, a family icon. Danièle is a lesbian. In the ’70s, she was part of a revolutionary homosexual group. Sam recalls an action she and her comrades led in the Évreux cathedral in 1976.

Apollo 11: The Untold Story

Nearly forty years after the moon landing the men on the mission reveal what really happened. On how close the mission came to disaster.

Lo Fugaz de la Mirada

Fifty years have passed and Julio still hasn't managed to get over the disappearance of Miguel, the actor starring in a film they made together when they were young. In an attempt to reconstruct what happened, Julio sees some tapes he filmed while they were shooting and decides to write a farewell letter to Miguel's ghost.

Dear Esther

In 1989, a woman writes a letter to her mentor. She reminisces about a life-changing campaign they spearheaded to save a historic home, Irving Gill's Walter Luther Dodge House in Los Angeles, twenty years prior.

Hélène Berr, une jeune fille dans Paris occupé

Phantasia

X-ray images were invented in 1895, the same year in which the Lumière brothers presented their respective invention in what today is considered to be the first cinema screening. Thus, both cinema and radiography fall within the scopic regime inaugurated by modernity. The use of X-rays on two sculptures from the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum generates images that reveal certain elements of them that would otherwise be invisible to our eyes. These images, despite being generally created for technical or scientific purposes, seem to produce a certain form of 'photogénie': they lend the radiographed objects a new appearance that lies somewhere between the material and the ethereal, endowing them with a vaporous and spectral quality. It is not by chance that physics and phantasmagoria share the term 'spectrum' in their vocabulary.

The Last Failure

Julio Medina decides to become a film director. With his savings and some borrowed money, and after having read a book on film directing, he shoots his first feature film. Then he will have to release the film, something that will not be easy for him. The odyssey to release his first film will turn into a real nightmare.

Seven Winters in Tehran

After seven years in prison, a female student in Tehran is hanged for murder. She had acted in self-defence against a rapist. For a pardon, she would have had to retract her testimony. This moving film reopens the case.

Sabotaje (La muerte de Metacine)

Charlie and Emi return to do a sketch that doesn't go as planned when reality gets in their way.

Auto-hipnosis

A failed writer relives the past since he's unable to write something new. His search for inspiration will make him delve into his mind and face his internal conflict.

Hiroshima

The documentary recounts the world's first nuclear attack and examines the alarming repercussions. Covering a three-week period from the Trinity test to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the program chronicles America's political gamble and the planning for the momentous event. Archival film, dramatizations, and special effects feature what occurred aboard the Enola Gay (the aircraft that dropped the bomb) and inside the exploding bomb.

Mossad L'Histoire Secrète d'Israël

Arkhé

“Archeology” and “Archive” share the same roots. Both words come from “Arkhé”, the Greek word for “origin”. In the ruins of buildings, lost forever by earthquakes, as in the depth of the archives, we dig. What happened the morning of the big earthquake? The morning of September 19th 1985 is fading away in our memories. These recordings have never been seen. Unedited images of the catastrophe dug out by the archaeological adventure of an archivist that suffered with them. He dug and suffered until he could no longer see.

The Moving-Picture Man

Happy fun times with a little crew of people driving around to backwater villages to show movies in places where the locals don't get much culture. But all good things come to an end...

Atlal (Remnants)

'Atlal (Remnants)' is a fictional documentary that follows Bassam, a Palestinian man in his fifties, on a journey between the past and present. An abandoned school, the remains of a beach club, and a dusty cinema hold Bassam's cherished memories from his life in Qatar. Through personal archives and interviews with Bassam and his wife, Laila, we get a deeper look into their stories—slowly revealing the dismaying thoughts behind Bassam's nostalgia.

When Forever Dies

An archival fiction feature about the eternal battle of the sexes, in which two star-crossed lovers trapped in a kingdom of shadows fight to keep their love alive as they gradually fall in hate. Their names are Forever Man and Forever Woman. They are embodied by actors and actresses from long-gone eras, but also by cartoon characters and puppet animations. Together they narrate the story of the euphoric ups and tragic downs of human existence. When Forever Dies, a virtuoso collage of film fragments from the Eye Filmmuseum archive, is an epic ode to largely unseen cinema anchored in the polarizing world of today.