Animal Cinema (2017)

Hugo Pratt, trait pour trait

Several key words emerge from Hugo Pratt's work, inseparable from his life: travel, adventure, erudition, esotericism, mystery, poetry, melancholy... and of course, Corto Maltese, his hero and alter ego, who established him as one of the greatest names in comic books. Born in Italy in 1927 and dying in Switzerland sixty-eight years later, Hugo Pratt, born without an H and with only one T, grew up in the shadow of a fascist father who took him at a very young age to Ethiopia, which was occupied by Mussolini's forces. The teenager developed a fascination for the wide-open spaces of Africa, soon followed by an irresistible attraction to the Indian world. This was the starting point for a life of travel, success, conquests, rare failures, and marked by his veneration for the American cartoonist Milton Caniff, his absolute master.

Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory

Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.

S'altra banda

What's on the other side of Fornells bay? Pepe el Malo is an urban legend or he really existed? This documentary doesn't try to shed light on the dark; it rather plays deftly with the ambiguities of a character that is part of the Menorcan imaginary.

Until Further Notice

With his industry on lockdown and no end in sight, Toronto chef Luke Donato tries to keep his culinary passion alive during the COVID-19 pandemic - even if it means teaching a group of misfits online.

JENNY@7-11

In a convenience store, the door of the storage room is a two-way mirror, reflecting a romantic story of love at first sight.

The Man Who Was There

The Spanish journalist Manuel Chaves Nogales (1897-1944) was always there where the news broke out: in the fratricidal Spain of 1936, in Bolshevik Russia, in Fascist Italy, in Nazi Germany, in occupied Paris or in the bombed London of World War II; because his job was to walk, see and tell stories, and thus fight against tyrants, at a time when it was necessary to take sides in order not to be left alone; but he, a man of integrity to the bitter end, never did so.

Coded: The Hidden Love of J.C. Leyendecker

Coded tells the story of illustrator J.C. Leyendecker, whose legacy laid the foundation for today's out-and-proud LGBTQ advertisements.

Frenchball - Le Coup D'Envoi

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In the Lost City

The city of Madrid as it appears in the Spanish films of the 1950s. A small tribute to all those who filmed and portrayed Madrid despite the dictatorship, censorship and the critical situation of industry and society.

Flora

A metacinematic reflection on the nature of representation and the ongoing drug war in Mexico, Nicolás Pereda’s Flora revisits locations and scenes from the mainstream 2010 narco-comedy El Infierno, exploring the paradoxes of depicting narco-trafficking on film—its tendency both to romanticize and to obscure. To screen is both to project and to conceal.

Lesser Choices

The bleached palette and home-movie aesthetics of Super 8 footage provide the image track for this testimonial about an illegal abortion in Mexico City in the 1960s, delivered in voiceover by the filmmaker’s mother. In its account of this intimate and disorienting memory, Lesser Choices summons a time of profound uncertainty—a moment from an era without rights—and offers a warning to the present.

Fire in Paradise

In this documentary, survivors recall the catastrophic 2018 Camp Fire, which razed the town of Paradise and became California’s deadliest wildfire.

Paleo Impulse

Paleo is a video clip shoot at the famous homonymous music festival in the French canton of Vaud in Switzerland, where many hippie-techno-pagans gather every summer since 1977. The editing style is a tribute to the reworking of psychedelic theories and the New Age proliferation within rave culture in the early 90s from the perspective of the late second decade of the new millennium. In the footage, the ritual ingestion of psychedelics is symbolically replaced by a liberating dance through a powerful fast montage that epitomizes the frenzy of intoxication achieved through psychedelic plants. A revival of a revival of a revival.

Minuta ticha

Plot unavailable

The Diary of a Projectionist

This is the story of my grandfather, Tiago Florit, who for 50 years was a film operator at the Teatre Principal de Maó, in Menorca. It is a review of his life, from his birth to his death, in a cinematographic key. A true love story to cinema.

Casablanca revisitada

A lyrical and nostalgic analysis of how Casablanca, the mythical film directed by Michael Curtiz in 1942, has influenced both film history and pop culture.

Otamaniki

Biopic filmed in a single shot about the Majorcan musician Juanjo Monserrat.

Tribu

Ruben and Gio have been recently adopted by Evelyn and Memo. The four of them try to create a home where the past, the bad and good stories, and the dreams in common for the future blend all together.

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.

Land Without Bread

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.

Bliss

The first film made by Markopoulos after moving to Europe, Bliss was shot over the course of two days using only available light to create a lyrical study of the interior of the Church of St. John on the island of Hydra.

Wings of Kyrgyzstan

As „wings of men“ they became the faithful companion of a great nomadic nation thousands of years ago. Today, 28 years after the Soviet occupation, the little horse is an essential part of the cultural heritage and the search for identity of the modern Kyrgyz people. Based on its own story, a so called „good brown horse“ leads through the film and offers an insight of what it could mean to be „todays wings of men“. Told by a horse’s voice and through its eyes, this short film still is a documentary, but also a poetic journey to a nomadic culture.

Tremor

The anguish a woman experienced on the night of September 7, 2017, caused by the 8.2 magnitude earthquake that struck southern Mexico and the danger of another impending disaster.

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.

Comrades

Young people are protesting on the streets of Hong Kong in order to bring about change. Air soaked with tear gas, the dark uniforms and loud commands of the police officers in the colourful umbrella sea of the protesters. In the midst of the action, the film documents a brand new protest movement.

The Seafarers

Stanley Kubrick’s first color film, commissioned by the Seafarers International Union to promote the benefits of union membership. Shot inside the union’s Atlantic and Gulf Coast District facilities, it features scenes of ships, machinery, cafeteria life, and meetings, highlighting the daily routines and camaraderie of seafarers. Thought lost for decades, the film was rediscovered in 1973 and preserved by the Library of Congress.

Isle of Flowers

A tomato is planted, harvested and sold at a supermarket, but it rots and ends up in the trash. But it doesn’t end there: Isle of Flowers follows it up until its real end, among animals, trash, women and children. And then the difference between tomatoes, pigs and human beings becomes clear.

Solarmax

Solarmax is a 40-minute giant-screen documentary that tells the story of humankind's struggle to understand the sun. The film will take audiences on an incredible voyage from pre-history to the leading edge of today's contemporary solar science.

The House Is Black

Set in a leper colony in the north of Iran, The House is Black juxtaposes "ugliness," of which there is much in the world as stated in the opening scenes, with religion and gratitude.

The Funicular of Mount Faloria

Vertigine (Vertigo) is the original title of a fragment of around 4', signed by Michelangelo Antonioni, which is a part of the eight-minutes documentary La funivia del Faloria. The title was eventually modified in La funivia del Faloria because considered more effective to obtain the governmental prize (at the time the minimum length allowed was 8 minutes). Vertigine was shot in 1949 with the cinematographer Bellisario, who was director of photography in several documentaries in those years, but was edited only in 1950, after Antonioni had made his first feature film, Cronaca di un amore.

Glamour Reel Docs: Dreamland

Tommy Hilfiger Dreaming Perfume campaign - Coney Island, the playland of New York City, documents the preservation of the lifestyle, joys and history of this iconic Brooklyn neighborhood.

Glamour Reel Docs: Soul Tigers

Soul Tigers Marching Band, Inc. has stepped into the breach to offer not just music education and the arts but the development of integrity, honorable personal conduct, and patience & respect for others, for some New York’s most underserved youth populations.

In Song: Arturo Chacón-Cruz

Journey to the sunny coastline of South Florida, where Chacón-Cruz — one of opera’s leading tenors — invites you inside his home, his artistry and his history to show how he’s embraced his identity as fuel for his work.