Album 61 (2013)

Creating The Queen's Gambit

A fascinating character. Exquisite sets. A wig for every era. The stars, creators and crew reveal how the hit series about a chess prodigy came to life.

Chess på svenska: The musical that came home

A film about Chess - from reading to first night

Brooklyn Castle

Brooklyn Castle is a documentary about I.S. 318 – an inner-city school where more than 65 percent of students are from homes with incomes below the federal poverty level – that also happens to have the best, most winning junior high school chess team in the country. (If Albert Einstein, who was rated 1800, were to join the team, he’d only rank fifth best.) Chess has transformed the school from one cited in 2003 as a “school in need of improvement” to one of New York City’s best. But a series of recession-driven public school budget cuts now threaten to undermine those hard-won successes.

Mind Games - The Experiment

Can exercise sharpen the brightest minds? In this ground-breaking experiment, four world-class gamers, competing in eSports, Chess, Mahjong and Memory Games, put this to the test.

Closing Gambit: 1978 Korchnoi versus Karpov and the Kremlin

The story of the 1978 World Chess Championship between the Soviet Communist Party's protege, Anatoly Karpov and the traitor and Soviet defector, Viktor Korchnoi. One of those instances in life where truth is stranger than fiction.

Magnus

From a young age Magnus Carlsen had aspirations of becoming a champion chess player. While many players seek out an intensely rigid environment to hone their skills, Magnus’ brilliance shines brightest when surrounded by his loving and supportive family. Through an extensive amount of archival footage and home movies, director Benjamin Ree reveals this young man’s unusual and rapid trajectory to the pinnacle of the chess world. This film allows the audience to not only peek inside this isolated community but also witness the maturation of a modern genius.

This is Not a Game

Angela Su’s fictional artist Rosie Leavers is the last remaining person to upload her consciousness to a video game. Contemplating during a pandemic year which also saw people’s resistance movements in many parts of the world, the work pinpoints the uncanny affinities between gaming and warfare strategies. They have mutually informed the infrastructure of both worlds since time immemorial when diplomatic conflicts played out on the battlefield of the 64 squares of a chess board to flight simulation technologies which were adapted to shape gaming experiences as we know it now. When the conflict is between the state and its people, she speculates that gaming strategies empower civilians in resistance movements to counter imperialism through its own operative logic. But once we upload our consciousness, are we able to return to the sensibilities and political motivation that inspired the revolution to begin with?

The Seventh Seal

When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.

The Coldest Game

Warsaw, Poland, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962. Josh Mansky, a troubled math genius and former US chess champion, is recruited to hold a dangerous public match against the Soviet champion, while playing the deadly game of espionage hidden in the darkest shadows of a hostile territory.

Analysis Paralysis

A man’s head is bursting with thoughts and decisions. A gardener is about to explode – somebody has trampled on her flowerbeds. The man is looking for somebody who is better at playing chess than his dachshund. The gardener is looking for a mysterious vandal who is missing a yellow boot. In the end, they might just be looking for the same thing.

Alice Through the Looking Glass

A modern adaptation of the classic children's story 'Alice through the Looking Glass', which continued on from the popular 'Alice in Wonderland' story. This time Alice is played by the mother, who falls asleep while reading the the bedtime story to her daughter. Walking through the Looking Glass, Alice finds herself in Chessland, a magical and fun world. There she meets the Red and White Queens, as well as many other amusing friends on her journey across the chessboard countryside onto become a crowned queen.

Searching for Bobby Fischer

A seven-year-old chess prodigy refuses to harden himself in order to become a champion like the famous but unlikable Bobby Fischer.

Rondo

Every Sunday, lonely bachelor and refined judge Mladen goes to play chess with his friend, sculptor Fedji. Slowly, he engages in a love affair with Neda, Fedia's wife, and almost invisibly, a love triangle forms. Chess board is the central part of the film, as moves on the board reflect emotions of the characters.

Geri's Game

An aging codger named Geri plays a daylong game of chess in the park against himself. Somehow, he begins losing to his livelier opponent. But just when the game's nearly over, Geri manages to turn the tables.

Fresh

Death and violence anger twelve year old drug courier Fresh, who sets his rival employers against each other.

o copo

Plot unavailable

Knight Moves

A chess grandmaster is in a big tournament, and when his lover is found painted up and the blood drained out of her body he becomes a chief suspect. After he gets a call from the killer urging him to try and figure out the game, he cooperates with police and a psychologist to try and catch the killer, but doubts linger about the grandmaster's innocence as the string of grisly murders continues.

The World Champion

Some sporting victories are about more than just claiming a title. Some of them go down in history. The film follows the most dramatic and legendary showdown in the history of chess – the match between Anatoly Karpov, then world champion, and Viktor Korchnoi, a recent emigrant from the USSR. In this battle between two outstanding chess players, a duel of personalities under immense psychological pressure, the stakes are incomprehensibly high.

Saturn 3

In the future, Earth is overcrowded and the population relies on distant bases to be fed. In the Saturn 3 station, Major Adam and the scientist Alex, who is also his lover and has never been on Earth, have been researching hydroponics for three years in the base alone with their dog Sally. Captain Benson arrives Saturn 3 with Hector, incapable to controlling his emotions he transfers his homicidal tendency and insanity to Hector. Now Major Adam and Alex are trapped in the station with a dangerous psychopath robot.

All the Pretty Horses

The year is 1949. A young Texan named John Grady finds himself without a home after his mother sells the ranch where he has spent his entire life. Lured south of the border by the romance of cowboy life and the promise of a fresh start, Cole and his pal embark on an adventure that will test their resilience, define their maturity, and change their lives forever.

The Hussites

What if the events in a key era in our history were actually completely different than what our history textbooks try to tell us? What if Master Jan Hus didn't even get warm in Constance, let alone burn up? What if Jan Zizka had more than one healthy eye? This animated comedy from director Pavel Koutský playfully breaks the myths about the Hussite era as the pedestal of history is occupied not by preachers and military leaders but by two unbelievable scatterbrains, who become the heroes of their time against their will.

The Collector of Brains

A young pianist is shocked when she witnesses a strange chess tournament with a robot. Could there be a gruesome secret behind this exhibition?

Pawn Sacrifice

American chess champion Bobby Fischer prepares for a legendary match-up against Russian Boris Spassky.

Stalag 17

It's a dreary Christmas 1944 for the American POWs in Stalag 17 and the men in Barracks 4, all sergeants, have to deal with a grave problem—there seems to be a security leak.

Europa

A young, idealist American gets a job as a train conductor for the Zentropa railway network in postwar, US-occupied Frankfurt. As various people try to take advantage of him, he soon finds his position politically sensitive, and gets caught up in a whirlpool of conspiracies and Nazi sympathisers.

Checked

Two adversaries partake in an ancient game, a battle of epic proportions.

5150 Elm's Way

Yannick moves to a small, quiet town to study cinema. One day when he fell off his bike, he knocked at the door of the Beaulieu residence so he could clean the blood off his hands. But Jacques Beaulieu and his family had other plans for Yannick. Beaulieu is a righteous psychopath and fanatic chess player who wants to rid the world of evil. And even though Ian has done nothing wrong, he is beaten, tortured and tormented before Beaulieu makes him an offer: win at chess and he is free to go. And so Ian is now a pawn in Beaulieu 's game. A game in which he will either lose his mind or his life.

Martyrs of Striving

When Death wants to bring the plague to Württemberg in 1349, he has not reckoned with the two guard soldiers Volckel and Utz, who engage him in a heated argument about plague ordinances and entry regulations.

Keeper of the Flame

Famed reporter Stephen O'Malley travels to a small town to investigate the death of a national hero.

Night of the Demon

An anthropology professor and his students attempt to track down a Bigfoot responsible for a rash of violent murders, only to uncover something even more sinister.

Dangerous Moves

World Chess Champion Akiva Liebskind (Michel Piccoli) faces his former pupil Pavius Fromm (Alexandre Arbatt), who defected to the West from the Soviet Union five years earlier, for the World Chess Championship in Geneva, Switzerland. The tension and strategies between the players draw parallels to the political conflicts and ideologies between East and West during the Cold War.

Queen to Play

Hélène, a housekeeper at a ritzy hotel in Corsica, is devoted to her family but lacks any passion in her own life. When she sees a handsome couple play a passionate game of chess, she becomes inspired to play herself. Hélène's working-class husband and spoiled daughter are soon bewildered by her obsession with chess. They also grow suspicious of Hélène's close relationship with Dr. Kröger, her eccentric American expat tutor.

Entrusted

Hoping to entrap Maria von Gall, who runs a courageous underground railroad for Jews in France, the Nazis kidnap her son Thomas, a brilliant 11-year-old chess master. An exchange arrangement goes awry and he sees her die in a hail of bullets; but he is rescued by his American father, whom he has never met before, and who plans to flee with him to Spain. However, Queen Maria had solemnly entrusted her little pawn Thomas with a precious secret and a terrifying mission, and it was time for him to move. A pawn may become an important piece by slowly, quietly advancing all the way through the enemy's ranks. Or a pawn may die trying. Retreat is what a pawn can never do.

The Dark Horse

One-time Maori speed-chess champ, Genesis Potini, lives with a bi-polar disorder and must overcome prejudice and violence in the battle to save his struggling chess club, his family and ultimately, himself.

Wazir

'Wazir' is a tale of two unlikely friends, a wheelchair-bound chess grandmaster and a brave ATS officer. Brought together by grief and a strange twist of fate, the two men decide to help each other win the biggest games of their lives. But there's a mysterious, dangerous opponent lurking in the shadows, who is all set to checkmate them.

The Luzhin Defence

Based upon the novel by Vladimir Nabokov, a chess grandmaster travels to Italy in the 1920s to play in a tournament and falls in love.

Mistress America

Tracy, a lonely college freshman in New York, is rescued from her solitude by her soon-to-be stepsister Brooke, an adventurous gal about town who entangles her in alluringly mad schemes.

The Double 0 Kid

Lance, a teenager, dreams to be a secret agent when he is suddenly in the middle of an hacker intrigue which aims at an international environmental congress. Lance gets in possession of a computer access card one of which the hackers are in urgent need of for their operation. Lance begins to play with the hackers, seeing his dream come true.

The Mystery of Chess Boxing

Evil Chun Shan uses chess boxing and a five-element ninja style to terrorize the martial arts world until he is challenged in a series of battles, then destroyed.

Cold Comfort

Dolores has everthing she wants for her birthday: a party, 18 glowing candles, and Stephen, the handsome stranger who's more than a guest. He's a prisoner. COLD COMFORT bristles with the suspense, passion and danger of three people caught up in a madman's game.

The Mighty Pawns

Inner city kids are given new direction when they are convinced to join the school chess team.

The Right to Live

A man with a broken back dies after his wife has an affair with his brother.

Knight to D7

Knight To D7' is an extraordinary story of sacrifice that takes place one ordinary afternoon when Dustin Harper visits his longtime friend, Brady Collins. Their ongoing game of chess is brought to a halt when Brady reveals that his continuing battle with cancer has taken a turn for the worst. The only thing harder than saying goodbye will be honoring Brady's last request.

King's Gambit

A surrealist retelling of Caine and Abel in a black void, where a game of chess is taking place. A boxer uses a punching bag while watching from afar.

Gourmet Detective

Famed culinary consultant Henry Ross is a charming food industry insider in San Francisco. When suspicious sabotage ends in a shocking murder at his friend’s five-star restaurant, Henry is put on the case with strong-willed police detective and single mom, Maggie Price. Despite Maggie’s protests, they must work together to decipher the clues and investigate all of San Francisco’s top culinary pros.

The Dilemmas of a Burning Train, by the Baker

A Baker and a Train Driver meet during a festival to play a game of chess. While playing the game, both exchange ideas about Life and Death and their future destinies.

The Chess Players

In the year 1856, Nawab Wajid Ali Shah is the King of Awadh, one of the last independent kingdoms of India. The British intend to control this rich land and send General Outram to clear way for an annexation. Pressure is mounting amidst intrigue and political maneuvers, but the Nawab whiles away his time in pursuit of pleasure and religious practice. The court is of no help either — noblemen Mir and Mirza ignore all duties and spend their days playing endless games of chess. Based on Munshi Premchand's short story of the same name. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2010.

Queen of Katwe

A young girl overcomes her disadvantaged upbringing in the slums of Uganda to become a Chess master.

Checkmates

Candela, the headmistress of an elite school, after a traumatic divorce, returns to her old high school to lead a group of rebellious students through chess. There she will learn that in chess, and in life, it doesn't matter if you are a king or a pawn, because everyone ends up in the same box.

Evan's Gambit

Two brothers, raised by a chess master, must battle head to head in the world's most competitive chess tournament.

Old Man's hell chess

Plot unavailable

A Little Game

Ostracized at her posh new uptown school and shaken by the death of her beloved grandmother, a 10 year-old downtown girl finds an unlikely mentor in the form of an irascible chess-master, who uses the game to teach Max lessons in resilience, perseverance, and how to embrace inevitable change.

Narkarappor

Based on the game of Chess that delves into the conflicts and confrontations of people between the rich and poor class and high and low strata of society. How does an ordinary boy, from the community of sanitation workers, become a grandmaster?