Embodying Rainer’s aesthetic rigor and wit, the film combines fiction and documentary, script readings, dance snippets, still photos, and tableaux vivants to explore issues of power and gender that influence the emotional lives of her performers.
Social & External
The people behind it
John Erdman
Valda Setterfield
Shirley Soffer
Fernando Torm
Yvonne Rainer
Boundary-pushing Russian dancer and actress Ida Rubinstein selects renowned French composer Maurice Ravel to compose the music for her next ballet. Ravel ends up creating his greatest success ever: Boléro.
After losing her best friend Yue to depression, Joy struggles to celebrate his first birthday without him, reflecting on their past, she desperately tries to only remember the good things.
A rowdy singer - blindsided when her guitarist/problematic lover quits the band - struggles to write a song to prove to her record label she's worth keeping solo. Looks like she'll have to face herself before she can face the music.
Felina, a woman capable of becoming a panther, or perhaps a panther capable of becoming a woman, lives in love with a blind pianist.
Tilda's days are strictly structured: she studies, works at the supermarket checkout and looks after her little sister Ida - on some days she also has to look after her alcoholic mother. But this summer brings a change: Tilda receives a promising job offer for a doctorate in Berlin. Viktor also turns up, who, like her, always swims 22 laps in the swimming pool. When Tilda begins to believe that everything could be better, the situation at home spirals out of control.
After her much older husband forces a move to a suburban retirement community, Pippa Lee engages in a period of reflection and finds herself heading toward a quiet nervous breakdown.
With little or no embellishment, filmmaker Marguerite Duras offers a simple, often wordless chronicle of a woman's day. She and her friend are seen doing yard work, talking about their families and receiving the occasional visitor. The brightest spot in the day is when a washing machine salesman comes to call.
After a chance encounter with a wanted man, a woman is harassed by the police and press until she takes violent action.
"REM" is an Afrikaans Sci-Fi Drama about a grief-stricken father, Dehan, who becomes obsessed with the memory of his late wife, Lena, through the use of a high-tech, dream-altering device, the REM. This unhealthy obsession leads to Dehan struggling to reconnect with his young son, Erich, who survived the car accident that caused Lena's death. Dehan must decide to face and to confront his grief, reconnecting with his son, or to become so immersed in his fantasy dream-world that he loses touch with reality, and Erich, altogether.
Five young Europeans (German, English, and Irish) try to find answers to life's questions in India and Thailand.
Berlin provides the backdrop for this crime drama that centers on a military doctor falsely accused of dealing illegal drugs. Determined to prove his innocence, he escapes from the MPs and ends up holing up in the apartment his wife rented. He doesn't know that she has sublet the flat to a nightclub singer. When he finds out, he begs the singer to assist him. She is attracted to him and agrees. The doctor believes that his wife is behind the black-market dealings, but in the end, they find the real culprit.
Three minutes. The time to leave a message. To pass the baton and run 1600 meters. To cook an egg. The time to make a decision that can change your life.
A young woman sabotages her own wedding in order to reclaim her identity and obliterates her life in the process.
A father and daughter live a perfect but mysterious existence in Forest Park, a beautiful nature reserve near Portland, Oregon, rarely making contact with the world. But when a small mistake tips them off to authorities, they are sent on an increasingly erratic journey in search of a place to call their own.
In the Tuscan countryside, a family of traditional honey farmers struggles to make ends meet. The household consists of only daughters—four of them—led by the eldest, Gelsomina, who takes on the responsibilities of the family. When a small boy is sent to stay with them for rehabilitation, their routine is disrupted. As financial troubles threaten their home, Gelsomina sees an opportunity in a reality TV contest searching for 'Italy’s Most Traditional Family.' Willing to expose their secluded life for the prize money, she clashes with her father’s rigid ways in a bid to secure their future.
Fueled by love, rebellion, and rock 'n' roll, Radit and Jani live fast and free—until reality hits, and they’re forced to trade chaos for survival.
A married young academic falls under the sexual thrall of a much older man whose air of jaded ennui conceals a secret desire for vengeance.
On Christmas Eve, Francesca sets out for Rotterdam in order to find her little sister, who has run off with her musician boyfriend. On the way, she picks up Gerlinde, a heartbroken older woman at the end of her rope.
Rewi Rapana returns to the small country town of Te Mata after his family has left the district. His arrival rekindles old tensions as well as renewing family ties. He is seeking an identity and a permanent place to call home yet desperately hiding a secret from his past. Oddly enough there is one person with whom he finds peace of mind. She is an old woman known as Kara. A special relationship develops between Rewi, Kara and Kara’s great granddaughter Awatea.
On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips with her mother’s terminal illness.
A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.
A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.
In order to be reinstated to the bar and recover custody of her daughter, a hotshot lawyer, now in recovery and on probation, must take on the appeal of a woman wrongfully convicted of murder.
Feeling awkward and isolated, an imaginative and strong-willed teenage girl runs away from home with an older punk rock drifter.
A drama set in the American South, where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.
When seventeen-year-old Hannah stumbles upon a website about Thinspiration--an online community devoted to anorexia as a life choice--she becomes an obsessive follower of the site founder, ButterflyAna. By the time Hannah's family realizes what is happening and get Hannah the help she needs, the disease has fully taken hold and Hannah is refusing to eat. Will this family be able to exorcise the demon of anorexia from their lives?
More interested in partying and flirting with young musicians than work, veteran rock journalist Ellie Klug has one last chance to prove her value to her magazine’s editor: a no-stone-unturned search to discover what really happened to long lost rock god, Matt Smith, who also happens to be her ex-boyfriend. Teaming up with an eccentric amateur documentary filmmaker, Ellie hits the road in search of answers.
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
In a suburban landscape, the lives of several families interlace with loss, despair and personal crisis. Esther Gold has lost focus on all but caring for her comatose son, Paul, and neglects her daughter and husband. Lawyer Jim Train is devoted to his career, not his family. Helen Christianson wants to find a new spark in life, while Annette Jennings tries to rebuild hers.
Defiant young activists take the women's suffrage movement by storm, putting their lives at risk to help American women win the right to vote.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.
A woman embarks on a journey alone across the United States after fleeing from her violent husband.
An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn't let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of "Carmen Jones", becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star - with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn't wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
The story of a young writer's transformation when her past invades her present.
Young teen girl Xiu Xiu is sent away to a remote corner of the Sichuan steppes for manual labor in 1975 (sending young people to there was a part of Cultural Revolution in China). A year later, she agrees to go to even more remote spot with a Tibetan saddle tramp Lao Jin to learn horse herding.
When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond.
A Midwestern husband and father announces his plan to have a sex change operation.
A former professional dancer volunteers to teach dance in the New York public school system and, while his background first clashes with his students' tastes, together they create a completely new style of dance. Based on the story of ballroom dancer, Pierre Dulane.
94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein tries to rebuild her life after the death of her best friend. As a result, she moves back to New York City after living in Florida for decades.