The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat

A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

Das Dorf der Freundschaft

A German Documentary about the “village of friendship” that was created by American Veteran George Mizo to help the Vietnamese kids suffering from the Vietnam War.

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City

A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.

Dubrovnik

A film describing the political history of Dubrovnik and the history of its architecture, painting, literature and science until the end of Republic of Ragusa.

The Beauty of the Adriatic

The Beauty of the Adriatic was created as a promotional tourist film, but through its unusual and even bizarre formal devices it overcomes the promotional function. The narrator of the film is constantly communicating with the viewer, exclaims and inserts jokes, and we also see him in the film as a guide entertaining us with various gestures and movements. In the film there are also interspersed humorous animated scenes, an interview with Hamlet, poetic sequences and stylized scenes such as one where the camera is "looking for" the lost guide.

Dubrovnik Summer Festival

Zvonimir Berković decided to present the Dubrovnik Summer Festival on film in an imaginative manner. He set scenes from the most popular plays of the Festival across various locations in Dubrovnik, so Pero Kvrgić acts Negromant's monologue from "Dundo Maroje" while interacting with vendors on the local marketplace, and in the dreamy atmosphere of Lokrum forest fairies are performing a scene from Držić's "Grižula".

The Sea, Reefs, Letters

The intellectual and the sensual are combined in this essay presentation of the work of the painter Ivo Vojvodić from Dubrovnik. Through the presentation of three frequent motifs of Vojvodić's painting - the sea, reefs and letters - Berković touches upon the emigratory fate of Vojvodić's family in desire for a home and the Ragusan ideal of freedom.

Fondations

Mathieu Collette, a passionate blacksmith, renovates an abandoned heritage building belonging to the City of Montreal to create a blacksmithing school. Sixteen years later, after turning the building into an internationally renowned center for the transmission of living heritage, Mathieu is threatened with eviction for obscure administrative reasons, in the very year of Montreal's 375th anniversary. What could possibly justify putting one of Quebec's last blacksmiths out on the street, as the bearer of an unparalleled social and heritage project? Filmed over several years, this documentary traces Forges de Montréal's fight against the disappearance of a part of our collective memory.

Shaka

Showcasing breathtaking footage of mountains and waves around the world, Shaka follows snowboarding world champion and renowned athlete Mathieu Crepel as he faces the biggest challenge of his life: to surf the legendary waves of Jaws Beach, Hawaii.

When Romero Met Del Toro

Filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro in conversation with George Romero.

El palenque de San Basilio

Documentary about Palenque de San Basilio, a town built by African slaves who espaced in Cartagena de Indias, and have preserved for centuries their rites, their music and their language.

Silent Asylum

A film director interviews Burmese refugees about their experiences encountering oppression and cruelty in their homeland, and reads aloud poetry about the destruction of Hiroshima by atomic bomb.

Palestinian Women

Palestinian women, the often-forgotten victims of the Israeli-Palestinian war, are here given a voice by Jocelyne Saab. The film was commissioned by Antenne 2 (France), but it was censured while still in the editing stage and never shown. This print was specially made for this retrospective by the conservation centre at Cinemateca Portuguesa.

Christmas at the Front

Poignant scenes of Allied troops enjoying their Yuletide rations at the first Christmas of WWI.

Les Larmes

The Rubber-Keyed Wonder

The Rubber Keyed Wonder tells the story of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. This film goes into all the finer details of how and why the ZX Spectrum was created, what impact the computer had as well as the various versions that followed right the way through to the latest iteration of the system with the ZX Spectrum Next.

Christmas Church Parade

Recruits of Lord Kitchener's 'New Army' parade on Christmas morning.

'All the Winners' - And the Losers!

No fewer than five once or future prime ministers on show at the momentous 1923 election.

Army Cross Country

Private Daly of the Connaught Rangers triumphs in the Aldershot Command annual cross country race, months before the outbreak of WWI.

Pico Sacro [The Holy Mountain]

In a leafy forest, a Galician sovereign who longs to attain wisdom meets a sorcerer, who tells him: “Go back to your country and study the Earth and the Stars in the sky; anywhere in the world reflects an image of it. You will ride on this arrow, which you must keep for a hundred years and a day. After this time, stick it in the widest valley of all those you possess, with the tip facing the sky. Then the Moon will come and, just as it exerts its action on the waters of the sea, it will act on the arrow, turning it into a holy mountain." - Legend about the Pico Sacro Inspired by Hokusai's views of Mount Fuji and Cézanne's paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire, "Pico Sacro [The Holy Mountain]" aims to reveal the mystery and the magic that underlie reality.