Michael Palin's Quest for Artemisia (2015)

Shurum Zurum Songs

The songs from Shurum Zurum

Strange Object

An archival investigation into the imperial image-making of the RAF ‘Z Unit’, which determined the destruction of human, animal and cultural life across Somaliland, as well as Africa and Asia.

Boy

Boy is the unsettling story of a young male prostitute, or Rent Boy, in a small rural town who learns the truth behind a hit and run accident which has killed a local girl. When the news of the girls death spreads through the community, the driver and his family decide that the boy must be silenced. The set out to scare him into silence. The pressure becomes more and more violent, but despite this, the boy battles to expose the truth.

Was There Karotin?

The beginning of the 30s of the last century. A leak of classified information was found at the Soviet shipbuilding plant. Arriving under the guise of a scientist, the legendary chekist Karotin begins to unravel the threads of the conspiracy of the fascist spy organization. He is helped by inexperienced but active local detectives. Mastering the basics of the counterintelligence, they fall into a situation the other one funnier.

Crime à Ramatuelle

Sébastien Lacassagne, 35, owner of a wine estate, was assassinated with a statuette in his house. The investigation conducted by Prosecutor Elisabeth Richard and Captain Caroline Martinez reveals many gray areas in the victim's life.

The Greenhouse Effect

Rita is a naive 18-year-old from the sticks who has come to Moscow to meet up with the man who impregnated her a few months earlier. Unfortunately, his name and address was written on a piece of paper in her luggage, which was promptly stolen upon her arrival in Moscow. Thus, she is a bit at loose ends, and going back home is clearly not an option.

Black Eyed Susan

Desperate for work, Derek accepts a job replacing his recently-deceased friend at a tech startup. Continuing to develop the company's innovative project means working intimately with Susan, a bleeding-edge BDSM sex doll meant to receive and appreciate punishment as an integral part of her evolving AI. Derek will soon test the limits of his own desires and explore the nature of man and woman, pleasure and pain, and life and death in a morally uncertain future world.

National Family

Don Poli, the patriarch of a family embedded in politics, faces the change of party in his state - after a hundred years in power - losing all his privileges. Humiliated and angry, he threatens to disinherit his family and leave to rebuild his life. This forces his children (Kippy, Ramses and Belén) to take extreme measures to ensure their future, causing everything that could go wrong to turn out worse.

A Springtime Morning

This short experimental film by Marian Dora combines the images of springtime and the autopsy of an old man; accompanied with organ music.

Niepewność. Zakochany Mickiewicz

The 22-year-old young man promises to be a great poet, but he also has a warm heart. He spends his summer time at a friend's mansion. The beautiful Maryla appears there. Young Adam's heart beats harder and harder, but his closest friend Thomas Zan is there, who also looks at Maryla. There is a confrontation between the two men, from which Adam emerges victorious. Tomasz leaves, leaving the field to his friend to find his life, happiness in Maryla....

The Groomsmen: Second Chances

Danny finds the courage to admit his romantic feelings for his best friend, when he is asked to be the best man at his wedding in Greece.

Tunnel

A nature photographer discovers an old railway tunnel that holds a strange mystery.

The Hopeful Romantic

Jess, a bellboy working at The Manila Hotel, is gifted an all-expenses paid stay at the hotel's most expensive suite. And during his stay, he encounters Veronica, a professional golddigger. Jess keeps up the illusion of being a rich guest of the hotel, hoping to get Veronica to fall in love with him before he has to tell her the truth.

The Silent Shouting

Based on a true story of sexual abuse between siblings.

La face cachée de la Résistance

Plot unavailable

Bestiary

A popular sensation in medieval Europe, bestiaries were catalogs of beasts featuring exotic animal illustrations, zoological wisdom, and ancient legends. The documentary unfolds like a filmic picture book where both humans and animals are on display. As we observe them, they also observe us and one another, invoking the Hindu idea of “darshan”: a mutual beholding that initiates a shift in consciousness.

Irlande, une balade en terre celte

Plot unavailable

AFTER SHOCK: 2000 A.D

It's 1999. The Y2K bug is set to destroy society as we know it. Damon, Graham, Malcolm and Micky must prepare for the apocalypse, before it’s too late…

IAM Concert Mouv'Live

Plot unavailable

Jesus Christ Saviour

Klaus Kinski has perhaps the most ferocious reputation of all screen actors: his volatility was documented to electrifying effect in Werner Herzog’s 1999 portrait My Best Fiend. This documentary provides further fascinating insight into the talent and the tantrums of the great man. Beset by hecklers, Kinski tries to deliver an epic monologue about the life of Christ (with whom he perhaps identifies a little too closely). The performance becomes a stand-off, as Kinski fights for control of the crowd and alters the words to bait his tormentors. Indispensable for Kinski fans, and a riveting introduction for newcomers, this is a unique document, which Variety called ‘a time capsule of societal ideals and personal demons.’

Bronx, New York, November 2019

Plot unavailable

Cal State Long Beach, CA, January 2020

A wordless portrait of sculptor Jessica Jackson Hutchins shows us the artist in the process of transforming clay into uncanny forms.

Cracking the Shakespeare Code

Norwegian researcher Petter Amundsen claims to have deciphered a secret code hidden in legendary playwright William Shakespeare's works that reveals a map leading to the location of certain treasures. British Shakespearean scholar Robert Crumpton embarks on a mission to prove he is spectacularly wrong. (A remake of “Shakespeare: The Hidden Truth,” including new discoveries.)

Alain Delon, a unique portrait

Biography of a star and figure study : This fascinating portrait is for anyone who wants to know more about the man behind the mask. By the end of the film, you will view this famous French icon in a totally different light. Delon speaks in a series of surprising interviews, spanning nearly 50 years.

I'll be your mirror

The artist Johanna Faust is about to leave her children to finally devote herself to her art again. A vague memory comes to her mind: Didn't her grandmother do the same thing, with terrible consequences? The intimate road movie tells of lost mothers and abandoned children, of the temptations and the price of self-fulfilment, of the abysses of motherhood and of the deep longing for another life.

Counter Shot: Departure of the Filmmakers

Documentary about filmmakers of the New German Cinema who were members of the legendary Filmverlag für Autoren (Film Publishing House for Authors). Among them are Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and Wim Wenders.

The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism

Taking its lead from French artists like Renoir and Monet, the American impressionist movement followed its own path which over a forty-year period reveals as much about America as a nation as it does about its art as a creative power-house. It’s a story closely tied to a love of gardens and a desire to preserve nature in a rapidly urbanizing nation. Travelling to studios, gardens and iconic locations throughout the United States, UK and France, this mesmerising film is a feast for the eyes. The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism features the sell-out exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920 that began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and ended at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut.

The Past Is a Grotesque Animal

A personal, accessible look at an artist - Kevin Barnes, frontman of the endlessly versatile indie pop band of Montreal - whose pursuit to make transcendent music at all costs drives him to value art over human relationships. As he struggles with all of those around him, family and bandmates alike, he's forced to reconsider the future of the band, begging the question - is this really worth it?

Raphael: The Lord of the Arts

Raphael: The Lord of the Arts is a documentary about the 15th century Italian Renaissance painter Raphael Sanzio.

Darkroom Diaries

In a high tech profession where photography is seemingly at everyone’s fingertips, Paul Hodgkinson steps back in time to create art using the same historical techniques as the pioneers of his craft.

Serial Killer Culture

Serial Killer Culture examines the reasons why artists and collectors are fascinated by serial killers.

Make Me Famous

An investigation of Edward Brezinski, an ambitious, charismatic Lower East Side painter hell-bent on sucess, who thwarted his own career with antics that roiled NYC’s art elite. Brezinski’s quest for fame gives an intimate portrait of the art world’s attitude towards success and failure, fame and fortune, notoriety and erasure.

Crumb

This movie chronicles the life and times of R. Crumb. Robert Crumb is the cartoonist/artist who drew Keep On Truckin', Fritz the Cat, and played a major pioneering role in the genesis of underground comix. Through interviews with his mother, two brothers, wife, ex-wife and ex-girlfriends, as well as selections from his vast quantity of graphic art, we are treated to a darkly comic ride through one man's subconscious mind.

The Painting

For three and a half centuries, from the same day that Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) applied his last brushstroke to the canvas, the enigma of “Las meninas, o La familia de Felipe IV” (1656) has not been deciphered. The secret story of a painting unveiled as if it was the resolution of a perfect crime.

Jane by Charlotte

Charlotte Gainsbourg looks at her mother Jane Birkin in a way she never did, overcoming a sense of reserve. Using a camera lens, they expose themselves to each other, begin to step back, leaving space for a mother-daughter relationship.

J. A. Komenský – Život a dílo

Plot unavailable

32 Pills: My Sister's Suicide

Traces the life and mental illness of New York artist and photographer Ruth Litoff, and her sister's struggle to come to terms with her tragic suicide.

Post New Bills: The Story of Green Patriot Posters

A short documentary illustrating how art can influence public perception towards environmental issues. Green Patriot Posters is a highly acclaimed multimedia design campaign that challenges artists to deepen public understanding and ignite collective action in the fight against climate change. So far, it has reached five million people through print media, public space and digital culture. The film features interviews with key Green Patriot Posters contributors (Shepard Fairey, Michael Bierut, DJ Spooky, Mathilde Fallot) and its founders (The Canary Project, Dmitri Siegel).

Belmondo l'incorrigible

Charismatic and resourceful, seducer and daredevil, Jean-Paul Belmondo has always played his roles as he lived, at a thousand miles an hour. He had only one passion: to entertain the public with his smile, his naturalness, his energy, his stunts. But contrary to appearances, his destiny was full of pitfalls. This film lifts the veil on a founding childhood that allowed him to overcome many obstacles throughout his life thanks to the tutelary figures of his father and mother. Told from the inside with the help of his autobiography, interviews and unpublished archives, this epic story traces the career of this turbulent young actor who launched the New Wave in Breathless before becoming the popular Bebel, an indestructible and provocative vigilante. From film to film, this documentary paints an intimate portrait of a man who built himself up to reach the top: his triumphs but also his trials, his doubts, his secrets, his angers, his clowning, his disappointments or his personal dramas.

L'Orientalisme

Orientalism is a literary and artistic movement born in Western Europe in the 18th century. Through its scale and popularity, throughout the 19th century, it marked the interest and curiosity of artists and writers for the countries of the West (the Maghreb) or the Levant (the Middle East). Orientalism was born from the fascination of the Ottoman Empire and followed its slow disintegration and the progression of European colonizations. This exotic trend is associated with all the artistic movements of the 19th century, academic, romantic, realistic or even impressionist. It is present in architecture, music, painting, literature, poetry... Picturesque aesthetics, confusing styles, civilizations and eras, orientalism has created numerous clichés and clichés that we still find today in literature or cinema.

Julian Schnabel: A Private Portrait

A chronicle of the personal life and public career of the celebrated artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel.

Un été à la Garoupe

La Garoupe, a beach in Antibes, in 1937. For one summer, the painter and photographer Man Ray films his friends Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar, Paul Eluard and his wife Nusch, as well as Lee Miller. During these few weeks, love, friendship, poetry, photography and painting are still mixed in the carefree and the creativity specific to the artistic movements of the interwar period.

A Sonorous Melody

Growing up as a Deaf individual in Indonesia, Mufi was taught to speak instead of sign. As an adult, now she carves her music career to inspire others to express themselves through sign language.

Godard Cinema

Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.

Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme

Short film from Sergei Parajanov, a personal view of the director on the spectacular heritage of Niko Pirosmani (1862–1918), a Georgian primitivist painter.

Carlos Almaraz: Playing with Fire

Mixing archival footage with interviews, this film celebrates one of Los Angeles's most influential painters and Chicano art activists from the 1970s.

The Pilgrims

Arguably one of the most fateful and resonant events of the last half millennium, the Pilgrims journey west across the Atlantic in the early 17th century is a seminal, if often misunderstood episode of American and world history. The Pilgrims explores the forces, circumstances, personalities and events that converged to exile the English group in Holland and eventually propel their crossing to the New World; a story universally familiar in broad outline, but almost entirely unfamiliar to a general audience in its rich and compelling historical actuality. Includes the real history of the "first thanksgiving".