Cordobés 65

Return to Crystal Lake: Making 'Friday the 13th'

Una vez iniciado el fuego

Documentary on the recording of the Album Una vez iniciado el fuego by Sakatumba

Organ at Night - Iveta Apkalna

This film portrait of organist Iveta Apkalna reveals her journey from her native Latvia to the world's greatest stages. Her name is synonymous with virtuosity and complete dedication to music. "Iveta has the ability to bring music to life," says Finnish composer Esa-Pekka Salonen. The film shows the contrasts in Iveta Apkalna's professional life — from the glamour of the stage to lonely hours of rehearsal at night. The film features her performances with virtuoso violinist Hilary Hahn, outstanding conductor Paavo Järvi, and contemporary music composer Nico Muhly, as well as audience ovations and adrenaline.

Foster Child

Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards.

Tehran Is the Capital of Iran

Tehran Is the Capital of Iran (1966-79) documents life in a deprived district in the south of Tehran. The images of destitution in Tehran's poor areas is accompanied by a variety of spoken accounts: the official viewpoint on the district's living conditions, what the inhabitants have to say, and occasional extracts read out of school manuals. The key element in Shirdel's film is the counterpoint effect he creates with image and sound. His impressively powerful portrayal of social unease helps reinforce the impact of his astonishing documentary images and social themes.

Rubens: A Life in Europe

The Flemish painter, humanist and diplomat Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was fortunate to be recognized during his lifetime as an artist of genius and one of the most prolific among his peers, making him a key figure of the Baroque.

Bonecos de Ohi

Documentary about the life and art of puppeteer Celso Ohi.

Quest for the Ring

Because the World Never Stops

Shot live in the studio during the evening broadcast on Swedish public television, the film shows the news like you've never seen them before.

A Life for Movies: Lotte Eisner

Born in Berlin in 1896, Lotte Eisner became famous for her passionate involvement in the world of both German and French cinema. In 1936, together with Henri Langlois, she founded the Cinémathèque Française with the goal of saving from destruction films, costumes, sets, posters, and other treasures of the 7th Art. A Jew exiled in Paris, she became a pillar of the capital's cultural scene, where she promoted German cinema.

Flesh

Rare, medium rare, medium, medium well and well done. Through intimate and personal stories, five women share their experiences in relation to the body, from childhood to old age.

Toronto Jazz

Toronto is regarded as the third largest jazz centre in North America. This film features a cross-section of jazz bands of that city: the Lenny Breau Trio, the Don Thompson Quintet and the Alf Jones Quartet. Their styles show creative self-expression, hard work, and improvisation.

Moravian Hellas

Karel Vachek’s graduate film offers us a documentary essay which is both a light-hearted and aggressive little piece and also a parody of investigative film journalism. The Strážnice folk festival, backed by the cultural Party apparatus of the time, for years had little to commend itself to authentic folklore. In the film the event assumes the form of a bizarre stage spectacle with almost surrealistic elements that Vachek reinforces with unconventional approaches (commentary appearing as titles on screen, singing, declamations into the camera, feature etudes, the fusion of news coverage and fiction). The result is a stirring film collage depicting various characters, from crowd-pleasers, Easter egg decorators, kitsch artists and peddlers, to museologists and local residents, all of whom come up against the eccentric "identical” twin reporters Karel and Jan Saudek and a bored actress who appears as an extra. Using their special blend of irony and wit, they present us with the sad truth.

Pucundrìa

In a retirement home in a small town surrounded by mountains, the daily lives of the people who live there alternate. Them inside, the world outside. An imbalance that manifests itself in "Pucundrìa", an indefinable feeling of melancholy, boredom and perennial dissatisfaction, which leads to an unconscious resignation for what has not been, is not and can never be.

Buba

This documentary film is about one of Georgia's regions - Racha. The title of the film is taken from the name of one of Racha's high mountain villages. It tells about the poorest in society living in the mountains and the rise of the SSSR. The product of a remarkable collaboration between the first Georgian female filmmaker and the leading Georgian avant-garde artist David Kakabadze.

Second Place

One of several Kevin Jerome Everson pieces regarding African-American rodeo riders, SECOND PLACE brings us inside the big show. The jerkily pixilated view of a bucking bull offers an aesthetic equivalent of the cowboy's wild ride while the film's silence lends an unexpected repose to the contest. Whether anticipating a bull's blasting out of the gate or watching an old hand stretch out his back, Everson's camera is ever-attentive to the action at the edge of the frame. - Max Goldberg

Symphonic Sketches

“Symphonic Sketches” tells the story of one classical music concert performed by the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra. Musicians from diverse racial backgrounds connect to the repertoire in unique ways and stage an unforgettable performance.

Cars Without a Home

Jan Schmidt and Pavel Juráček turn their attention to the problem of Czechoslovakia's unloved cars in this whimsical documentary short.