My films are like that: in a room, but looking out onto an open sky. I can’t really say it except to repeat that Bresson note, ‘that without a thing changing, everything is different.’ The film exists. The fiction is set up, and we believe in it. The justness of the agreement leads us to believe it, because everything plays equally at being a sign.
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Documentary
Rupa u dusi / Hole in the Soul (1994) Dusan Makavejev, Rambo Amadeus, Melodie Annis, Dennis Jakob, Documentary, Biography, Comedy
A self-portrait documentary of Dusan Makavejev who travels to former Yugoslavia, and charts the changes of the society which parallels to his own life.
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Houston, We Have a Problem! (2016) Bostjan Virc, Ziga Virc, Documentary, Drama
Cold War-era international intrigue, declassified top-secret documents, and a clandestine deal between John F. Kennedy and Yugoslavia’s president Josip Tito are just the tip of the iceberg in this absorbing directorial debut from filmmaker Žiga Virc. Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, Houston, We Have a Problem! explores the myth behind the origins of America’s race to be the first country to send a man to the moon, and a supposed multi-billion-dollar deal involving America’s purchase of Yugoslavia’s space program in the early 1960s.
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Llámale Jess Redux (2014) Carles Prats, Jesús Franco, Lina Romay, Documentary
Jesus Franco, also known as Jess Franco, was one of the biggest names in cinema “B” worldwide. With more than 200 works and a large and peculiar use of pseudonyms, his work remains difficult to categorize, which makes it more exciting if possible. Through a series of interviews with Franco, “Call him Jess Redux” about the viewer sadist, esoteric and erotic world of the director, as refined as rogue. This new version of “Call him Jesus” (2000), considered the documentary reference Franco and directed by Carles Prats and Manel Mayol, incorporates new unpublished statements irreducible Madrid filmmaker and pays homage to his muse and companion, Lina Romay incorporating their active presence the story.
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Bouzkachi, le chant des steppes / Bouzkachi The Chant of Steppes (2009) Jacques Debs, Ali Choriev, Stasys Eidrigevicius, Dilbar Gunayeva, Drama, Documentary
The Chant of Steppes builds on a love triangle. Mohabat likes two men but she can not make the right choice and decides to marry the one who wins the bouzkachi contest. A poet and an artist have to cross mountains and steppes to engage in a noisy and dusty contest of horsemen in order to gain the hand and the heart of the beautiful Mohabat. The rules of the traditional Oriental game called bouzkachi are strict – a team of riders has to get the headless carcass of a ram clear of the other players to win the contest.
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Beatles around the World (1988) Rita Gillepsie, Documentary, Musical
Three Beatles performances: A television special taped April 28, 1964 in England with other popular British performers ; the band’s first concert in the U.S. in Washington ; and one of the group’s last concerts together, July 2. 1966, in Tokyo, Japan…
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Vers Mathilde (2005) Claire Denis, Mathilde Monnier, Documentary
The french choreographer Mathilde Monnier and her preparation for her next performance is the main focus of this documentary. The choreography’s practices and the bodies, everything is registered in some sort of anthropological way by the filmmaker’s camera.
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That’s Sexploitation! (2013) Frank Henenlotter, Albert Cadabra, Gal Friday, David F. Friedman, Documentary, Erotic
Before the advent of modern-day pornography, a vast and rapidly-paced world of smut peddling was the norm, complete with its own secret history. This documentary reveals the untold story of American cinema’s gloriously sordid cinematic past. Starting in the 1920s, expert exploiteer David F. Friedman and Henenlotter navigate us through more than five salacious decades of skin flicks. It’s the true story of dirty movies, traced in elegant detail from the bizarre locations where these nudie shorts were screened to the ongoing legal battles fought by their promoters. And of course there are the stories of the innovators themselves, people who often risked their own security and livelihood to make these films, believing in some way that what they were doing wasn’t a ‘bad’ thing – and that it could rake in some dough.
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Katka (2010) Helena Trestíková, Documentary, Biography, Drama
Helena Trestikova is the author of 10 episodes from the series Women on the Brink of the New Millennium, intimate portraits of both successful women and women on the social periphery. The tragic story of a girl named Katka who believes that joy and happiness can be applied through a hypodermic needle. All she is left with is despair. We first meet Katka at a rehab clinic in Nemcice, still full of optimism and faith in a drug-free future. The film tries to draw attention to the drug problem from a somewhat different point of view.
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Tchoupitoulas (2012) Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross, William Zanders, Bryan Zanders, Kentrell Zandrs, Documentary
Bill and Turner Ross’s Tchoupitoulas begins with wistful narration from its young protagonist, an impoverished African-American boy with a distinctly Southern drawl detailing a dream he’s recently had: “I don’t really have dreams,” he says, “but last night I did. It was actually a close-up of my future—like a flashback, except a flashing future. I was dreaming I seen me in the NFL, and I was playing for the New York Giants.” Right away, the similarities between this doc-fiction hybrid and Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild are evident, which makes sense considering both films are products of Court 13, a so-called “independent filmmaking army” made up of a group of ex-New Yorkers who moved to New Orleans in hopes of fostering a grassroots film community. But thanks to its decidedly less sensationalistic point of view, Tchoupitoulas proves the perfect antidote to the twee affectations of Zeitlin’s feature.
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