Vowellet - An Essay by Sarah Vowell (2005)

way

San Francisco filmmaker Konrad Steiner took 12 years to complete a montage cycle set to the late Leslie Scalapino’s most celebrated poem, way—a sprawling book-length odyssey of shardlike urban impressions, fraught with obliquely felt social and sexual tensions. Six stylistically distinctive films for each section of way, using sources ranging from Kodachrome footage of sun-kissed S.F. street scenes to internet clips of the Iraq war to a fragmented Fred Astaire dance number.

Heavenly Touch

Jonard is having trouble making ends meet. His mother is suffering from depression, and he and his sister are forced to quit school in order to take care of her. One day, Jonard meets up his friend Rodel, and Rodel introduces him to the world of massage parlors. Rodel teaches him massage, and brings him to Heavenly Touch, a syndicate-run massage parlor that mostly caters to homosexuals.

An Ideal Father

Michel, the jovial owner of the only café in a small Normandy town, sees his life turned upside down when his teenage daughter is murdered. The community has his back but soon rumor spreads and Michel is singled out. From the ideal father, he becomes the ideal culprit.

Sonic & Shadow Lovely Lavat

Sonic sends TikToks to his husband Shadow everyday but Shadow never respond, Sonic thinks his husband Shadow doesn't love him and don't care about him, they fight and Shadow makes Sonic cry and now Shadow doesn't know what to do.

Lion

The lion has to become more physically fit. The gazelle does not think he is capable of doing so.

Raiders of the Lost Library

While digging one of the many tunnels for the Moscow metro, Soviet workers unearth ruins of a dungeon. The site is closed, the metro tunnel is diverted, and amidst the bustle no one notices the tunnel workers’ foreman pocketing a little ‘souvenir’ – a book-sized frame made of precious metals featuring an inscription in an unknown language. Decades later, the foreman’s grandson Ilya, who works as a courier, discovers the ancient relic in a pile of old junk. Oblivious to the true value of the family heirloom, he soon learns about it from a mysterious stranger. The relic is the key to the secret location of the priceless ancient library that belonged to Ivan the Terrible. What Ilya doesn’t know is that the search for the lost library has been going on for centuries, and now very powerful people are after him. Ilya and the mysterious stranger decide to try their luck in finding the library.

Old Man Junior

Morbius Jr, now an OId Man, is nearing the end of life, when he finds the last hope for all Morbkind. However, as he fights to protect the future of Morbheads, he finds himself facing off against an unlikely of enemy... HIMSELF.

Pimpinero: Blood and Oil

When Juan, a young gasoline smuggler, is forced to work for a mysterious organization in the desert bordering Colombia and Venezuela, his girlfriend Diana embarks on a journey to uncover the secrets that inhabit this no-man’s-land.

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.

Panda Plan

International action star Jackie Chan is invited to the adoption ceremony of a rare baby panda, but after an international crime syndicate attempts to kidnap the bear, Jackie has to save the bear using his stunt work skills.

Transmorphers: Mech Beasts

20 years after the events of Transmorphers, a newer, more advanced species of alien robot descends on a rebuilt Earth, threatening once again to destroy the planet.

Sikandar Ka Muqaddar

After an unsolved diamond heist, a hard-nosed cop’s pursuit of his key suspect turns into obsession, until they finally face each other — and the truth.

The Price of Money: A Largo Winch Adventure

Largo Winch, devastated by the kidnapping of his son, realizes that if he finds those responsible for his bankruptcy, maybe he'll see his son again.

Sugarcane

An investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school in Canada ignites a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve.

The Silent Hour

While working a case as an interpreter, a hearing-impaired police detective must confront a group of criminals trying to eliminate a deaf murder witness in her apartment building.

Weekend Warriors

A fun camping trip turns into a desperate fight for survival after two kids witness a horrific event in the wild. They have to endure the elements and wildlife and they must also find a way to reach civilization before it's too late.

The Exorcism of Hannah Stevenson

Hannah and Matt, a young couple on their first holiday together, quickly discover that they may not see eye-to-eye. Feeling as though she let her boyfriend down, Hannah enlists the help of a mysterious gypsy woman, in the hope that the couple's troubles can be overcome. However, when Matt wakes to find his girlfriend has disappeared, the gypsy woman's sinister intentions become all too clear.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba - Tsuzumi Mansion Arc

A recap of Kimetsu no Yaiba episodes 11–14, with new footage and special end credits. Tanjiro ventures to the south-southeast where he encounters a cowardly young man named Zenitsu Agatsuma. He is a fellow survivor from Final Selection and his sparrow asks Tanjiro to help keep him in line.

All the Names of God

After being implicated in a terrorist attack, Santi, a taxi driver, is taken hostage by one of the perpetrators.

River of Blood

Four kayakers take the wrong river into a jungle inhabited by a tribe of merciless cannibals.

Things Will Be Different

In order to escape the police after a robbery, two estranged siblings lay low in a metaphysical farmhouse that hides them away in a different time. There they reckon with a mysterious force that pushes their familial bonds to unnatural breaking points.

An Invisible Victim: The Eliza Samudio Case

A star goalkeeper threatens a woman who is pregnant with his child. Her pleas for help go unanswered in the shadow of his fame — then tragedy strikes.

Robot Apocalypse

An expert hacker is targeted by a sentient AI after she realizes the threat it poses, and she must try to stay off its radar long enough to stop it.

Will & Harper

When Will Ferrell's good friend Harper comes out as a trans woman, they take a road trip to bond and reintroduce Harper to the country as her true self.

Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva

In 2018 a string of tragedies unfold in the high desert of North Eastern Nevada. A woman was found dead and another would vanish along the same stretch of remote highway. Could these events be linked to the infamous 2017 disappearance of outdoorsman Gary Hinge?

Another End

Set in a near-future when a new technology exists that can put the consciousness of a dead person back into a living body, in an attempt to ease the grief of separation, providing a little extra time to say goodbye.

Bank Robbers: The Last Great Heist

Through candid interviews, the perpetrators of Argentina's most notorious bank heist detail how — and why — they carried out the radical 2006 operation.

The Desired War

A diplomatic incident threatens to break out a war inside Europe that only an unlikely couple of bickering lovers seems able to stop.

Kingdom 2: Far and Away

It follows a young man who dreams of becoming a general and Ying Zheng, whose goal is unification.

Eye for an Eye 2

The blind swordsman, skilled in martial arts, named Cheng Xiazi (Xie Miao), accidentally saves Zhang Xiaoyu (Yang Enyou), who has suffered from the destruction of his family. Under the persuasion of the orphan Xiaoyu, Cheng reluctantly keeps him by his side and teaches him skills. Xiaoyu also waits for the opportunity to seek revenge.

Last Straw

A rural roadside diner becomes the host of a maniacal killing spree – leaving a young waitress to clean up the mess. After hard-headed Nancy fires the staff at her dad’s diner, she decides to cover the last shift of the night by herself. Little does she know, she is far from alone. The day is coming back to haunt her and when things begin to spiral out of control, she must fight for her life over the course of one long night.

The Front Room

Everything goes to hell for newly-pregnant Belinda after her mother-in-law moves in. As the diabolical guest tries to get her claws on the child, Belinda must draw the line somewhere.

Visibles

Society has created a stereotype of the LGTBQ collective in which its members are young people who are fashionable, who have money, who have a lot of fun and who never pass the age of forty. But where are the older ones? When they reach that age, do they evaporate? This documentary makes visible a little-discussed topic: old age.

The Colour of His Hair

Based on an unrealized film script written in 1964 for The Homosexual Law Reform Society, a British organisation that campaigned for the decriminalization of homosexual relations between men, "The Colour Of His Hair" merges drama and documentary into a meditation on queer life before and after the partial legalization of homosexuality in 1967.

Step

The senior year of a girls’ high school step team in inner-city Baltimore is documented, as they try to become the first in their families to attend college. The girls strive to make their dancing a success against the backdrop of social unrest in their troubled city.

Night and Fog

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

Birdman

A portrait of Robert, a troubled but poetic soul struggling with his purgatorial existence in a hackney scrapyard.

Like a Spiral

Like a Spiral is a dialogue between Beirut and five women, migrant domestic workers, under the Kafala system. Expressing their belonging to a society in collapse, the women's voices rise through the film's grainy images to denounce their stolen freedom with an inalienable thirst for existence. Their memories dance in the rhythm of oppression. Caught within life's spiral, they lift themselves up to not sink into oblivion.

Larisa

Elem Klimov's documentary ode to his wife, director Larisa Shepitko, who was killed in an auto wreck.

The Sixth Side of the Pentagon

On October 21, 1967, over 100,000 protestors gathered in Washington, D.C., for the Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam. It was the largest protest gathering yet, and it brought together a wide cross-section of liberals, radicals, hippies, and Yippies. Che Guevara had been killed in Bolivia only two weeks previously, and, for many, it was the transition from simply marching against the war, to taking direct action to try to stop the 'American war machine.' Norman Mailer wrote about the events in Armies of the Night. French filmmaker Chris Marker, leading a team of filmmakers, was also there.

Flesh

Rare, medium rare, medium, medium well and well done. Through intimate and personal stories, five women share their experiences in relation to the body, from childhood to old age.

Kelce

An intimate and emotional documentary that chronicles Philadelphia Eagles team captain and All-Pro center Jason Kelce’s 2022 season, which began with him confronting one of the most challenging decisions any professional athlete will ever face—is now the time to hang it up?

The Tickle King

Featuring new, previously unseen footage documenting the bizarre and unsettling things that happened to filmmakers David Farrier and Dylan Reeve as Tickled premiered at film festivals and theaters in 2016. Lawsuits, private investigators, disrupted screenings and surprise appearances are just part of what they encounter along the way. Amidst new threats, the duo begins to answer questions that remained once the credits rolled on Tickled, including whether the disturbing behavior they uncovered will ever come to an end.

Haida Carver

On Canada's Pacific coast this film finds a young Haida artist, Robert Davidson, shaping miniature totems from argillite, a jet-like stone. The film follows the artist to the island where he finds the stone, and then shows how he carves it in the manner of his grandfather, who taught him the craft.

Sarajevo Film Festival

Sarajevo in the twentieth month of its besiegement. The situation is critical, but the city chooses to organise an international film festival. Dutch filmmakers Johan van der Keuken and Frank Vellenga present Van der Keuken's documentaries Face Value and Brass Unbound there, and one of the festival organisers asks a festival visitor: "What is the significance of film in war?" In Sarajevo Film Festival Film, a reflection on film, war and daily life, fictional images are juxtaposed in a disconcerting way with the gruesome reality of the life of a festival visitor.

Corridors

Latest installment from the on-going collaboration between filmmaker Paul Clipson & musician Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. Paul's Super8 films, shot entirely in New York City, channel the blissed out states of color drenched psychadellia explored by Brakage as well as lovely black and white still life's that reminisce on Ozu's 'pillow shots' & Chantel Akermans monumental portrait of Pre-Giuliani New York 'Letters Home'. Jefre's music is culled from the same sessions that launched his 2007 release on Students Of Decay 'Shinning Skull Breath', (the two share a track in common). Billowy clouds of distorted guitar expand out into long passages of muffled static and fuzzed out melody.

The Green Fog

A tribute to a fascinating film shot by Alfred Hitchcock in 1958, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, and to the city of San Francisco, California, where the magic was created; but also a challenge: how to pay homage to a masterpiece without using its footage; how to do it simply by gathering images from various sources, all of them haunted by the curse of a mysterious green fog that seems to cause irrepressible vertigo…

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.

A Calling to Care

A Calling to Care is the inspiring story of 55 year-old Grace Stanley, a Canadian nurse who left her home and prestigious career behind to answer a calling halfway around the world in Karachi, Pakistan. Teaching nursing to local women in a strict Muslim culture that forbids them to even to touch men is a formidable task. However, Grace challenges her own values and belief systems to find common ground with her students, helping them to excel and feel respect for themselves in a culture that doesn't respect them. Whether it is getting her hands painted with henna, swimming fully-clothed in the ocean, or marching bravely with them on International Women's Day, Grace bonds with her students in a very special way, and ultimately discovers how the West can learn a lot more from the Third World than she ever thought.

Mystery of the Nile

Filmed in IMAX, a team of explorers led by Pasquale Scaturro and Gordon Brown face seemingly insurmountable challenges as they make their way along all 3,260 miles of the world's longest and deadliest river to become the first in history to complete a full descent of the Blue Nile from source to sea.

Amazon

Explore the mysterious Amazon through the amazing IMAX experience. Amazon celebrates the beauty, vitality and wonder of the rapidly disappearing rain forest.

Cosmic Voyage

The Academy Award® nominee Cosmic Voyage combines live action with state-of-the-art computer-generated imagery to pinpoint where humans fit in our ever-expanding universe. Highlighting this journey is a "cosmic zoom" based on the powers of 10, extending from the Earth to the largest observable structures in the universe, and then back to the subnuclear realm.

The Imperial Lullaby

The armies of Fascist Italy conquered Addis Ababa, capital of Abyssinia, in May 1936, thus culminating the African colonial adventure of the ruthless dictator Benito Mussolini, by then lord of Libya, Eritrea and Somalia; a bloody and tragic story told through the naive drawings of Pietro Dall'Igna, an Italian schoolboy born in 1925.

A 3 Minute Hug

As daylight breaks between the border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico, undocumented migrants and their relatives, divided by a wall, prepare to participate in an activist event. For three minutes, they’ll embrace in no man’s land for the briefest and sweetest of reunions.

Rocky Jumped a Park Bench

A location tour of the Rocky filming locations in Philadelphia.

Long Live Hunting!

This documentary essay introduces a peculiar trio of men united by their passion for hunting. Each of them conceives of hunting in his own way, luring the viewer to an exotic safari, to an antlered trophy collection or to a sitting in the woods.

Echo

A reframing of the classic tale of Narcissus, the director draws on snippets of conversation with a trusted friend to muse on gender and identity. Just as shimmers are difficult to grasp as knowable entities, so does the concept of a gendered self feel unknowable except through reflection. Is it Narcissus that Echo truly longs for, or simply the Knowing he possesses when gazing upon himself?

Roundhay Garden Scene

The earliest surviving celluloid film, and believed to be the second moving picture ever created, was shot by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince using the LPCCP Type-1 MkII single-lens camera. It was taken in the garden of Oakwood Grange, the Whitley family house in Roundhay, Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire (UK), possibly on 14 October 1888. The film shows Adolphe Le Prince (Le Prince's son), Mrs. Sarah Whitley (Le Prince's mother-in-law), Joseph Whitley, and Miss Harriet Hartley walking around in circles, laughing to themselves, and staying within the area framed by the camera. The Roundhay Garden Scene was recorded at 12 frames per second and runs for 2.11 seconds.

Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge

A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.

Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag

Fighter Pilot: Operation Red Flag follows American F-15 Eagle pilot John Stratton as he trains with some of the world’s best pilots. The movie depicts Stratton’s progression through the challenging and dangerous exercises of Operation Red Flag, the international training program for air forces of allied countries.

Journey into Amazing Caves

Journey into Amazing Caves is an extraordinary IMAX adventure into the depths of the earth to uncover the secrets to life underground.

Dickie V

The remarkable life and career of the legendary Dick Vitale, ESPN's voice of college basketball for more than four decades, and an inspiration as he battles cancer, a disease he's been fighting on behalf of others for years as well. The film features more than 40 original interviews including Magic Johnson, Mike Krzyzewski, Charles Barkley, John Calipari, Robin Roberts, Chris Berman and Mike Tirico, among many leading voices from college basketball, sports broadcasting, and beyond, "Dickie V" is a fun, unforgettable, moving, inspirational ride through an incredible life still being lived, and a poignant tribute to a man still spreading love and joy wherever he goes.

The Key Issue

A mockumentary about four people and their idiosyncratic ways of saving the planet.

Lost Worlds: Life in the Balance

Lost Worlds looks at untouched aspects of nature in parts of the world where humans rarely tread. From plants, to animals, to geology, this artfully photographed documentary presents facets of the biological world that you are not likely to see anywhere else.

A Modern Man

You could be forgiven for mistaking Charlie Siem for James Bond. Whether he's driving an orange Porsche to his cliff-top Monaco mansion, ordering martinis or looking suave in a designer suit, he is a man on a mission. It isn't to hunt down SPECTRE, but to find perfection in everything he does. Whether it's performing on stage, recording albums, or selecting a suit, Charlie demands the best, of himself and others. Despite an entourage dubbed ‘Charlie's Angels', he's lonesome, and complains that people can't relate to him. Danish filmmaker Eva Mulvad, with patience and panache, delves into this life of privilege to find commonalities of ambition and desire.

welcome_home.exe

As technology accelerates, our species' collective imagination of the future grows ever more kaleidoscopic. We are all haunted by temporal distortion, perhaps no more than when we attempt to remember what the future looked like to our younger selves. As the mist of time devours our memories, the future recedes; each of us burdened by the gaping mouth of entropy. Yet, emerging technology provides a glimmer of hope; transhumanism promises a future free from mortality, disease and pain. Does our salvation lie in digital simulacra? We're here to sell you the answer to that question, for the low, low price of four hundred and seventy seconds.

The Water Map

The Water Map is an essayistic journey through the ethnography and landscapes of the Region of Murcia. These places are in the process of disappearing due to the increasing and abundant agricultural exploitation. Water has marked the territory and the culture of the area, and with its disappearance, the memories of four characters fade away.

Ocean Wonderland 3D

Shot on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and in the Bahamas, Ocean Wonderland brings to you the amazing beauty of the many varieties of coral and the immense diversity of the marine life thriving there.

I Am a Truck

Worldy renowned for his masterpiece The Housemaid (1960), Kim Ki-young debuts with his first short film I Am a Truck (1953), which was sponsored by UN and made a year after the armistice of the Korean War. This film is a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a soon-to-be powerful auteur and influential filmmaker in the post-war Korean cinema, if not the whole history of Korean cinema.