Return to Reason: Four Films by Man Ray (2024)

Anita Liberty

Anita's boyfriend Mitchell dumped her after 3.5 years for Heather. All she can think about is humiliating him, mostly in poems that are bitter, banal, and hilarious.

Cyril contre Goliath

Cyril, a Parisian writer, never imagined that Lacoste, the village of his childhood, could one day be privatized by the billionaire Pierre Cardin. Pushed by his son and when nothing intended him for that, he decided to take action against this takeover of a new kind and began a real showdown with the famous fashion designer.

Amnesia Love

A guy is trying to discover his true identity after being found unconscious in a remote island.

My name is Enric Marco

Enric Marco, ex-president of the Spain’s main deportees’ association, embarks on a car trip to Germany, a demythologising journey into his past. Two years earlier, a historian had shown that Enric Marco wasn’t the member of the Resistance he had claimed to be, and that he’d made up the stories of his experiences in a concentration camp that he had been recounting on television for years. Now, Marco retraces the route of his 1941 train journey as part of a convoy of workers sent by Franco to Hitler, in the middle of the Second World War.

The End of the Journey

A 40-year-old mother struggles to deal with the anxiety of growing older after her eldest daughter moves out and the youngest distances herself.

Aridhu Aridhu

Aridhu Aridhu is a 2010 Indian Tamil-language drama film written and directed by K. R. Mathivanan, an assistant of director Shankar, directing his maiden venture. The movie is produced by Jaya Krishnan under the banner name of JK Creations. The movie lead cast includes Harish Kalyan and Uttara Raj both making their debuts. Thaman has scored the music under the audio label of Five Star Audios.

1+2=Paradise

Yuusuke Yamamoto has a crippling phobia of women, and understandably so—the twin girls living next door tried to cut off his penis as a child. Unfortunately, Yuusuke's father is a gynecologist and needs him to overcome his fear so he can inherit the family business. To accomplish this, Yuusuke's father offers sanctuary to sisters Rika and Yuka Nakamura in their home while the girls are studying at the nearby college. In a terrible twist of fate, when Yuusuke realizes that their guest room is too small for two people, he is forced to choose which of the sisters is allowed to stay. Desperate to win his favor, the brazen Yuka and the more reserved Rika are willing to do whatever it takes to impress and eventually sway Yuusuke—even if it means making things physical and personal. This two-episode OVA, 28 minutes per episode, is a seinen anime (typically targeted toward an older audience), which in addition to the harem genre is an ecchi comedy romance.

Uncut Family

The life of a boy in his adolescence takes a turn when his relationship with his mother and father is exposed

Die Legende der Maske

Plot unavailable

Lovers on Borders

Double revenge in two separate stories. Set in both a near future and the historical past, revenge is served not by violence, but by love.

Eternal Bond

Amidst the turmoil and betrayal of the Greater East Asia War, divine vengeance arises more ruthless than the fires of war. Fate brings them together, unveiling a chilling murder mystery far more terrifying than any human deed. The legend of the Eastern Naga King is about to unfold!

Black Hair Velvet Soul

A drunk husband has a gambling compulsion that ends up putting him in a bad way with the local Yakuza. Unable to pay his debt, he hocks the deed to his wife’s restaurant in order to stay out of trouble with the thugs. But it’s not enough. The wife has to sacrifice her body as well.

La tombe 33, un mystère égyptien

Plot unavailable

Bed Scenes

Seven brief scenes, each with a couple, explore the surprises and the changes of heart that can occur during sexual encounters. Only one of the seven couples has been in bed together before; several are strangers or new acquaintances. A prostitute and her john, an older woman and a youth who follows her home, two women friends, a gay man with a straight man, a man with distinctive ideas about soap and water, a woman who wants the light left on, and a Spanish-speaking woman with a French-speaking man make for an array of possibilities and unanticipated consequences. The 7 bed scenes are titled: The Black Hole [Le trou noir]; Mr. Clean [Monsieur Propre]; Madame; Heads or Tails [Tête bêche]; The Ideal Man [L'homme idéal]; Love in the Dark [L'amour dans le noir]; and The Virgins [Les puceaux].

Roland the Mighty

In this sword-and-sandal saga set on the steppes of Asia, Roland, leader of the Paladin troops, who must proves his mettle against the dreaded Saracen invaders, and withstand their evil plots

Chonda Pierce: Did I Say That Out Loud?

70 Minutes of Laughs as only Chonda Pierce, America's #1 female comedian, can deliver! Chonda goes to Hollywood and nothing gets past her! Not Botox booths, purse puppies, or health food--"whatever that is." Back in the South things get a bit more familiar, but not necessarily more comfortable, with barbecue tithing and hockey pucks flying and wigs tumbling. For the first time ever, Chonda answers questions from the audience, allowing Chonda to do what she does best - saying out loud whatever pops into the party she calls her mind.

Knight of the Trail

Jim and Molly are set to get married when Molly finds out about her fiancé's criminal past. Bill Carey weasels his way into Molly's heart in the interim, eager to relieve her of her savings.

Real Madrid. Rey de Copas

Plot unavailable

Sammy, the Way-Out Seal

Two young brothers secretly bring home a seal from their summer vacation and try to hide it from Mom and Dad. Havoc ensues as Sammy's antics disrupt the quiet town of Gatesville and its unsuspecting residents.

Tahiti Honey

The "Eleven Brooklyn Bombshells," a band led by Mickey Monroe ('Dennis O'Keefe (I)' ), are stranded in Tahiti at the time of the fall of France to the Nazis. Suzette "Suzie" Durand (Simone Simon). a French-American girl singing in a nightclub is consumed with a desire to go to the United States. Things go from bad to worse for the band,. and they are faced with the necessity of either taking a girl singer into the group,which they all regard as bad luck, or starving. The band insists that she be dropped as soon as they can earn enough to catch a bot home. But Mickey falls in love with Suzie, and smuggles her on board the ship.

Lost at War

This is a Twilight Zone type story that involves five soldiers out on a mission. And they soon find themselves stuck in a foxhole in an apparently deserted camp. Then strange things begin to happen. For one they are surrounded by strange creatures shrouded in black who do not fire on them or attempt to hurt them in any way but still they stay out there watching, almost as if waiting for something. And this, along with other things that happen, cause these men to question weather they are alive or dead. And that is where their struggle begins. Exploring the age old question of fate and if it is something that is written in stone or is it something we as people can affect. One by one, four of these five men give in to fate as it were and walk off into the woods never to be seen again, but Captain Jason Briggs will not give up for any reason and in the end it is up to him alone to fine out if he can truly change his own fate.

High on the Hog

With a potent strain of pot sweeping the City, DTA agents attempt to infiltrate a small town farming operation that has a strong leader and interesting family members.

Aelita: Queen of Mars

A young man travels to Mars in a rocket ship, where he leads a popular uprising against the ruling group with the support of Queen Aelita, who has fallen in love with him after watching him through a telescope.

Woman in the Moon

A scientist discovers that there's gold on the moon. He builds a rocket to fly there, but there's too much rivalry among the crew to have a successful expedition.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

A doctor's research into the roots of evil turns him into a hideous depraved fiend.

Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages

The story of a poor young woman, separated by prejudice from her husband and baby, is interwoven with tales of intolerance from throughout history.

The Big Parade

The story of an idle rich boy who joins the US Army's Rainbow Division and is sent to France to fight in World War I, becomes friends with two working class men, experiences the horrors of trench warfare, and finds love with a French girl.

The Crowd

John, an ambitious but undisciplined New York City office worker, meets and marries Mary. They start a family, struggle to cope with marital stress, financial setbacks, and tragedy, all while lost amid the anonymous, pitiless throngs of the big city.

Why Broncho Billy Left Bear County

Through a kindly act Broncho Billy earns the deep gratitute of Marion Rivers, who presents him with a Bible. Not long afterwards, she comes upon him as he is about to hold up the stage, but at sight of the girl he is overwhelmed with shame and taking out the little Bible promises her that he will live honorably. In the meantime, Marion's father holds up the stage at another point, and one of the stagecoach drivers, mounting a bareback pony, rides off for the sheriff. Broncho Billy sees Rivers get away with the money, and when he hears the sheriff and his men coming, for Marion's sake he goes to warn her father. To shield him, he takes the bags of money and rides away with the men after him. He leaves the money at the mile post with a note saying: "SAheriff, I'm through with Bear County, this stick-up was my last", and rides across the border. (Moving Picture World Synopsis)

Bloodbath

Chicken, a desperate hippie junkie living in a small Spanish village, is finding it difficult to separate fantasy and reality. This isn't helped by the villagers practising magic and child sacrifice, or his involvement with a group of boozy expatriates lost in their own dreams and regrets.

Mulholland Drive

Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.

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.

Frida

A biography of artist Frida Kahlo, who channeled the pain of a crippling injury and her tempestuous marriage into her work.

Modern Times

A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time..

Two Lovers

Set during the 16th-century Spanish occupation of Flanders, the story concentrates on the fiercely patriotic Mark Van Ryke (Colman). Donning the guise of "Leatherface," a swashbuckling masked avenger, Van Ryke performs his derring-do on behalf of the Prince of Orange (Nigel de Brulier). Naturally, Van Ruke considers beautiful Spanish aristocrat Donna Leonora de Vargas (Vilma Banky) to be a bitter enemy, and the feeling is mutual. To no one's surprise, however, Van Ryke and Donna Leonara eventually fall in love (hence the title). The pulse-pounding climax finds Van Ryke riding hell-for-leather through a rainstorm to warn the Flemish troops about the Spaniards' plans to burn the city of Ghent to the ground. Two Lovers was based on Madame Orczy's novel Leatherface, and adapted for the screen by Alice Duer Miller.

The Holy Mountain

The Alchemist assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent the planets in the solar system. The occult adept's intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their worldly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.

Limite

Adrift in the vast expanse of the ocean, a solitary boat carries three castaways—a man and two women. Stranded and devoid of any glimmer of rescue, they find solace in recounting the tales of their lives to one another. As they delve into their personal narratives, reminiscing about the circumstances that led them to this desolate predicament, they navigate through the depths of three distinct destinies. Bound by the confines of their shared space, every aspect of their existence becomes a boundary, underscoring their plight.

French Touch: Between Men

Between life, between love, between men. Four stories of men facing the precipice of deep change in their lives... and the male figures that took them there. Includes: In Seventh Heaven [7ème ciel] (2013); Michel's Mouse [Tapette] (2016); Taste of Love [Goût bacon] (2016); When You Hear the Bells [Au bruit des clochettes] (2016).

Carrie

An awkward, telekinetic teenage girl's lonely life is dominated by relentless bullying at school and an oppressive religious fanatic mother at home. When her tormentors pull a humiliating prank at the senior prom, she unleashes a horrifying chaos on everyone, leaving nothing but destruction in her wake.

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.

The Joyless Street

In 1921, we follow two women - Marie and Grete - from the same poor Viennese neighborhood, as they try to better the lives of themselves and their families during the period of Austrian postwar hyperinflation.

Amarcord

In an Italian seaside town, young Titta gets into trouble with his friends and watches various local eccentrics as they engage in often absurd behavior. Frequently clashing with his stern father and defended by his doting mother, Titta witnesses the actions of a wide range of characters, from his extended family to Fascist loyalists to sensual women, with certain moments shifting into fantastical scenarios.

Behind the Door

Oscar Krug is looked upon with suspicion by his neighbors because of his German name. When the US is drawn into the war with Germany, he enlists and travels the seas with his wife, Alice Morse. During a submarine attack Alice is snatched from Krug's side by a German officer. Krug now lives to have his revenge, and when the opportunity presents itself, he will have it.

People on Sunday

A semi-documentary experimental 1930 German silent film created by amateurs with a small budget. With authentic scenes of the metropolis city of Berlin, it's the first film from the later famous screenwriters/directors Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.

Metropolis

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

Apocalypse Now

At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.

The Birth of a Nation

Two families, abolitionist Northerners the Stonemans and Southern landowners the Camerons, intertwine. When Confederate colonel Ben Cameron is captured in battle, nurse Elsie Stoneman petitions for his pardon. In Reconstruction-era South Carolina, Cameron founds the Ku Klux Klan, battling Elsie's congressman father and his African-American protégé, Silas Lynch.

Trainspotting

Heroin addict Mark Renton stumbles through bad ideas and sobriety attempts with his unreliable friends -- Sick Boy, Begbie, Spud and Tommy. He also has an underage girlfriend, Diane, along for the ride. After cleaning up and moving from Edinburgh to London, Mark finds he can't escape the life he left behind when Begbie shows up at his front door on the lam, and a scheming Sick Boy follows.

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

A married farmer falls under the spell of a slatternly woman from the city, who tries to convince him to drown his wife.

Lost Highway

A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgängers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.

Requiem for a Dream

The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island residents are shattered when their addictions run deep.

Loft

In an apocalyptic future world, a young upper class couple is visiting an exhibition of surrealistic paintings, presented by a group of young anarchists in their loft flat where they trap and torture their high society guests.

The Passion of Joan of Arc

A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.

Blue Velvet

The discovery of a severed human ear found in a field leads a young man on an investigation related to a beautiful, mysterious nightclub singer and a group of psychopathic criminals who have kidnapped her child.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep.

Pi

A mathematical genius discovers a link between numbers and reality, and thus believes he can predict the future.

Battleship Potemkin

A dramatized account of a great Russian naval mutiny and a resultant public demonstration, showing support, which brought on a police massacre. The film had an incredible impact on the development of cinema and is a masterful example of montage editing.

Nanook of the North

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

The Ring

Both Jack Sander and Bob Corby are boxers in love with Mabel. Jack and Mabel wed, but their marriage is flat. The young wife looks to Bob for comfort.

Close to His Chest

These men are undergoing a crucial stage of self-discovery, but for better or worse - they will not go through it alone. A selection of 6 shorts about the complexities of gay and male sexuality. Includes: Along the Road [Längs vägen] (2011); Drives [Pulsiones] (2009); Frozen Princess [Princesa de hielo] (2017); Naked [Desnudos] (2013); Swimming Pool [Piscina] (2017); Visibles (2018).

The Farmer's Wife

Successful middle-aged farmer Samuel Sweetland becomes widowed, then his daughter marries and leaves home. Deciding he wishes to remarry, Sweetland pursues some local women he considers prospects.

The Woman of the Century

Beth, a young transgender woman, is taken to times and places afar. Run-ins with a powerful spirit and a growing bond with another lost girl will take our heroine on a journey to finding her place in this big strange world of ours.

Ramona

Based on the Helen Hunt Jackson novel of 1884 about a young woman of partial Native American descent, who experiences love and loss in 1800s California.

Boys Life

Each of the three short films in this collection presents a young gay man at the threshold of adulthood. In "Pool Days," Justin is a 17-year old Bethesda lad, hired as the evening life guard at a fitness center. In the course of the summer, he realizes and embraces that he's gay. In "A Friend of Dorothy," Winston arrives from upstate for his freshman year at NYU. He has to figure out, with some help from Anne, a hometown friend, how to build a social life as a young gay man in the city. In "The Disco Years," Tom looks back on 1978, the year in high school that he came out of the closet after one joyful and several painful encounters

Cabiria

Young Cabiria is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Carthage. Just as she's to be sacrificed to Moloch, Cabiria is rescued by Fulvius Axilla, a good-hearted Roman spy, and his powerful slave, Maciste. The trio are broken up as Cabiria is entrusted to a woman of noble birth. With Cabiria's fate unknown, Maciste punished for his heroism, and Fulvius sent away to fight for Rome, is there any hope of our heroes reuniting?

The Triplets of Belleville

When her grandson is kidnapped during the Tour de France, Madame Souza and her beloved pooch Bruno team up with the Belleville Sisters—an aged song-and-dance team from the days of Fred Astaire—to rescue him.

Lux Æterna

Two actresses, Béatrice Dalle and Charlotte Gainsbourg, are on a film set telling stories about witches.

Faust

God and Satan war over earth; to settle things, they wager on the soul of Faust, a learned and prayerful alchemist.

The Blazing World

Ever since Margaret was six years old, she has been haunted by the memory of watching her sister drown during an explosive fight between her parents. As a young woman, she slides further into her twisted inner life, ultimately finding herself on the brink of suicide. Through an epic journey down the smokiest and scariest corridors of her imagination, she tries to exorcise the demons pushing her closer and closer to the edge.

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.

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.

Presence

A couple, Rebekah and Chris, and their children, Tyler and Chloe, move into a seemingly normal suburban home. When strange occurrences occur, they begin to believe that there is something else in the house with them. The presence is about to disrupt their lives in unimaginable ways.

The Kid Brother

The most important family in Hickoryville is (not surprisingly) the Hickorys, with sheriff Jim and his tough manly sons Leo and Olin. The timid youngest son, Harold, doesn't have the muscles to match up to them, so he has to use his wits to win the respect of his strong father and also the love of beautiful Mary.

Ocean Waves

At Kichijōji Station, Tokyo, Taku Morisaki glimpses a familiar woman on the platform opposite boarding a train. Later, her photo falls from a shelf as he exits his apartment before flying to Kōchi Prefecture. Picking it up, he looks at it briefly before leaving. As the aeroplane takes off, he narrates the events that brought her into his life...

The Reflecting Skin

A young boy tries to cope with rural life circa 1950s and his fantasies become a way to interpret events. After his father tells him stories of vampires, he becomes convinced that the widow up the road is a vampire, and tries to find ways of discouraging his brother from seeing her.

Takeshis'

Beat Takeshi lives the busy and sometimes surreal life of a showbiz celebrity. One day he meets his blond lookalike named Kitano, a shy convenience store cashier, who, still an unknown actor, is waiting for his big break. After their paths cross, Kitano seems to begin hallucinating about becoming Beat.

The Sealed Room

The Count sets out to make a private room for him and his Countess, built in such a way no one can see, hear, and most importantly, disturb them. But unbeknownst to the Count, his wife has set her eyes on the court minstrel. Based on Edgar Allan Poe's “The Cask of Amontillado” and Honoré de Balzac's “La Grande Breteche”.

Preface to a History

A couple, Vlad and Sophy, navigate their relationship as well as their own struggles with mental health in the context of a highly connected, politically uncertain modern world while on a trip to a remote Canadian island in this avant-garde feature film. PREFACE TO A HISTORY, created with a tiny crew of four people, represents an experiment in using minimalist tools to create an overwhelming aesthetic experience in service of a simple, but specifically contemporary, story about two people attempting to navigate a fraying relationship amid all the anxieties and external pressures of modern adulthood in a technologically-interconnected and politically unstable era.

The Way of the Strong

A gangster falls for a blind violinist, only for his mobster rivals to kidnap her.

Hour of the Wolf

While vacationing on a remote German island with his pregnant wife, an artist has an emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires.

The Story of the Kelly Gang

Just as Galeen and Wegener's Der Golem (1915) can be seen as a testament to early German film artistry, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) symbolizes both the birth of the Australian film industry and the emergence of an Australian cinema identity. Even more significantly, it heralds the emergence of the feature film format. However, only fragments of the original production of more than one hour are known to exist, preserved at the National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra; Efforts at reconstruction have made the film available to modern audiences.

Damnation

Karrer plods his way through life in quiet desperation. His environment is drab and rainy and muddy. Eaten up with solitude, his hopelessness would be incurable but for the existence of the Titanik Bar and its beautiful, haunting singer. But the lady is married and Karrer is determined to keep her husband away...

The Manxman

A fisherman and a rising lawyer who grew up together as brothers fall in love with the same woman.

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

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.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

In 15th century France, a gypsy girl is framed for murder by the infatuated Chief Justice, and only the deformed bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral can save her.

Sweeney Todd

A man dreams he is the 'demon barber' who cuts sailors' throats for jewels and uses the corpses for pies.

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.