Preface to a History (2024)

The Godfather Part II

In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba.

Blade Runner

In the smog-choked dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, blade runner Rick Deckard is called out of retirement to terminate a quartet of replicants who have escaped to Earth seeking their creator for a way to extend their short life spans.

Wings of Desire

Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds -- with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk -- that it might be possible for him to take human form.

Richer and Richer

Losing her lover, mother, and hope for tomorrow, Gisele, the daughter of a crime syndicate, is forced to confront its oppressive leader – her father.

Out of Africa

Tells the life story of Danish author Karen Blixen, who at the beginning of the 20th century moved to Africa to build a new life for herself. The film is based on her 1937 autobiographical novel.

Interview with the Vampire

A vampire relates his epic life story of love, betrayal, loneliness, and dark hunger to an over-curious reporter.

Vanilla Sky

David Aames has it all: wealth, good looks and gorgeous women on his arm. But just as he begins falling for the warmhearted Sofia, his face is horribly disfigured in a car accident. That's just the beginning of his troubles as the lines between illusion and reality, between life and death, are blurred.

Fogos em mim

Experimental university short film inspired by grief, the passage of time and the filmmaking process

Tyngsboro

During his visit to a graveyard, a young man is suddenly projected into a dream-like realm. Empty and removed from time, the familiar landscape forces him to confront certain pains when blood suddenly effuses from his hands.

Henry John and the Little Bug

Dinner time in a remote home of a prairie family turns nightmarish when a band of blood spattered outlaws break through the front door in search of food, horses, and women. Nothing is as it seems in this constantly twisting genre bender.

127 Hours

The true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston's remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crashes on his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Utah.

Guaret

Pedro is Mallorcan, born to a mother from Burgos and a father from Mallorca. Due to his distant relationship with his father, Pedro doesn't fully master Mallorcan as a language. He turns to the works of Damià Huguet to remember his father, as only his poems can fill the void left by his death. The poet's words transport Pedro to his childhood and his roots, even though many of the words are unknown to him, despite them belonging to his language. This becomes the driving force behind the protagonist's search for his own identity, his origins, what it means to be a man, father-son relationships, collective identity, and "mallorquinness". Pedro constantly questions the emotions stirred by Huguet's poetry, and, most importantly, who he is and where he belongs.

The Illiac Passion

Prometheus, on an Odyssean journey, crosses the Brooklyn Bridge in search of the characters of his imagination. After meeting the Muse, he proceeds to the "forest." There, under an apple tree, he communes with his selves, represented by celebrated personages from the New York "underground scene" who appear as modern correlatives to the figures of Greek mythology. The filmmaker, who narrates the situations with a translation of Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound , finds the personalities of his characters to have a timeless universality.

Swain

Swain is inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Fanshawe, features a dreamlike narrative of a young man’s ritualized rejection of heterosexuality, as a mysterious woman in white gossamer pursues him through a ruined landscape.

Between You and You All

A chronicle of the lives of a couple and the gradual dissolution of their relationship.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

The wife of an abusive criminal finds solace in the arms of a kind regular guest in her husband's restaurant.

Lonesome Jim

After failing to find success as a writer in New York City, Jim slinks back to his family's home in the Midwest to lick his wounds. But his visit is quickly complicated when his angst spreads to his brother, Tim, who promptly decides to drive his car straight into a tree. Under the shadow of his sibling's injurious actions, Jim strikes up an unlikely friendship with Anika, whose centered small-town wisdom gradually rubs off on him.

A Haunting of Past Ink

A person receives old entries from their diary, unsure of who is sending them. They eventually arrive at a moment of transcendence.

Mera Naam Joker

Raju faces many hurdles and disappointments in matters of the heart throughout his life. But as a clown in a circus, he tries to make his audience laugh at the cost of his own sorrows. Along the way, Raju loves and loses, but must always keep a smile on his face because, in the words of his circus manager, "The show must go on."

Moon Child

Moon Child follows a group of childhood friends as they advance in a futuristic criminal underworld. Sho feels he is doomed to walk in his idol Kei's footsteps as a vampire with the gift of eternal life and the curse of blood thirst. Over time, their tight friendship becomes corrupted because of their rivalry and love for the same woman.

Desert Vows

Hunter, a bride-to-be, feels overworked and unappreciated. Her artistic spirit is squelched by the shallow corporate world she’s in and she has had enough. Unfortunately, she feels as if she can’t turn to Ian, her commercial executive fiancé, for solace. As her wedding day approaches, Hunter and her three bridesmaids embark on a road trip to Las Vegas for one last hoorah together. As the girls venture from the city, they decompress and let their personal barriers fall. An impromptu sightseeing excursion into the desert leads to a clash of anxieties and attitudes between Hunter, the bridesmaids, and her fiancé as Hunter searches for the road that’s right for her.

Anhedonia

A piece of visual poetry that shows the world seen through the eyes of a person in a constant state of anhedonia

Maborosi

A tragedy strikes a young woman's life without warning or reason. She continues living while searching for meaning in a lonely world.

Santa Sangre

A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his mother – the leader of a strange religious cult – and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name.

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion

SEELE orders an all-out attack on NERV, aiming to destroy the Evas before Gendo can advance his own plans for the Human Instrumentality Project. Shinji is pushed to the limits of his sanity as he is forced to decide the fate of humanity. An alternate ending to the television series "Neon Genesis Evangelion", which aired from 1995 to 1996 and whose final two episodes were controversial for their atypically abstract direction.

Hebe

Hebe, in her journey from childhood to adulthood, finds herself compelled to explore the boundaries of the real and the illusory through her extrasensory perceptions. Endowed with a singular gift: glimpsing the past and future as an eternal present, Hebe defies temporal convention, questioning whether her premonitions are pre-written destinies or mere whispers of chance. Inspired by true events, Hebe invites us into the fabric of time to discover whether her gift can and should be controlled or whether she should surrender and succumb to it.

Linton Falls - A Study of the Force of Water

An experimental film documenting a river leading up to a waterfall, depicting both its natural beauty and its inherent danger.

On the Other Side

A boy is going on an exchange to Canada but doesn’t know why he’s decided to do so.

Dracula's Daughter

A countess from Transylvania seeks a psychiatrist’s help to cure her vampiric cravings.

Soft

A portrait of new found sobriety and love unravels as a young woman moves through the motions of melancholic life in seclusion.

The Debacle of Mr. Eastward

Weston Eastward, owner of a small delivery service, hires Garrett Britches to deliver packages to unusual clients, whom lead Garret to a dark secret.

Cala Mata

A woman goes to a cold and inhospitable abandoned cove to try to summon the spirit of her only son, who passed away during the war.

Time and Tide

A drama examining the romantic relationships of one man's life. Jumping from past to present, the story focuses on the highs and lows of four specific affairs, alternately revealing passion, humor, beauty, and truth.

Dolores Claiborne

Dolores Claiborne was accused of killing her abusive husband twenty years ago, but the court's findings were inconclusive and she was allowed to walk free. Now she has been accused of killing her employer, Vera Donovan, and this time there is a witness who can place her at the scene of the crime. Things look bad for Dolores when her daughter Selena, a successful Manhattan magazine writer, returns to cover the story.

Opulence

Amidst the realm of her parents' upscale nightclub, a young woman embarks on a surreal odyssey to confront her identity, only to find herself inescapably mirroring her father.

PROLIX

A young woman watches TV with her cat in the room. A dying man explores what's left of his psyche.

The Secret Life of Bees

Set in South Carolina in 1964, this is the tale of Lily Owens a 14 year-old girl who is haunted by the memory of her late mother. To escape her lonely life and troubled relationship with her father, Lily flees with Rosaleen, her caregiver and only friend, to a South Carolina town that holds the secret to her mother's past.

Something Awful

A surrealist poetic short film following a struggling filmmaker as he is tormented by his ambitions and anxieties, granted only to leave through a process of self-actualisation.

Less Than Zero

A college freshman returns to Los Angeles for Christmas at his ex-girlfriend's request, but discovers that his former best friend has an out-of-control drug habit.

Nosferatu the Vampyre

A real estate agent leaves behind his beautiful wife to go to Transylvania to visit the mysterious Count Dracula and formalize the purchase of a property in Wismar.

Saudade

Aurora and Bernardo are experiencing moments of happiness, but their joy is interrupted by the onset of war.

My Prostitute Love

Halil goes to a bar with his friends and meets Sabiha, a prostitute, and they fall in love. Two lovers want to escape their past and live together. However, Sabiha knows little about Halil's life, and she has to face some facts.

Where the Tracks End

Georgina is a teacher determined to make a difference in the lives of the children she educates in the classroom of a wagon school in rural Mexico.

The Baby of Mâcon

Set halfway through the 17th century, a church play is performed for the benefit of the young aristocrat Cosimo. In the play, a grotesque old woman gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. The child's older sister is quick to exploit the situation, selling blessings from the baby, and even claiming she's the true mother by virgin birth. However, when she attempts to seduce the bishop's son, the Church exacts a terrible revenge.

25th Hour

In New York City in the days following the events of 9/11, Monty Brogan is a convicted drug dealer about to start a seven-year prison sentence, and his final hours of freedom are devoted to hanging out with his closest buddies and trying to prepare his girlfriend for his extended absence.

Mirror

A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.

What Makes the Ride Worthwhile

A short film shot on 16mm about memory, grieving, and siblinghood.

Sit With Me and Do Nothing for a While

A woman meditates on her life in an 80-minute unbroken zoom shot.

Blow-Up

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.

Born In Summer

A filmmaker plays with diary-docu and fiction as his camera joins his ventures into a phone dating club. Bored to death, hormones running, and desperately wanting to talk to someone his own age (preferably a girl), he walks into a local phone dating club. Can he hook up with someone? Borrowing the form of a diary-movie, the director unfurls an unpredictable and imaginative look into his own persona. 8mm experimental film by Murakami Kenji, the film that made his name.

Together

The elderly first-class prosecutor Khalid Aliyarov loses his wife before retirement. For a 65-year-old man, this event becomes a serious life crisis. However, the head of the prosecutor's office asks him to support his colleague Govhar khanum in opening the next criminal incident in order to get him out of this crisis. In connection with the case, the prosecutor's office gives him a car equipped with a Virtual Interlocutor (Viham) with artificial intelligence, and Aliyarov realizes that he is not alone in his loneliness. Despite being a representative of a large, modern virtual world, Viham is also lonely. There is a serious gap between these two generations. Will they be able to find common ground...

Big Bang Love, Juvenile A

An unknown future. A boy confesses to the murder of another in an all-boy juvenile detention facility. More an exercise in style than storytelling, the story follows two detectives trying to uncover the case. Homosexual tension and explosive violence drives the story which delivers some weird and fascinating visuals.

Blue Melody

Plot unavailable

The American

Dispatched to a small Italian town to await further orders, assassin Jack embarks on a double life that may be more relaxing than is good for him.

Triumph and Ruins

History as immersion and dispersion in the fragments of the past, a visionary journey accompanied by the voice of Patty Pravo. Presented at the Taormina Festival '97.

for us, an essay

How heavy is an emotional relationship in TRANSit? Giving love? Losing love? Having, in my chest, not only a heart but also longing? That's why I record you this: for us to continue.

Red Autumn

A Experimental Docu-Drama about the Red Army Faction's formation, and events leading up to their imprisonment and death, from 1970 to 1977.

Sasha Grey

“For my film portrait of Sasha Grey, I wanted to focus on her expressive and psychological transformation into a cinematic actor, separate from the cues that have associated Sasha with her previous career as a performance artist working within the adult film world.” – Richard Phillips

Remember me as Time

An experimental short film about a woman who feels stuck in time after experiencing some form of trauma.