#MerrittXanadu44 (2013)

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.

Topos

During its 85-minute running time, this jarring experimental film takes a no-holds-barred look at the way women have been treated and depicted in Western art.

Sam Was Here

California, Mojave Desert, 1998. A strange glow appears in the sky. Sam, a forty-something door-to-door salesman, travels through the few inhabited zones of the Californian desert in search of clients.

Pi

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

The Wrong Trousers

Wallace rents out Gromit's former bedroom to a penguin, who takes up an interest in the techno pants created by Wallace. However, Gromit later learns that the penguin is a wanted criminal. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

A Close Shave

Wallace's whirlwind romance with the proprietor of the local wool shop puts his head in a spin, and Gromit is framed for sheep-rustling in a fiendish criminal plot.

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared 6

All alone, Yellow Guy tries to stop a lamp from teaching him about dreams. While Red Guy finds out the truth about the puppets' existence.

We kept warm

Alone in her apartment, Nemo learns to play games with her grief. She cooks; she does her makeup; she knits a sweater that never ends. Meanwhile, the destruction of the world outside looms, threatening to encroach on this inner life.

Angel Heart

A down-and-out Brooklyn detective is hired to track down a singer on an odyssey that will take him through the desperate streets of Harlem, the smoke-filled jazz clubs of New Orleans, and the swamps of Louisiana and its seedy underworld of voodoo.

Inland Empire

An actress’s perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.

25th Hour

In New York City in the days following the events of 9/11, Monty Brogan is a convicted drug dealer about to start a seven-year prison sentence, and his final hours of freedom are devoted to hanging out with his closest buddies and trying to prepare his girlfriend for his extended absence.

Begotten

Begotten is the creation myth brought to life, the story of no less than the violent death of God and the (re)birth of nature on a barren earth.

Sweet Movie

The winner of the Miss World Virginity contest marries, escapes from her masochistic husband and ends up involved in a world of debauchery.

Nowhere

In Los Angeles, a colorful assortment of bohemians try to make sense of their intersecting lives. The moody Dark Smith, his bisexual girlfriend, her lesbian lover and their shy gay friend plan on attending the wildest party of the year. But they'll only make it if they can survive the drug trips, suicides, trysts, mutilations and alien abductions that occur as one surreal day unfolds.

Eulogy for a Vampire

A handsome young drifter is found unconscious near a remote monastery, where he joins forces with a vengeful spirit as he seduces and converts each of the monks to join his league of the undead.

The Wrong Side of Town

Jacob, Tony, and Brandon are on a night drive through the wooded outskirts of an unknown city. While his friends sleep, Jacob remembers where he's seen the upcoming overpass, the man standing on the other side of it, and the abandoned parking garage sitting above the road.

Lost Footage

How would a found footage film look if the footage was never found? This conceptual art experiment questions the very nature of film and cinema while serving as an ironic tribute to the found footage horror pop culture. The found footage format provides the narrative justification for such a film to exist: the non-existence exists because the footage existed yet it was lost and never found.

River of Fundament

Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filmed elements of performance, sculpture, and opera, reconstructing Mailer’s hypersexual story of Egyptian gods and the seven stages of reincarnation, alongside the rise and fall of the American car industry.

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.

Lonesome Cowboys

Five lonesome cowboys get all hot and bothered at home on the range after confronting Ramona Alvarez and her nurse.

The Cell

A psychotherapist journeys inside a comatose serial killer in the hopes of saving his latest victim.

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

The Grinch decides to rob Whoville of Christmas - but a dash of kindness from little Cindy Lou Who and her family may be enough to melt his heart...

The Serpent and the Rainbow

A Harvard anthropologist is sent to Haiti to retrieve a strange powder that is said to have the power to bring human beings back from the dead. In his quest to find the miracle drug, the cynical scientist enters the rarely seen netherworld of walking zombies, blood rites and ancient curses. Based on the true life experiences of Wade Davis and filmed on location in Haiti, it's a frightening excursion into black magic and the supernatural.

Samurai Rauni

Villagers are afraid of Samurai Rauni Reposaarelainen, who keeps them on their toes every day. When someone places a bounty on Rauni's head, he goes after this mysterious person.

Plastic Jesus

Tom is a young guy from Zagreb, completely without money, trying to make films in Belgrade. He somehow manages to survive with a help of women. He doesn't believe in anybody, respects no one and is in constant conflict with the ruling system and order. After being left by a silly American girl, Tom binds with a woman whose husband is abroad. When she kicks him out, he moves in with her husband's sister, who later kills him in the attack of jealousy. All this is shown in the context of major historical events prior to 1968. with lots of archive footage of world leaders.

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.

Boys in the Trees

On Halloween 1997, two estranged teen skaters embark on a surreal journey through their memories, dreams and fears.

Vexanthrone

A loner artist, exiled from the art community for creating a sculpture deemed too offensive, embarks on a bizarre odyssey of art, flesh, decomposition, and spiritual ascension. Vexanthrone details the mental and physical difficulties of the creative process in an experimental and surreal fashion that mixes arthouse sensibilities with gross-out body horror.

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.

Next Door

After Ingrid leaves John, he allows himself to be pulled into a mystical and scary world where it is impossible to separate truth from lies.

Silent Hill

Rose, a desperate mother takes her adopted daughter, Sharon, to the town of Silent Hill in an attempt to cure her of her ailment. After a violent car crash, Sharon disappears and Rose begins a desperate search to get her back. She descends into the center of the twisted reality of a town's terrible secret. Pursued by grotesquely deformed creatures and townspeople stuck in permanent purgatory, Rose begins to uncover the truth behind the apocalyptic disaster that burned the town 30 years earlier.

Un Chien Andalou

Un Chien Andalou is an European avant-garde surrealist film, a collaboration between director Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali.

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.

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.

The Shining

Jack Torrance accepts a caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel, where he, along with his wife Wendy and their son Danny, must live isolated from the rest of the world for the winter. But they aren't prepared for the madness that lurks within.

Frida

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

The Art of Happiness

Sergio driving a taxi in a white Naples overflowing sadness and garbage. Pouring rain leads her clients through the city trying to process the death of his brother, who started ten years earlier for Tibet and never returned. A pop singer, a recycler of fragments of life, a radio announcer, an old uncle, alternate seats on its bearing, each in its own way, a trace of his brother loved. Stubborn not to go over and get lost in an endless race, Sergio is overwhelmed by memories and the music produced in pairs with Alfredo, which in Buddhism and in its foundations had found the strength to cope with the disease. Those notes that he believed buried and laid to always return overbearing and demanding a soundboard that resonate and express his being sound. Putting his hand on the piano, Sergio Alfredo feel again, giving the past with the present and realizing itself in the feeling.

Donnie Darko

After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a large bunny rabbit that manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.

Brazil

Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.