Follow the Drinking Gourd (1990)

The Warrior

In 1375, China was in chaos between Yuan Dynasty and Ming Dynasty. Coryo (an ancient kingdom of Korea then) sent a delegation of many diplomats, soldiers and a silent slave to make peace with the new Chinese government. However, this delegation got charged as spies and sent in exile to a remote desert.

After-School Special

A man and a woman have an awkward encounter at an indoor playground.

The American Wake

A seventeen year old girl who has lived all her life on an island off the coast of Ireland is faced with the choice to remain there or emigrate to America.

Boy Saint

A sumptuous short film of friendship and adoration between boys, based on a poem by Peter LeBerge. Moments of joy, bonding and roughhousing on a school trip to the beach counterpoint one teen boy’s introspective sexual awakenings and questionings. Magnificent cinematography and editing create a visual feast that provides the imagery for a narrated poem by Peter Laberge alluding to early homosexual desires, but with Catholic overtones never directly expressed.

Manderlay

In 1933, a young woman and her father discover an Alabama plantation whose inhabitants live as if slavery had never been abolished. Feeling a sense of duty to those behind the heavy gates, she stays to liberate the people and see them through their first harvest. With four of her father's colleagues and a lawyer, she faces the daunting task of resurrecting the place known as Manderlay.

Zing

Day in, day out, Mr. Grimm is busy with his job as the Reaper, harvesting people's lives. One day, his monotonous existence is interrupted by the door bell. It's a little girl. She wants her cat back. Little does she know that she's the next life on Mr. Grimm's list.

Fish Out of Water

Fish Out of Water manages to unfurl its light-hearted tale of young man and the sea, without a word of dialogue. Avoiding the morning traffic jams, our man (Nick Dunbar) finds peace by rowing each day to work in the city. But when a seductive blonde unexpectedly enters the picture, he finds his morning boat ride heading in unexpected directions. Directed by Lala Rolls (Land of My Ancestors), Fish Out of Water was invited to play in the 2005 NZ Film Festival, plus another 10 overseas fests. Victoria Kelly composes the brass and banjo-inflected soundtrack.

Real Life

Tristan found a dead cat on the corner of his street, hit by a car and left there in the gutter to rot in the rain. The young man is shaken, and the image of the dead cat begins to haunt him.

Donald Duck's Christmas Favourites

In Donald Duck’s Christmas Favorites you’ll be treated to some of the best and most hilarious cartoon shorts from the days when Walt Disney himself added his magical touch to each film. The full effect of his presence can be felt in these sparkling gems that for generations have brought joy and laughter to kids and families everywhere. Want to find out how a real snow ball fight is done? Discover how to replace snow with popcorn? Learn how an alpine expedition should not be done? You’ll get all the answers you need in this collection of Donald Duck’s Christmas Favorites – a delightful winter collection from all of us to all of you. Features: Hockey Champ (1939), Snow fight (1942), Rescue dog (1947), Chip an' Dale (1947), Winter storage (1949), Toy Tinkers (1949), Corn Chips (1951), On ice (1935), Alpine climbers (1936), The art of skiing (1941)

La Fellinette

"Fellinette" is a young girl drawn on a page of a notebook in 1971 by Maestro Federico Fellini. "Fellinette" is the protagonist of this fairy tale which is set on the beach of Rimini on January 20, 2020, Centenary of birth of the great Maestro. Experience a melancholic and wonderful adventure through the fervent childhood imagination of Fellinette. Celebrate the greatest director with dreamlike atmospheres full of poetry, live action shots and animated parts.

Vacua

During an ordinary summer, Alba lives day by day trying to find the way to her future: a job, a purpose.

White Man

A white-collar South Korean man discovers a severed human finger and keeps it.

Poppety in the Fall

In this animated short, a terrible curse deprives Balthasar's kingdom of its stories. Taking the unicorn's horn back into The Belly of the Earth is the solution. Poppety will lead an expedition, by chance uncovering a hitherto closely guarded family secret.

Dying to Come Back

At 78 years old, Manuela buys a camera and AR glasses.

Reminder

The phenomenon that occurs in a room full of objects from the past allows Ulises to temporarily recover his memory.

Sweet Rabbit

Jeanet, an insecure middle-aged woman, discovers one day that rabbit ears are growing out of her head. Shocked and confused, she rushes to the doctor to get rid of her ailment. But the doctor turns out to be a poor listener. Jeanets relatives seem to have attention for her. Jeanet thinks she is on her own until she knocks on her husband's door.

Pepper

The painful awakening of a couple after an evening of fantasies ...

Amistad

In 1839, the slave ship Amistad set sail from Cuba to America. During the long trip, Cinque leads the slaves in an unprecedented uprising. They are then held prisoner in Connecticut, and their release becomes the subject of heated debate. Freed slave Theodore Joadson wants Cinque and the others exonerated and recruits property lawyer Roger Baldwin to help his case. Eventually, John Quincy Adams also becomes an ally.

Enemy Mine

A soldier from Earth crashlands on an alien world after sustaining battle damage. Eventually he encounters another survivor, but from the enemy species he was fighting; they band together to survive on this hostile world. In the end the human finds himself caring for his enemy in a completely unexpected way.

Judgment! XX Angel Rabbie

Humanity makes much progress through a combination of science and magic, until a large war breaks out. Many years later, the magical city of Sosarium (constructed on the Moon) sends an agent down to Earth to make sure history does not repeat itself as civilisation starts to rebuild itself. That agent is known as an Angel.

Second Round

In a world where childbirth is state-regulated, a couple applies for a license to have a child. They pass the first round of the process, but have no idea what awaits them in the second round.

Anxious Body

When living things, artificial things, geometry shapes, and lines encounter, a new direction is born.

Sycorax

Who is Sycorax? The first character in Shakespeare's "Tempest" to set foot on the island. The problem is that she has no voice. She is barely mentioned by Prospero as a crooked, old, wicked witch who vilely locked Ariel, the spirit of the air, in a tree. But why would she do that? Here, we wouldn't believe Prospero so much.

The Vandal

Set in a world not unlike mid-20th century America, The Vandal centers on Harold, whose tormented search for peace from traumatic loss results in an unexpectedly destructive awakening after he undergoes a lobotomy. When the procedure “turns his mind inside out” and his great love is suddenly gone, Harold’s desperate search intensifies.

A Shade of Grey

A peaceful life on a family farm. A cold, clear winter day. Nine-year-old Noémy is about to leave the carefree world of childhood behind.

La Belle Époque de Michel Ocelot

Plot unavailable

The Magical Beacon Stone

When an evil genius steals the Magical Beacon Stone and forces the children of Inverclyde to toil in his factories, Bella and Jenny only have five days to find the Stone stop his schemes and save Christmas.

El balancín de Iván

Ana is a woman of thirty-something, goes back to the house where she spent of her childhood during the Argentine dictatorship.

Turning

On his sixth birthday Robert receives three beautiful broken old birds in his mother's sitting room. A memory of an afternoon with tea and cake, lacy pink slips and a tale of an emperor with no skin.

Swingin'

When sixth-grader boy Qiu is bullied in school for having gay dads, his stepfather Howard, a flamboyant Jazz trumpet player, must confront his own nightmares of childhood bulling before he can provide his son a feeling of security.

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.

Meatoo

A naive actor auditions for a film which could launch his career. The things he's asked to do make him more and more uncomfortable, until a choice remark from the director makes him see red.

By the Sea Where We Played

A short story about a boy who is honest and courageous despite being paralyzed.

The Terrible Thing of Alpha 9!

A space bounty-hunter travels to a lonely planet to kill a terrible monster.

The Naughty Slingshot

A stop-motion animated fairy tale about good and evil using wooden folk toys.

The Doldrums or How to Cure Sadness

The tiricia is an illness of the soul when the heart is saddened. A story of three generations afflicted with being tiricientas: Ita, Justa and Alicia – grandmother, mother and daughter – who have at different times suffered, tolerated and allowed abuse, dragging on the disease. Alicia decides to break the cycle, eradicating it for future generations.

Women in Film: BBC Introducing Arts

Cultural historian Janina Ramirez presents a collection of intriguing and exciting short films by emerging women directors and artists. Each film gives a female perspective on modern-day topics from body image and new love to grief and belonging. Expect honest and refreshing storytelling that will make you laugh, make you cry and make you think. In a Room Full of Sisters; Blood Stains; Bridging the Gap; Cake; Ding-Ding, Next; Fruity; In Perpetuum; Owulide; White Dwarf; Cosmic Domestic; The Dead Are Jewels to Me; The Presence of Absence

Hiwa

Jay wakes up in Manila, yet he dreamed of Athens. He has a nightmare, during which he has a special quest: to save his two daughters from a dangerous surgery. In his attempt to rescue them, he roams around Athens’ cityscape, seeing things under a very different light.

Cherry Blossoms in March

In this mother-daughter story, a young woman explores her own mortality through art and poetry as her terminal illness holds her back from a normal life.

Batman: Strange Days

A lost tale from Batman's past, the Dark Knight tracks a strange giant to the mysterious lair of Hugo Strange.

Beautiful Dreamer

Facing a terminal disease, a mother uses space travel and relativity to stretch her last two years over the lifetime of her baby daughter, visiting for only one night every seven years. Mother and daughter must negotiate to build a relationship despite the longing and estrangement that marks the life moments they are able to share.

Birdboy

A terrible industrial accident changes little Dinki's life forever. Now Dinki's fate may ride on the wings of her eccentric friend Birdboy, a misfit who hides in the forest lost in his fantasies.

Frozen Roads

Balthazar and siblings Christian and Lyla have been friends since childhood. As the trio struggles with coming of age in a rural, conservative Canadian town, they must confront escalating desires for one another that threaten to destroy their delicate bond.

Requited

Nicolas, a young man in his mid 20s, struggles to decide whether or not to go to the wedding of his best friend from high school, Aaron, who he's always been quietly in love with. The two had a falling out years earlier after Nicolas inexplicably kissed Aaron's girlfriend. Nicolas clings to an idealized image of his former friend, unconsciously sabotaging his own happiness in the process. The film is a realistic slice-of-life that poses the question "How do you get over something you never had?"

Boys Like You

A young man struggles with the boundaries of friendship when he finds himself in an intimate situation

Revolution

A coming-of-age story about Jack, a 16-year old Iranian boy growing up in 1989 Los Angeles. With the 1979 Iranian Revolution a distant memory, the AIDS movement as a backdrop, and a haunting score by Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij, Jack learns how to stage his own much smaller revolution within the confines of his traditional family.

The In-Between

The story or two men who fall in love and move in together.

Pê

Pê, a man with terminal cancer, wanders through his city, Lisbon. Throughout the day, he is confronted with a reality unaware of his suffering while he prepares his imminent death by writing a farewell letter to his daughter. When emptying her father’s house, the daughter discovers the letter. It is the beginning of a new encounter.

Leon in Wintertime

One winter, a ravenous ogre terrorizes the land of King Balthasar. Meanwhile, a blizzard is brewing in Léon’s heart. Braving the cold, this adopted bear cub runs away from home. Léon has many an adventure during his travels. He befriends a hedgehog and an elephant, confronts an ogre, and sets Princess Molly Gingerbread free. His courage and integrity eventually lead him back to his family. In the end, the cub earns everybody’s respect.