The debate in France about the abortion laws in 1974.
Social & External
Documentary feature about Czech director Jiří Menzel, featuring Menzel himself as well as Miloš Forman, Emir Kusturica, István Szabó and others.
A biographical film about one of the greatest Medieval scientists and scholars, Al-Biruni.
A descent into the maelstrom of anguish that tormented Arthur Lipsett, a famed Canadian experimental filmmaker who died at 49. A diary transmuted into a clash of images and sounds charting a prodigious frenzy of creation, a tableau depicting an artist’s dizzying descent into depression and madness: with LIPSETT DIARIES, Theodore Ushev renews his filmmaking aesthetic and explores what happens when genius is on a first-name basis with madness.
Asier and I grew up in the Basque Country. But one day he disappeared, later I found out he had joined ETA.
Director Sam George chronicles the remarkable life and times of the late Eddie Aikau, the legendary Hawaiian big wave surfer, pioneering lifeguard and ultimately doomed crew member of the Polynesian voyaging canoe Hokulea.
Michael Paul Smith is a unique character. He has spent most of his reclusive life struggling through bullying, prejudices and health issues until he found a way to eliminate it all. His answer was to create a fictional town called Elgin Park. We go deep into the mind and the magic behind Michael's 1/24th-scale recreation his town.
The movie follows Elia da Cortona, one of the most faithful followers of St. Francis, from 1209 to 1226.
An account of the short life of genius musician Jimi Hendrix (1942-70), probably the most talented and influential guitarist of the twentieth century: his humble beginnings in Seattle, his time in New York, his rise to fame in swinging London… Live fast, love hard, die young.
In 1881 Ludwig of Bavaria goes on a cruise on a Swiss lake. He takes with him a famous actor, Josef Kainz, to act out the scenes from a story which took place on the lake, at the actual locations.
The controversial and troubled Indo-Pakistani writer Saadat Hasan Manto finds his artistic choices challenged by censors.
A biographical film featuring the presidency and assassination of Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War.
This 1982 biographical television miniseries, as seen on PBS's Great Performances, dramatizes the life of this classic Italian composer known for operas including La Traviata, Rigoletto, and Aida and his Requiem.
Balkan Baroque is a real and imaginary biography of the Yugoslavian performance artist Marina Abramovic. Rather than a mechanical reproduction of the artist's work, the film tries to create a new reality by translating the performances into cinematographic images that intensify the fictional context of the film. Abramovic plays herself, but ,appearing in multiple forms, blurs her own identity. Memories and fantasies intermingle with day to day rituals. The chronological narrative often breaks to reflect the interior voyage of the protagonist from the present to the past and back to the present. The result is a visually impressive film. Balkan Baroque had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, 1999.
A biographical film about cinematic illusionist Georges Méliès featuring Méliès’s widow, Jeanne d’Alcy, as herself, and their son André as his own father.
Having fought in the First Carlist War, Martin returns to his family farm in Gipuzkoa only to find that his younger brother, Joaquín, towers over him in height. Convinced that everyone will want to pay to see the tallest man on Earth, the siblings set out on a long trip all over Europe, during which ambition, money and fame will forever change the family’s fate. A story based on true events.
This short follows the political career of Theodore Roosevelt, beginning in 1895, when he was appointed police commissioner of New York City. In 1897 he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Navy. His charge up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War in 1898 is re-created. He becomes vice president in March 1901 and assumes the presidency when William McKinley is assassinated six months later. According to the narrator, Roosevelt refused to be beholden to political bosses, doing what he believed to be right for the American people.
This short film in support of the war effort focuses on the training and missions of Army Air Corps Captain Hewitt T. Wheless just after the U.S. entry into World War II.
Bio-drama tracing the life and career of Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla from his days as a young activist in Poland to his rise and installation in 1978 as Pope of the Catholic world.
Inventor Robert Fulton receives support from a tavern owner and a shipyard worker to help realize his dream of a high-powered steamboat.
Simone Veil's life story through the pivotal events of Twentieth Century. Her childhood, her political battles, her tragedies. An intimate and epic portrait of an extraordinary woman who eminently challenged and transformed her era defending a humanist message still keenly relevant today.
The life of Henri Grouès, known as Abbé Pierre, from his time in the Resistance in WWII to his fights against poverty and for the homeless.
In 1429, a French teenager stood before her King with a message she claimed came from God; that she would defeat the world's greatest army and liberate her country from its political and religious turmoil. As she reclaims God's diminished kingdom, this courageous young woman has various amazing victories until her violent and untimely death.
An unprecedented and intimate look at the life, work and enduring legacy of British actress Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993).
Diaries, audiotapes, videotapes and testimonials from friends and colleagues offer insight into the life and career of Gilda Radner -- the beloved comic and actress who became an icon on Saturday Night Live.
A behind-the-scenes documentary about the Clinton for President campaign, focusing on the adventures of spin doctors James Carville and George Stephanopoulos.
Based on true events about the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement, women who were forced underground to pursue a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an increasingly brutal State.
The life of internationally renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin is told through her slideshows, intimate interviews, ground-breaking photography, and rare footage of her personal fight to hold the Sackler family accountable for the overdose crisis.
Girl next door, activist, so-called traitor, fitness tycoon, Oscar winner: Jane Fonda has lived a life of controversy, tragedy and transformation – and she’s done it all in the public eye. An intimate look at one woman’s singular journey.
Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
After marrying a successful Parisian writer known commonly as Willy, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is transplanted from her childhood home in rural France to the intellectual and artistic splendor of Paris. Soon after, Willy convinces Colette to ghostwrite for him. She pens a semi-autobiographical novel about a witty and brazen country girl named Claudine, sparking a bestseller and a cultural sensation. After its success, Colette and Willy become the talk of Paris and their adventures inspire additional Claudine novels.
In WWII France, poor and illiterate Henri Fortin is introduced to Victor Hugo's classic novel Les Misérables and begins to see parallels between the book and his own life.
This is a drama set in Nazi-occupied France at the height of World War II. Charlotte Gray tells the compelling story of a young Scottish woman working with the French Resistance in the hope of rescuing her lover, a missing RAF pilot. Based on the best-selling novel by Sebastian Faulks.
Bastien is twenty years old and has been an activist for five years in the main extreme right party. When the presidential campaign begins, he's invited by his superior to commit even further. Initiated into the art of decking himself out like a politician, he starts to dream of a career, but old demons surge forth...
26 year-old Karl Marx embarks with his wife, Jenny, on the road to exile. In 1844 in Paris, he meets Friedrich Engels, an industrialist’s son, who has been investigating the sordid birth of the British working class. Engels, the dandy, provides the last piece of the puzzle to the young Karl Marx’s new vision of the world. Together, between censorship and the police’s repression, riots and political upheavals, they will lead the labor movement during its development into a modern era.
A documentary about the legendary series of nationally televised debates in 1968 between two great public intellectuals, the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. Intended as commentary on the issues of their day, these vitriolic and explosive encounters came to define the modern era of public discourse in the media, marking the big bang moment of our contemporary media landscape when spectacle trumped content and argument replaced substance. Best of Enemies delves into the entangled biographies of these two great thinkers, and luxuriates in the language and the theater of their debates, begging the question, "What has television done to the way we discuss politics in our democracy today?"
In 1973, a young gallery assistant goes on a wild adventure behind the scenes as he helps aging genius Salvador Dali prepare for a big show in New York.
The world's greatest pin-up model and cult icon, Bettie Page, recounts the true story of how her free expression overcame government witch-hunts to help launch America's sexual revolution. When she saw the film The Notorious Bettie Page, produced by HBO in 2006, the main person concerned reacted unequivocally: “Lies! Lies!” In a long interview recorded shortly before her death, the woman who entered the collective unconscious as the ultimate pin-up gave her version of events to director Mark Mori. In a gravelly voice, Bettie Page tells her own story and lifts the veil on areas often hidden by images that have made so many men and women fantasize since the 1950s: her abused childhood, an eclipse that lasted forty years, her mental illness. Through testimonies and unpublished archives, this documentary brings back to life a body and a face endlessly declined before our eyes, just as Bettie wanted: “I would like people to remember me as I was in the photos.”
Danton and Robespierre were close friends and fought together in the French Revolution, but by 1793 Robespierre was France's ruler, determined to wipe out opposition with a series of mass executions that became known as the Reign of Terror. Danton, well known as a spokesman of the people, had been living in relative solitude in the French countryside, but he returned to Paris to challenge Robespierre's violent rule and call for the people to demand their rights. Robespierre, however, could not accept such a challenge, even from a friend and colleague, and he blocked out a plan for the capture and execution of Danton and his allies.
One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows-Primo Levi. The Oscar®-winning Helen Mirren will introduce audiences to Anne Frank's story through the words in her diary. The set will be her room in the secret refuge in Amsterdam, reconstructed in every detail by set designers from the Piccolo Theatre in Milan. Anne Frank this year would have been 90 years old. Anne's story is intertwined with that of five Holocaust survivors, teenage girls just like her, with the same ideals, the same desire to live: Arianna Szörenyi, Sarah Lichtsztejn-Montard, Helga Weiss and sisters Andra and Tatiana Bucci. Their testimonies alternate with those of their children and grandchildren.
