Beautiful Like a Poem (2020)

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.

Shannon Amen

Shannon Amen unearths the passionate and pained expressions of a young woman overwhelmed by guilt and anxiety as she struggles to reconcile her sexual identity with her religious faith. A loving elegy to a friend lost to suicide.

NiiSoTeWak: Two Bodies, One Heart

NiiSoTeWak means “walking the path together.” Tapwewin and Pawaken are 10-year-old brothers trying to make sense of the world, their family and each other. They’re already grappling with some heady questions about identity. What does it mean to be a twin? What does it mean to be Cree? How do you define yourself when you’re forever linked to someone else? The twins discuss these questions with their two elder brothers — 22-year-old actor Asivak and 20-year-old basketball player Mahiigan — and their parents, Jules and Jake.

Visions of Europe

Twenty-five films from twenty-five European countries by twenty-five European directors.

Calçada

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John Was Trying to Contact Aliens

John Shepherd spent 30 years trying to contact extraterrestrials by broadcasting music millions of miles into space. After giving up the search, he makes a different connection here on earth.

The Starr Sisters

Patte and Randa Starr are fun specialists. After growing up in an abusive household set above their father's candy store, they spent their lives fighting to find joy and freedom. Now in their 70s, these sisters do exactly as they please: they live together near the beach, they always have a movie on, and the candy drawer is fully stocked.

Novena

In 2012, Stephen Vaughan and Kay Ferreter are invited to address the congregation at St. Joseph's Redemptorists Church in Dundalk, Ireland for the Solemn Novena Festival. In a powerful speech, the pair describe their experiences being gay and lesbian in Ireland, feeling excluded by Catholic doctrine, and the importance of a more inclusive church.

Knife Skills

Edwin’s Restaurant is determined to become one of America’s top French restaurants, with a staff unlike any other in the country. Brandon Edwin Chrostowski prepares to open his Cleveland, Ohio fine dining establishment with a staff composed nearly entirely of recently released prisoners in search of an opportunity to get their lives back on track. They sign up for a classical French food boot camp to learn the ins and outs of fine wine, sauces, and more.

Strudel Sisters

Two elderly sisters share the delicate art of making traditional Hungarian strudel and reveal a deeply personal family story about their mother, who taught them everything they know.

Bears

From polar bears in the arctic tundra to black bears in the Northern Rockies, you'll see some of the most spectacular footage ever shot of these enterprising omnivores. Catch salmon with a group of hungry grizzlies on the McNeil River in Alaska. Crawl inside a den with a mother black bear and her cubs. Learn about the challenges facing each of these species as their habitat diminishes.

Yellow Fever

What does beauty look like? In this award-winning short, Kenyan filmmaker Ng’endo Mukii combines animation, performance, and experimental techniques to create a visually arresting and psychologically penetrating exploration of the insidious impact of Western beauty standards and media-created ideals on African women’s perceptions of themselves. From hair-straightening to skin-lightening, YELLOW FEVER unpacks the cultural and historical forces that have long made Black women uncomfortable, literally, in their own skin.

Vanilla

Look around. Everything you see and touch can taste like vanilla.

Polycephaly in D

Informed by an underlying sense of anxiety and anguish, Michael Robinson’s Polycephaly in D nestles fragments of narrative within a collage of sound, image, and text that oscillates between the elegant and the discordant.

The Rink

This short, silent film captures a Sunday afternoon at a community skating rink. Iconic Quebec director Gilles Carle has the camera follow toddlers learning to skate, young girls flashing their skates and boys decked out in the colours of their favourite hockey teams. A picture perfect moment on a bright winter's day.

Mystery of the Nile

Filmed in IMAX, a team of explorers led by Pasquale Scaturro and Gordon Brown face seemingly insurmountable challenges as they make their way along all 3,260 miles of the world's longest and deadliest river to become the first in history to complete a full descent of the Blue Nile from source to sea.

Volcanoes of the Deep Sea

12,000 feet down, life is erupting. Alvin, a deep-sea mechanized probe, makes a voyage some 12,000 feet underwater to explore the Azores, a constantly-erupting volcanic rift between Europe and North America.

Amazon

Explore the mysterious Amazon through the amazing IMAX experience. Amazon celebrates the beauty, vitality and wonder of the rapidly disappearing rain forest.

Cosmic Voyage

The Academy Award® nominee Cosmic Voyage combines live action with state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery to pinpoint where humans fit in our ever-expanding universe. Highlighting this journey is a "cosmic zoom" based on the powers of 10, extending from the Earth to the largest observable structures in the universe, and then back to the subnuclear realm.

Little Potato

Wes Hurley's autobiographical tale of growing up gay in Soviet Union Russia, only to escape with his mother, a mail order bride, to Seattle to face a whole new oppression in his new Christian fundamentalist American dad.

Daybreak Express

Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.

Alzheimer Cafe

Ivan and Jožica, a married couple, move to a care home after 70 years of sharing their lives. Despite the hardships of old age, they continue to live together in the new environment. Memories are fading, love remains.

Faith & Fight

Short documentary that lends a platform to the players on the Rattlers football team directly to speak on issues at their university they believe are impacting their student athlete experience. This is the story of FAMU football’s faith in their ability to speak out for what is right, and their fight for the respect and support they deserve as elite student athletes at the #1 public HBCU in America.

Remembering Surrounded Islands

For the 35th anniversary of Surrounded Islands - a monumental temporary art installation by world renowned environmental artists Christo & Jeanne-Claude that wrapped eleven small islands in Biscayne Bay with 6.5 million square feet of bubble gum pink woven polypropylene plastic - Perez Art Museum Miami presented a documentary exhibition about the work entitled Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Surrounded Islands, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980–83 | A Documentary Exhibition. This was the first time the exhibition was on display in North America.

Benek Blues

The action is placed in a cramped flat in Warsaw’s district of Ochota. A father and a son, both bedridden, live in a fascinating symbiosis. The son, a well‑known photographer Bernard ben Dobrowolski, is lying in bed because a chronic condition has deformed his body and immobilized him. The father, Dominik, has recently suffered from a stroke. Now they are taking care of each other and crowds of visitors move through their room.

Fuji

A short documentary about the former judoka Marina and her Judo Club for People with Disabilities - "Fuji". Its brave members cope with all things Judo and real-life challenges, but always with a smile and the heart of a true judoka.

Tussilago

A woman's story of how she became involved in terrorist activities in the 1970s.

Taking Stock

Using his failed attempts at creating profitable stock footage, a filmmaker reflects on the absurd, mundane and funny side of being trapped inside your own head as an out of work, self-employed freelancer.

Seven Up!

A group of British children aged 7 from widely ranging backgrounds are interviewed about a range of subjects. The filmmakers plan to re-interview them at 7 year intervals to track how their lives and attitudes change as they age.

Good Morning, Margarita

«All my mom’s teeth fell out, I’m only going for about three months and I return» was what Pancho dreamed of fulfilling when he crossed the US border without papers, but an accident during the trip transformed his life and his aunt Margarita.

Your Friend the Rat

Let's face it, rats are not the most beloved creatures on earth. However, maybe this little tale about the history of human and rat interaction will change the world's tune. At least that is the hope of Remy, the star of Ratatouille, and his reluctant brother Emile as they guide us through world history from a rat's perspective. Why can't we all just get along?