Negative history of Hungarian cinema (2010)

King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen

A feature-length documentary focusing on the acclaimed work and eclectic career of maverick filmmaker Larry Cohen, writer-director of "Black Caesar," "It's Alive," "God Told Me To," "Q," "The Stuff," and many more.

Les dents de la mer: Un succès monstre

In the summer of 1975, the young director Steven Spielberg set new standards for cinema worldwide with an oversized shark bite, a plastic shark fin and an unmistakable two-note main theme composed by John Williams. With the horror from the deep, a man-eating, gigantic great white shark, the film of the same name became a similarly traumatic reference as Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho": it triggered lasting primal fears across generations. On the beaches of the world, there was clearly a "before" and an "after". Steven Spielberg, who was only 28 at the time, not only set new standards for the thriller genre, but also hid his biting criticism of US capitalism in the 1970s behind it.

I Am Alfred Hitchcock

Interviews and archival footage weave together to tell the story of the Master of Suspense, one of the most influential and studied filmmakers in the history of cinema.

Verstörung - und eine Art von Poesie. Die Filmlegende Bernhard Wicki

Documentary about film director and actor Bernhard Wicki.

Martin Scorsese, l'Italo-Américain

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Altman

Robert Altman's life and career contained multitudes. This father of American independent cinema left an indelible mark, not merely on the evolution of his art form, but also on the western zeitgeist. With its use of rare interviews, representative film clips, archival images, and musings from his family and most recognizable collaborators, Altman is a dynamic and heartfelt mediation on an artist whose expression, passion and appetite knew few bounds.

My Best Fiend

A film that describes the love-hate relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, the deep trust between the director and the actor, and their independently and simultaneously hatched plans to murder one another.

Moleman 4: Longplay

It is the year 2546. Corporations rule the world, and an agent is on a secret mission to explore the untold stories of the past. His journey leads him into a secret virtual reality where one corporation has recreated the 1980s, an era that witnessed the birth of video game development, an event in which a politically and economically restricted small European country, Hungary, had a significant role. He discovers a strange but exciting world, where computers were smuggled through the Iron Curtain and serious engineers started developing games. This small country was still under Soviet pressure when a group of people managed to set up one of the first game development studios in the world, and western computer stores started clearing room on their shelves for Hungarian products.

Clint Eastwood: The Last Legend

The portrait of the last cowboy Hollywood legend dives into the 65 years of an extraordinary career in Hollywood, highlighted iconic films like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, as well as Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River and Gran Torino all the way to Cry Macho in 2021. It is no small task to cover more than 60 years of cinema history, especially when it is trying to surveyed with such breadth and diversity: TV star, international star, controversial icon, contested director, filmmaker with a capital F, Eastwood has been through it all, experienced it all, and it is first of all this romantic trajectory, this true American pastoral that the documentary wants to tell with all the passion it possibly can.

Yellow Door: '90s Lo-fi Film Club

This intimate documentary explores a bygone era of cinematic passion and the emergence of young film enthusiasts in South Korea, including Bong Joon Ho.

Hans Zimmer & Friends: Diamond in the Desert

An extraordinary live performance of Hans Zimmer's most beloved and renowned movie soundtracks, including music from Dune, Gladiator, Interstellar, and The Lion King. Featuring conversations with creative collaborators Billie Eilish, Christopher Nolan, Denis Villeneuve, Finneas, Jerry Bruckheimer, Pharrell Williams, Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, and more.

The Balcony Movie

Composed from the conversations that the director holds with people passing by in the street under his Warsaw apartment, each story in 'The Balcony Movie' is unique and deals with the way we try to cope with life as individuals. All together, they create a self-portrait of contemporary human life, and the passers-by present a composite picture of today's world.

Welcome to Lynchland

Creator of absolute freedom, David Lynch constructed his work as an enigma to be deciphered between dream and reality. A cult director from his first films ("Eraserhead", "Elephant Man", "Blue Velvet"), Lynch forever changed the world of television with his series "Twin Peaks", before tackling the lies of Hollywood in "Mulholland Drive". Tracing the life of the most influential filmmaker of his generation, this documentary explores the hidden meaning of a relentlessly consistent filmography and delves beneath the dark, teeming surface of the American Dream.

The Mythology of Star Wars

George Lucas discusses how Joseph Campbell and his concept of the Monomyth (aka the Hero's Journey) and other concepts from mythology and religion shaped the Star Wars saga.

Entretien en six temps avec Gilles Groulx

This feature-length documentary brings together six of the rare television interviews given by Gilles Groulx between 1966 and 1983. Through these interviews, the filmmaker's ethical and aesthetic concerns are revealed. A striking coherence emerges in his thinking regarding his conception of cinema and the role the filmmaker should play in his culture and society.

Plan 9 From Syracuse

On August 15th, 2006, filmmaker Ryan Dacko set out to get a 30-minute meeting with a major Hollywood producer by running on foot from Syracuse, New York to Hollywood, California.

Elie Wiesel Goes Home

A documentary chronicling the adolescent years of Elie Wiesel and the history of his sufferings. Eliezer was fifteen when Fascism brutally altered his life forever. Fifty years later, he returns to Sighetu Marmatiei, the town where he was born, to walk the painful road of remembrance - but is it possible to speak of the unspeakable? Or does Auschwitz lie beyond the capacity of any human language - the place where words and stories run out?

The Dynasty

The Dynasty by the Direkt36 investigative center tells the story of the business dealings of the Prime Minister’s family over several decades. With hidden camera footage, it also shows the luxurious world built by Viktor Orbán’s son-in-law István Tiborcz and his daughter Ráhel Orbán.

Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy

For decades, Freddy Krueger has slashed his way through the dreams of countless youngsters, scaring up over half a billion dollars at the box office across eight terrifying, spectacular films.

Billy Wilder Speaks

In 1988, German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff sat down with legendary director Billy Wilder (1906-2002) at his office in Beverly Hills, California, and turned on his camera for a series of filmed interviews. (A recut of the 1992 TV miniseries Billy, How Did You Do It?)

No Country for the Poor

What if democracy fails citizens by not serving them all equally? What if inequality becomes the norm and the most vulnerable citizens are left behind with no money, no home, no rights, and no country of their own? In Hungary, the government has slashed social benefits and criminalized homelessness, but a group of activists, homeless and middle class, is confronting authorities to defend social justice and their right to be citizens. After the tragic death of two of its founding members, the group feels that Hungary is growing more hostile and their struggle is more important than ever. Despite all odds, their own community keeps them going—a mini-society with democracy and solidarity at its heart, an island of hope, belonging and dignity in a society gradually shifting the other way.

Clint Eastwood: Hollywood Outlaw

Film clips and interviews with biographers and colleagues chart the prolific, six-decade career of maverick actor-director Clint Eastwood.

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One

In Manhattan's Central Park, a film crew directed by William Greaves is shooting a screen test with various pairs of actors. It's a confrontation between a couple: he demands to know what's wrong, she challenges his sexual orientation. Cameras shoot the exchange, and another camera records Greaves and his crew. Sometimes we watch the crew discussing this scene, its language, and the process of making a movie. Is there such a thing as natural language? Are all things related to sex? The camera records distractions - a woman rides horseback past them; a garrulous homeless vet who sleeps in the park chats them up. What's the nature of making a movie?

Sous le soleil de Pialat

In just ten films, Maurice Pialat painfully rose to the top of the cinema, draining into his legend a mad demand for truth as much as memorable fury to achieve it. With "L'Enfance nue", his first feature film at the age of 43, the filmmaker immediately made his mark, this "art of making things authentic", according to Chabrol. But throughout an unclassifiable filmography in the form of an autobiography, from a break-up to his fatherhood in wonder, through the agony of his mother, the filmmaker does not get rid of the feeling of being misunderstood, despite international recognition.

Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno

In 1964, Henri-Georges Clouzot's production of L'Enfer came to a halt. Despite huge expectations, major studio backing and an unlimited budget, after three weeks the production collapsed. This documentary presents Inferno's incredible expressionistic original rushes, screen tests, and on-location footage, whilst also reconstructing Clouzot's original vision, and shedding light on the ill-fated endeavor through interviews, dramatizations of unfilmed scenes, and Clouzot's own notes.

Quicksand

"A week before he passed away, my grandfather shared with me his former aspirations of becoming a filmmaker. After many trials, a narrow escape from the Nazis and immigration to the United States, the dream slowly but surely came true. surely passed out. After his passing, I discovered a treasure trove of dust-covered 8mm film archives that had apparently not been seen by anyone for at least a generation. Mesmerized, what unfolded before me was something something most people, myself included, had never seen before: the development and complete decline of the human body and mind. Motivated by my grandfather's unrealized cinematic dreams, I decided to reconstruct a film that he had already made involuntarily." Lance Oppenheim

Żuławski on Żuławski

A portrait of film director Andrzej Żuławski. This biographical documentary shows the different layers of the personality of the artist and doesn't hide the contradictions of his nature. The confessions of Żuławski are alternated with fragments of his films, showing the twists and turns of his personal life and art.

Narrow Path to Happiness

A young gay Romani couple from a remote village in Hungary has a dream so absurd that it seems impossible: making a musical film based on their lives.

Kubrick by Kubrick

A rare and transcendent journey into the life and films of the legendary Stanley Kubrick like we've never seen before, featuring a treasure trove of unearthed interview recordings from the master himself.

Compañero Fernando

This documentary is a portrait made in Mexico by a group of Argentine exiles, directed by the painter Nicolás Amoroso.

Fellini of the Spirits

2020 marks 100 years since the birth of Federico Fellini, the most prominent Italian director and one of the symbols of the insuperable cinematic heyday of mid-20th century. Fellini had always been a mysterious director, not only in his cryptic symbolism but also in his idiosyncratic, excessive mixture of psychoanalysis, Catholicism and faith in the mysterious. In this documentary, his relationship with the paranormal, luck and fate, alongside the coexistence of organized discourse and transcendence to the imaginary, is examined via friends, collaborators and distinguished fans (Friedkin, Gilliam, Chazelle). A great testimony to why rationalists and ideologists have a hard time with his work, ‘Fellini and the Spirits’ is an appropriate yet unexpected tribute.

Pennywise: The Story of ‘It’

Thirty-plus years after its release, the popular two-part miniseries "It" and its infamous villain Pennywise live on in the minds of horror fans around the world. This documentary captures not only the buzz the "It" saga generated in 1990 but also the lasting impact it has had on an entire generation and the horror genre at large. Several years in the making, the film features exclusive interviews with many of the cult classic's key players, from cast members Richard Thomas, Seth Green, and Tim Curry, who portrayed the notorious monster clown Pennywise, to director Tommy Lee Wallace and special effects makeup artist Bart Mixon. The documentary also boasts a wealth of archival material and never-before-seen footage.

Ah, Amerika!

Documentary with animated sequences about that massive Hungarian exodus to the US which went on from the end of 19th century till the outbreak of WW1. The history of the nameless crowds presented in the film submerged under the surface of official history.

Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story

Chronicles the last great American showman, filmmaker William Castle, a master of ballyhoo who became a brand name in movie horror with his outrageous audience participation gimmicks.

The People vs. George Lucas

The passion the original Star Wars trilogy inspires in its fans is unparalleled; but when it comes to George Lucas himself, many have found their ardor has cooled into a complicated love-hate relationship. This hilarious, heartfelt documentary delves deep into Lucas’s cultural legacy, asking all the tough questions. Has Lucas betrayed his masterwork? Should he just have left the original trilogy alone? Is The Phantom Menace so bad it should carry a health warning? Utilizing interviews taken from over 600 hours of footage, and peppered with extraordinary Star Wars and Indiana Jones recreations lovingly immortalized in song, needlepoint, Lego, claymation, puppets and paper-mâché, above all this film asks the question: who truly owns that galaxy far, far away—the man who created it, or the fans who worship it?

Rendszerhiba - A magyar film el nem mondott története

Thirty years, three eras: they have been trying to save the Hungarian film industry again and again over the decades. Among these attempts were highs, lows, countless deals and compromises. And now some say that we are living in the saddest period of Hungarian filmmaking.

Anthony Perkins, the Actor Behind the Door

Anthony Perkins’ face and name remain familiar to a younger 21st century audience, fond of giallo and slashers. But he has long struggled in the shadow of his most famous character, Norman Bates – the young man in Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece, “Psycho". We also discover that he was an amazing crooner. His greatest success, “Moonlight Swim”, will be taken up by Elvis Presley. He even directed “Psycho III” – proof of his reconciliation with his favorite bogeyman.

Godard by Godard

Godard by Godard is an archival self-portrait of Jean-Luc Godard. It retraces the unique and unheard-of path, made up of sudden detours and dramatic returns, of a filmmaker who never looks back on his past, never makes the same film twice, and tirelessly pursues his research, in a truly inexhaustible diversity of inspiration. Through Godard’s words, his gaze and his work, the film tells the story of a life of cinema; that of a man who will always demand a lot of himself and his art, to the point of merging with it.

Something's Coming: West Side Story

Incredible video behind-the-scenes with the stars, Steven Spielberg, and see one of the last interviews with the legendary Stephen Sondheim.

Clerk

A look at Kevin Smith's life and career from his childhood in New Jersey, to the day they cemented his footprints at the world famous TCL Chinese Theater, with a flock of famous folks testifying on Silent Bob's behalf!

The Buried Secret of M. Night Shyamalan

Everyone has a skeleton or two in his or her closet, but what about the director behind some of the most successful thrillers ever to hit the silver screen? Could M. Night Shyamalan be hiding a deep, dark secret that drives his macabre cinematic vision? Now viewers will be able to find out firsthand what fuels The Sixth Sense director's seemingly supernatural creativity as filmmakers interview Shyamalan as well as the cast and crew members who have worked most closely with him over the years. Discover the early events that shaped the mind of a future master of suspense in a documentary that is as fascinating as it is revealing.

The Making of 'Rocky vs. Drago'

Fight alongside Sylvester Stallone as he creates a brand-new director's cut of Rocky IV: ROCKY VS. DRAGO. This feature-length documentary offers a personal and uncompromising look into the editing process, captured by Sly's longtime friend and fellow filmmaker John Herzfeld.

Passion & Poetry: The Ballad of Sam Peckinpah

Portrayal of a talented, influencial and troubled artist: a filmmaker who fought his own demons and seemed to live his own legend like no other director. Against all odds Sam Peckinpah was able to create a very personal body of work in the studio system of Hollywood and with his powerful directing and editing style changed the way of filmmaking forever. Legendary for his use of slow-motion violence, various scandals and his ongoing problems with sudios and producers, the story of Peckinpah is filled with tragedy, humor, success and defeat.

China und Wir

China is pushing hard into German and European markets. Furthermore, Beijing is developing into an increasingly powerful military power. An investigative reporter team from BR, rbb, and SWR is investigating the impact this has on Germany's internal and external security.

Mysteries of Love

Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern, and producer Fred Caruso are interviewed for this 68-minute documentary about the making of David Lynch's Blue Velvet