Director: Edward Zwick
Stars: Matthew Broderick, Denzel Washington, Cary Elwes
Genre: Biography, Drama, History
Country: USA
Robert Gould Shaw leads the U.S. Civil War’s first all-black volunteer company, fighting prejudices from both his own Union Army, and the Confederates.
Director: Pedro Costa
Stars: Pedro Hestnes, Nuno Ferreira, Inês de Medeiros
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Country: Portugal
Vicente, seventeen, lives with brother Nino, ten-years-old, and his ailing father in a derelict house on the outskirts of the capital. They don’t seem to remember their mother, and are very much attached to their father, despite his temper, and his frequent absences from home. One day, the father leaves for good, and Vicente and Nino swear to cover it up. It’s their secret. Clara, the primary school assistant, is fascinatingly beautiful, and secretive, and (may be) she knows it aswel. There are other secrets, though: the origin of the money that appears at Vicente’s house; the relationship between Vicente’s well-to-do uncle and his girlfriend; the relationship between the four people who once played the cards together, and now can’t stand each other.
Director: Ettore Scola
Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Massimo Troisi, Marina Vlady
Genre: Drama
Country: Italy | France
Jordan, forced to close his movie theater due to financial problems, recalls the events, the characters and the films that marked his life.
Director: Jorge Fons
Stars: Héctor Bonilla, María Rojo, Jorge Fegán
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: Mexico
A Claustrophobic experience which involves a Mexican middle class family into the atrocities made by wild and heartless army forces whose main objective seems to be students who do not permit the 1968’s Olimpic games’ to develop normally.
Director: John Duigan
Stars: Raul Julia, Richard Jordan, Ana Alicia
Genre: Biography, Crime, Drama
Country: USA | Mexico
The life and work of Archbishop Oscar Romero who opposed, at great personal risk, the tyrannical repression in El Salvador.
Director: Alison Maclean
Stars: Theresa Healey, Peter Tait, Annagretta Christian
Genre: Short, Horror
Country: New Zealand
A woman finds something quaint in her kitchen sink and feels strangely captivated towards it.
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Stars: Kenneth Branagh, Derek Jacobi, Simon Shepherd
Genre: Action, Biography, Drama
Country: UK
In the midst of the Hundred Years War, the young King Henry V of England embarks on the conquest of France in 1415.
Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Stars: Rentarô Mikuni, Yoshiko Mita, Tsutomu Yamazaki
Genre: Drama, History
Country: Japan
Legendary tea master Sen no Rikyu is faced with his warmongering lord’s unrealistic pretensions.
Director: Charles Lane
Stars: Charles Lane, Nicole Alysia, Tom Alpern
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA
Nearly silent comedy filmed in black and white follows a street artist (Charles Lane), who rescues a baby after her father was murdered. The artist then sets off to find the mother, but has to first learn how to care for the child. Ultimately he ends up in a horse drawn chase of the murderers.
Director: Marco Risi
Stars: Michele Placido, Claudio Amendola, Francesco Benigno
Genre: Drama, Crime
Country: Italy
A teacher discovers his calling. Marco relocates to Palermo from Milan and takes a job teaching in a reform school while he waits for a high school position. He tries to understand and motivate his handful of students, reading them colloquial poetry, encouraging them to stand up for their rights, finding out about their histories. Natale, in for murder, enamored of the Mafia, the King Rat within the group; Mery, a drag queen, arrested for assault when defending himself, in love with Mario and, in daylight, rejected by all; Pietro, illiterate, muscular, believing his destiny is set; the callow Claudio, vulnerable, learning to harden himself. What can Mario learn and do in such a short time?
Director: Ken Russell
Stars: Sammi Davis, Amanda Donohoe, Paul McGann
Genre: Action, Drama, Romance
Country: UK
A young woman deals in her own personal way with the trials of adolescence and young adulthood in early 1900s England.
Director: Jan Svankmajer
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short, Drama
Country: USA
The last moments of a creature made out of fruits and vegetables.
Director: Anne Wheeler
Stars: Rebecca Jenkins, Luke Reilly, Michael Ontkean
Genre: Drama, Romance, Music
Country: Canada
Story about a WWII wife & mother who joins a local dance band to provide for family while husband at war. Romantic involvement with one of the band members make her decisions difficult when husband returns from war. Story watches the progression of the band as it grows into a popular, successful recording and touring group. Excellent music and soundtrack.
Director: Ettore Scola
Stars: Marcello Mastroianni, Massimo Troisi, Anne Parillaud
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Italy | France
The visit of a lawer to his military son is an opportunity to recall the past, discuss the future and find a meeting point between two diametrically opposite personalities.
Director: Al Reinert
Stars: Jim Lovell, Ken Mattingly, Russell Schweickart
Genre: Documentary, History
Country: USA
An in-depth look at various NASA moon landing missions, starting with Apollo 8.
Director: Jan Svankmajer
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short, Comedy
Country: UK | USA | West Germany
Two pieces of meat fall in love.
Director: Jorge Furtado
Stars: Paulo José, Ciça Reckziegel, Douglas Trainini
Genre: Documentary, Short
Country: Brazil
The ironic, heartbreaking and acid “saga” of a spoiled tomato: from the plantation of a “Nisei” (Brazilian with Japanese origins); to a supermarket; to a consumer’s kitchen to become sauce of a pork meat; to the garbage can since it is spoiled for the consumption; to a garbage truck to be dumped in a garbage dump in “Ilha das Flores”; to the selection of nutriment for pigs by the employees of a pigs breeder; to become food for poor Brazilian people.
Director: Ryszard Bugajski
Stars: Krystyna Janda, Adam Ferency, Janusz Gajos
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: Poland
Tonia goes out drinking. She wakes up in prison, not having a clue why she’s there. She is tortured to encourage her to confess to a crime she is not aware of.
Director: Costa-Gavras
Stars: Jessica Lange, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Frederic Forrest
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
A lawyer defends her father accused of war crimes, but there is more to the case than she suspects.
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Stars: Babak Ahmadpoor, Farhang Akhavan, Mohammad Reza Nematzadeh
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Country: Iran
In this documentary, Kiarostami asks a number of students about their school homework. The answers of some children shows the darker side of this method of education.
Director: Frederick Wiseman
Stars: n/a
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Renowned documentarian Frederick Wiseman profiles the doctors, nurses, physicians, and patients at the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, as he watches medical staff work around the clock trying to provide care and comfort for patients possibly experiencing the last moments of their lives and console family members of the patients in addition.
Director: Stanley Kwan
Stars: Sylvia Chang, Maggie Cheung, Yat-Gam Chu
Genre: Drama
Country: Hong Kong | USA
Three very different Asian women forge a friendship in New York.
Director: Lindsay Anderson
Stars: Ellen Greene, Richard Thomas, James Whitmore
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Canada | UK
A radio preacher’s operation is controlled by his honest but colorless son. When the preacher is promoted into a media superstar by a savvy huckster, the son is left behind.
Director: Wendell B. Harris Jr.
Stars: Wendell B. Harris Jr., Timothy Alvaro, Dave Barber
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
William Douglas Street is bored with his life. Working for his father is getting to him, his wife wants more money, and he’s had enough. His solution is to re-invent himself. He becomes a chameleon, taking on whatever role suits the situation. From reporter to doctor to lawyer, he impersonates anyone he sees a need for and he can earn money being. The movie is based on the real people, William Douglas Street, Jr., and Erik Dupin.
Director: Adam Davidson
Stars: Scotty Bloch, Clebert Ford, Bernard Johnson
Genre: Short, Drama
Country: USA
A woman misses her train and buys lunch in a café. When she returns to her table, a man is eating her salad.
Director: Pekka Parikka
Stars: Taneli Mäkelä, Vesa Vierikko, Timo Torikka
Genre: Drama, History, War
Country: Finland
In 1939, two Finnish brothers are conscripted in the army to fight in the war between Finland and the Soviet Union.
Director: Uli Edel
Stars: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stephen Lang, Burt Young
Genre: Drama
Country: UK | West Germany | USA
Set in Brooklyn during the 1950s against a backdrop of union corruption and violence. A prostitute falls in love with one of her customers. Also a disturbed man discovers that he is homosexual.
Director: Maurizio Nichetti
Stars: Maurizio Nichetti, Caterina Sylos Labini, Federico Rizzo
Genre: Comedy
Country: Italy
A movie resembling Bicycle Thieves (1948) is shown on TV, but the real-life world gets muddled with the film and the TV commercials.
Director: Martin Arnold
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: Austria
Arnold’s original material is a piece of found-footage from the 50s. 18 seconds long and very typical for the period. A quiet take: a living room, a woman in an arm-chair. Her husband opens the door, kisses her, then moves out of the picture accompanied by a disturbing pan, his wife follows him. In Arnold’s film the sequence takes 16 minutes. Cadre by cadre, it becomes an exiting tango of movements. But pièce touchée is more than just a matter of forms. The reflections, distortions and delays it displays challenge Hollywood’s stable system of space and time.
Director: Alejandro Agresti
Stars: Tito Haas, Mirta Busnelli, Sergio Poves Campos
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina | Canada | Netherlands
As an anonymous man, Fermin leaves his underground hideout in the subway. The dictatorship in the country is followed by democracy, but the bright light of it blinds Fermin: he is displaced. At the police station, his anonymity is complete and he doesn’t remember his own name. He is fitted with a past of 13 years of illegal political opposition from the police archives. When he keeps silent about the crimes of the dictator regime, he will be a free man. The woman he promised to marry, doesn’t recognize him anymore, and thinks he is dead.
Director: Nikolay Volev
Stars: Irini Jambonas, Hristo Shopov, Rashko Mladenov
Genre: Drama
Country: Bulgaria
Margarit and Margarita are high school senior students. They are madly in love. And so proud and independent that they are often in trouble with their parents and teachers. They quit school to live life their own way, only to face a world or corruption and brutality. Margarit would make no compromise and would not get involved in a game with shady rules. Margarita is more willing to do so in the name of their future together. A big manager takes her under his wing and shows himself to be a corrupt womanizer. Margarit cannot stand the debauchery of their ‘protector’ and kills him. After his sentence he puts an end to his life and unable to live her life this way, so does Margarita.
Director: Alain Resnais
Stars: Laura Benson, Adolph Green, Linda Lavin
Genre: Comedy
Country: France
A grumpy American is suffering during his visit to Europe.
Director: Jacques Rivette
Stars: Bulle Ogier, Benoît Régent, Fejria Deliba
Genre: Drama, Mystery
Country: France | Switzerland
A drama following 4 women at stage school. Considered by some to be the summation of director Jacques Rivette’s work as a whole.
Director: Euzhan Palcy
Stars: Donald Sutherland, Janet Suzman, Zakes Mokae
Genre: Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
A white middle class South African suburbanite with no interest in politics agrees to help his black gardener find his jailed son. His investigation opens his eyes to the horrors committed by the secret police and turns him into a target.
Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Stars: Axel Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Country: Mexico
A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his armless mother – the leader of a strange religious cult – and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name as he becomes “her arms”.
Director: David O. Russell
Stars: Bette Davis, Julie Follansbee, William Hickey
Genre: Short
Country: USA | Canada
Early David O. Russell short.
Director: Jirí Barta
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short
Country: Czechoslovakia
Laid-off old mannequins spend their cracked and broken lives in an old, abandoned warehouse. New mannequins are brought to the warehouse. They are old as well, but from a younger generation. The two groups must live together, but it’s not easy at all.
Director: Philippe Garrel
Stars: Brigitte Sy, Philippe Garrel, Louis Garrel
Genre: Drama
Country: France
The familiar conflicts of a film director planning to make a movie about his life and the confrontation he has with his wife, an actress who was turned down for such project in which she wanted to play herself.
Director: Satyajit Ray
Stars: Soumitra Chatterjee, Dhritiman Chatterjee, Dipankar Dey
Genre: Drama
Country: India
In this adaption of the Ibsen stage play, an idealistic physician discovers that the town’s temple waters are dangerously contaminated. But with the community relying on the holy attraction for tourist dollars, his warnings go unheeded.
Director: Michael Roemer
Stars: Martin Priest, Ben Lang, Maxine Woods
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA
A small-time Jewish racketeer, just out of prison, finds himself in a quandary. Returning to his old neighborhood, he finds that the streets that he and his friends once controlled have now been taken over by blacks and Hispanics. On top of that, he must try to get back with his family, who want nothing to do with him.
Director: Fons Rademakers
Stars: Liv Ullmann, Maximilian Schell, Peter Fonda
Genre: Drama, War
Country: USA | West Germany | Austria
In Germany, an old man attacks another old man and is arrested. The attacker refuses to speak. A female lawyer is appointed to him. She discovers that the attacker has numbers tattooed on his arm and the attacked man was a German officer.
Director: Bertrand Blier
Stars: Gérard Depardieu, Josiane Balasko, Carole Bouquet
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Country: France
A car dealer, well-to-do and with a beautiful wife, finds himself attracted to his rather plain new temporary secretary. Despite her own commitments she feels the same and the two soon embark on an affair. Though it would seem it has happened before his wife finds this particular entanglement of her husband’s very difficult to accept.
Director: Werner Herzog
Stars: Werner Herzog
Genre: Documentary
Country: France | West Germany
Herzog’s documentary of the Wodaabe people of the Sahara/Sahel region. Particular attention is given to the tribe’s spectacular courtship rituals and ‘beauty pageants’, where eligible young men strive to outshine each other and attract mates by means of lavish makeup, posturing and facial movements.
Director: Goran Markovic
Stars: Rade Markovic, Bogdan Diklic, Dragan Nikolic
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: Yugoslavia
During the excavation of ancient Roman ruins, an old archaeology professor accidentally opens the gate between our world and the world of the dead.
Director: Andrzej Fidyk
Stars: Andrzej Fidyk
Genre: Documentary
Country: Poland
North Korea, late 1980s. The communist authorities hold enormous parades celebrating the 40th anniversary of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and worshipping its leader, Kim Ir Sen. But all this splendor, pomp and incredible lavishness is also to eclipse sports olympics taking part in South Korea.
Director: Frédéric Rossif
Stars: Philippe Meyer
Genre: Documentary
Country: France
A two-part TV documentary on World War II, made exclusively from archive footage.
Director: Jon Alpert
Stars: Freddy, Michael Jandreau, Robert
Genre: Documentary, Crime
Country: USA
Documentary maker Jon Alpert follows three petty criminals in Newark. Filmed by a hidden camera, the three are stealing, using drugs, getting caught and convicted.
Director: Eliseo Subiela
Stars: Lorenzo Quinteros, Noemí Frenkel, Hugo Soto
Genre: Drama
Country: Argentina | Spain
Roberto is an insurance salesman who dreams of writing his own novel. When he meets Estela, a young woman about to commit suicide, it serves him as material to make this work.
Director: Otar Iosseliani
Stars: Sigalon Sagna, Saly Badji, Binta Cissé
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy
Country: France | West Germany | Italy
The film depicts daily life in an Senegalian village. The people sleep, eat, make love, pray for rain, et cetera, while civilization, by way of timber trucks and tree fellers, is slowly encroaching.
Director: Jan Svankmajer
Stars: n/a
Genre: Animation, Short, Comedy
Country: Czechoslovakia
A human body gradually reconstructs itself as its various component parts crowd themselves into a small room and eventually, after much experimentation, sort out which part goes where.
Director: Bertrand Tavernier
Stars: Philippe Noiret, Sabine Azéma, Pascale Vignal
Genre: Drama, War
Country: France
Intense character study of men and women driven by an overpowering obsession with the past.
Director: Percy Adlon
Stars: Marianne Sägebrecht, Brad Davis, Judge Reinhold
Genre: Comedy
Country: USA | West Germany
A kindly but thieving shopaholic tries to turn her mistakes around, but does so by becoming a skilled computer hacker, something that could only get her into more trouble despite her goal to impress her beloved family.
Director: Michael Haneke
Stars: Birgit Doll, Dieter Berner, Leni Tanzer
Genre: Drama
Country: Austria
A European family who plan on escaping to Australia, seem caught up in their daily routine, only troubled by minor incidents. However, behind their apparent calm and repetitive existence, they are actually planning something sinister.
Director: Obie Benz, Joshua Waletzky
Stars: David Byrne, Sandra Bernhard, Frances Fisher
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Celebrity confessions about their first sexual experiences.
Director: Konstantin Lopushanskiy
Stars: Viktor Mikhaylov, Vera Mayorova, Vadim Lobanov
Genre: Drama, Sci-Fi
Country: Soviet Union | West Germany | Switzerland
In a post-apocalyptic world, in which a large part of the population consists of demented and deformed mutants being kept in reservations, a man embarks upon visiting the ruins of a museum buried under the sea which can only be accessed during low tide.
Director: Stan Brakhage
Stars: n/a
Genre: Short
Country: USA
An experimental short by Stan Brakhage which mixes and overlaps various footage filmed in Mesa Verde.
Director: Robert Denny, David Hoffman
Stars: Norman Rose, Adolf Galland, Hans Adolf Jakobson
Genre: Documentary
Country: USA
Through interviews with former World War II fighter aces, “How Hitler Lost the War” examines the theory that the German Armed Forces substantially won and then lost the war in Europe before 1942. That had it not been for the political and military mistakes of Adolf Hitler, the United States would have had to stand alone against a Nazi Europe allied with an even more powerful Japan, and face a future that is barely imaginable.
Director: Juraj Jakubisko
Stars: Bolek Polívka, Borek Dlouhý, Ivan Drozdy
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: Czechoslovakia | West Germany
Pepe and Prengel, returning from war, meet Ester and both fall in love with the girl and live together in a deserted house. Fanatic communist, Zelmira, wants to turn their world upside-down.
Director: Adrian Maben
Stars: Adrian Maben, Candice Bergen, Tina Brown
Genre: Documentary, Biography
Country: West Germany
A camera crew follows Helmut Newton, the fashion and ad photographer whose images of tall, blond, big-breasted women are part of the iconography of twentieth-century erotic fantasy. He’s on the go from L.A., to Paris, to Monte-Carlo, to Berlin, where he was a youth until he escaped from the Nazis in 1936. We see him on shoots, interviewing models, and discussing his work. It’s not art and it’s not good taste, he tells students. We meet June, his Australian-born wife, whom he married in 1948. Three actresses talk about working with Newton and how posing is different from acting. A heart attack in 1973 helps Newton re-focus, resulting in more personal photographic projects.
Director: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman
Stars: Sara Lewinstein, David Mandell, Suzi Mandell
Genre: Documentary, Biography, History
Country: USA
A collection of profiles of people dead from AIDS who are remembered in the AIDS Memorial Quilt.
Director: Coline Serreau
Stars: Daniel Auteuil, Firmine Richard, Pierre Vernier
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Country: France
A company president gets framed with a food-poisoning scandal and the only person who can help him is the evening cleaning-woman, who always seems to be at the right place at the right time.
Director: Wim Wenders
Stars: Wim Wenders, Yohji Yamamoto
Genre: Documentary
Country: West Germany | France
Wim Wenders talks with Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto about the creative process and ponders the relationship between cities, identity and the cinema in the digital age.
Director: Tunç Basaran
Stars: Ozan Bilen, Nur Sürer, Füsun Demirel
Genre: Crime, Drama
Country: Turkey
Baris, a 5 year-old little boy, has to stay in a prison with her mother during her detention period. Baris develops a special relationship with Inci, a young woman who also stays in prison. She promises him that the kite will fly someday.
Director: Robert Enrico, Richard T. Heffron
Stars: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Jane Seymour, François Cluzet
Genre: Drama, History, Thriller
Country: France | Italy | West Germany | Canada | UK
When Louis XVI summoned the Etats-Generaux, he unleashes a revolution that would change his country and cost his life. This is the story of one of the crucial points in the history of France, and Europe, divided into two parts.
Director: Ron Clements, John Musker
Stars: Jodi Benson, Samuel E. Wright, Rene Auberjonois
Genre: Animation, Family, Fantasy
Country: USA
A mermaid princess makes a Faustian bargain in an attempt to become human and win a prince’s love.
Director: Nigel Finch
Stars: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones
Genre: Documentary, Music
Country: UK
A look back at the lives and careers of the Rolling Stones.
Director: Brian Gibson
Stars: Ben Kingsley, Renée Soutendijk, Craig T. Nelson
Genre: Biography, Drama, War
Country: UK | West Germany | Hungary | USA
A biographical portrayal of Simon Wiesenthal, famous Nazi Hunter. From his imprisonment in a Nazi Concentration Camp, the film follows his liberation and his rise to become one of the leading Nazi hunters in the world, bringing such criminals to justice as Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie.
Director: Brian Gibson
Stars: Ben Kingsley, Renée Soutendijk, Craig T. Nelson
Genre: Biography, Drama, War
Country: UK | West Germany | Hungary | USA
A biographical portrayal of Simon Wiesenthal, famous Nazi Hunter. From his imprisonment in a Nazi Concentration Camp, the film follows his liberation and his rise to become one of the leading Nazi hunters in the world, bringing such criminals to justice as Adolf Eichmann and Klaus Barbie.
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Stars: Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Cuny, Sabine Azéma
Genre: Documentary
Country: France
An 8-part documentary chronicling the history of cinema, examining the history of the concept of cinema and how both relates to the 20th century.