Orchestrator of Storms: The Fantastique World of Jean Rollin (2022)

Regreso a «Viridiana»

Spain, 1960. French student Monique Roumette lives in Madrid on a scholarship. Thanks to a friend who works in the production company Uninci, she has the privilege of attending the shooting of Viridiana, a film directed by Luis Buñuel.

The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat

Likely in June 1897, 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.

Barefoot in the Kitchen

What was the role of women in Spanish cinema from the 1930s to the present explained through fragments of different films, both fiction and non-fiction. (Followed by “Manda huevos,” 2016.)

The March on Rome

The fascinating story of the rise to power of dictator Benito Mussolini (1883-1945) in Italy in 1922 and how fascism marked the fate of the entire world in the dark years to come.

Maria and the Lost Movie

The pianist Miguel Ángel Lozano embarks on a personal and artistic journey with the purpose of reconstructing the life of his grandmother, Maria Forteza (1910-60), singer and pioneer of Spanish sound films.

El Cepa Returns

Forty years later, Guillermo Montesinos, the actor who played José María el Cepa in The Cuenca Crime (1980), directed by Pilar Miró, returns to the various locations where the shooting of the mythical film, narrating the infamous Grimaldos case (1910), took place.

Arrebatad@s

An audiovisual investigation into the way Spanish cinema has represented its audience throughout history, and a tribute to those who, for over a hundred years, have inhabited the theaters, mutually nurturing their deepest dreams and aspirations.

The Rebellious Olivia de Havilland

The legendary British-American actress Olivia de Havilland (1916-2020), who conquered Hollywood in the thirties, challenged the film industry when, in 1943, she took on the all-powerful producer Jack Warner in court, forever changing the ruthless working conditions that restricted the essential rights and freedom of artists.

Grace Kelly: Destiny of a Princess

In 1956, actress and Hollywood star Grace Kelly (1929-82), then at the height of her film career, unexpectedly dropped everything to marry Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Jinx, an American journalist and friend of the future princess, accompanied her on her journey to the wedding and covered the sensational event.

The Fire Rises: The Creation and Impact of The Dark Knight Trilogy

This feature-length documentary delves into the trilogy, opening with the inspiration and vision for the new Batman films and inching its way toward the Rises finale and the culmination of nearly a decade of creative blood, sweat and tears. Candid, thoughtful and extensive, and comprised of revealing behind-the-scenes footage, countless interviews, audition tapes (with Christian Bale and Cillian Murphy doning the cape and cowl), and a narrative grip and momentum all its own, it leaves no stone unturned.

Sam Peckinpah's West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade

An account of the life and work of American film director Sam Peckinpah (1925-84), a tortured artist whose genius and inner demons changed the Western genre forever.

Volker Schlöndorff: The Beat of the Drum

The life and work of the brilliant German filmmaker Volker Schlöndorff, a cross-border artist who, by leaving Germany and making the whole world his place of work, acquired the objective perspective necessary to portray his country's society better than anyone else while providing a unique and original point of view on the troubled history of the European continent.

Buñuel en el laberinto de las tortugas

Spain, 1932. Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel travels to the region of Las Hurdes, in Extremadura, where he shoots his third film, a very critical and later controversial documentary about the living conditions of the poor peasants, abandoned and forgotten by the national authorities.

Republic of Silence

They grew up in the land of dictators and surveillance, where images are censored, photos are burned, thoughts are discreet, and mouths are kept shut. They grew up in Syria.

Stunts: A Taste for Risk

The amazing story of stunts, men and women who risk their lives every day on set to get the perfect action scene.

Journey to Somewhere

A young woman, who has inherited her grandparents' huge house, a fascinating place full of amazing objects, feels overwhelmed by the weight of memories and her new responsibilities. Fortunately, the former inhabitants of the house soon come to her aid. (An account of the life and work of Fernando Fernán Gómez [1921-2007] and his wife Emma Cohen [1946-2016], two singular artists and fundamental figures of contemporary Spanish culture.)

Cinema Novo

A deep investigation, in the way of a poetic essay, on one of the main Latin American movements in cinema, analyzed via the thoughts of its main authors, who invented, in the early 1960s, a new way of making movies in Brazil, with a political attitude, always near to people's problems, that combined art and revolution.

[REC]: Horror Without Pause

The horror film [REC] — directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, and released in 2007 — was an unprecedented triumph for Spanish fantasy cinema. Fifteen years later, those responsible for the creation and worldwide success of this cinematic milestone decode its keys and resurrect the myth.

The Concavenator Valley

Three researchers work on a paleontological project focusing on two dinosaurs: one fictional, the one created by special effects genius Ray Harryhausen for the film The Valley of Gwangi (1969); the other real, the Concavenator corcovatus, whose remains were discovered in 2003 at the Las Hoyas site, in the province of Cuenca (Spain), very close to where the filming took place.

A. K.

In 1985, Chris Marker traveled to Japan to attend the filming of Ran, directed by Akira Kurosawa. Marker analyzes the progress of filming; the infinite patience of a team under the orders of a meticulous director down to the smallest detail; the antithetical mixture of the modern with the traditional; of the real with the fictitious; of life with cinema… and literature.

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.

Trespassing Bergman

In the sixties, Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) built a house on the remote island of Fårö, located in the Baltic Sea, left Stockholm and went to live there. When he died, the house was preserved. A group of very special cinephiles, came from all over the world, travel to Fårö in search of the genius and his legacy. (An abridged version of Bergmans video, 2012.)

The Memory of Cinema: A Film About Fernando Méndez-Leite

A look at the life and work of Spanish filmmaker and film critic Fernando Méndez-Leite, as he writes his memoirs and a novel with autobiographical resonances.

Tippi Hedren: The Birds and Other Wild Animals

Tippi Hedren, the unforgettable actress who starred in The Birds (1963), made in her memoirs a relentless portrait of its director, the genius British filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980), the same one who, despite his disturbing personality and questionable working methods, made her a Hollywood star. From Minnesota to Hollywood, the true story of a unique performer and a free woman.

Bajo el signo de las sombras

A portrait of the Spanish director Lorenzo Llobet Gràcia (1911-76), one of the outsiders of Spanish cinema, and the story of his masterpiece, a cult work that tells the story of a self-taught filmmaker who was born under the sign of the shadows, lights and chiaroscuro of cinema.

Last Year in Dachau

Near Munich, in Bavaria, Germany, is the Schleißheim Palace, where French filmmaker Alain Resnais shot his film Last Year at Marienbad in 1960. Nearby is the Dachau concentration camp, where thousands of people were killed between 1933 and 1945. An essay about the present and the past, beauty and horror, life and death.

Sergio Leone: cinema, cinema

The life and work of one of the great masters of Italian cinema, Sergio Leone (1929-89); a rich and fascinating portrait through unpublished testimonies of collaborators, actors, directors and critics who reconstruct every aspect of his creative activity.

Clawing! A Journey Through the Spanish Horror

In the late sixties, Spanish cinema began to produce a huge amount of horror genre films: international markets were opened, the production was continuous, a small star-system was created, as well as a solid group of specialized directors. Although foreign trends were imitated, Spanish horror offered a particular approach to sex, blood and violence. It was an extremely unusual artistic movement in Franco's Spain.

FFG: un retrato

An experimental portrait of Fernando Fernán Gómez, one of the most renowned Spanish artists of all time.

FFG, el último gran conversador

Fernando Fernán Gómez (1921-2007), actor, writer, playwright and film director, was for decades one of the most important figures in Spanish culture. His close friends and relatives reveal another facet in which he stood out above all: that of being an excellent conversationalist, capable of hypnotizing and seducing those who listened to him.

Talking About Trees

Filmmakers Ibrahim, Suliman, Eltayeb and Manar, close friends for many years, left their motherland in the sixties and seventies to study film abroad and founded the Sudanese Film Group in 1989. After years of distance and exile, they are reunited, hoping to finally make their old dream come true: to bring back cinema to Sudan by reopening the Halfaia Cinema, a dilapidated theater in Khartoum.

Un chico de portada: el arte de Macario Gómez

Macario 'Mac' Gómez talks about his long career as a film poster designer.

I Am Richard Pryor

The life story of Richard Pryor (1940-2005), the legendary performer and iconic social satirist who transcended racial and social barriers with his honest, irreverent and biting humor.

Burden of Dreams

The Amazon rain forest, 1979. The crew of Fitzcarraldo (1982), a film directed by German director Werner Herzog, soon finds itself with problems related to casting, tribal struggles and accidents, among many other setbacks; but nothing compared to dragging a huge steamboat up a mountain, while Herzog embraces the path of a certain madness to make his vision come true.

100 Years of Japanese Cinema

The story of the first century of Japanese cinema from the point of view of the controversial Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Ōshima.

Lynch (one)

Rare glimpse into the fascinating mind of one of cinema's greatest directors. Footage was gathered over a two year period and documents David Lynch's many creative interests as well as his passion for filmmaking. It’s “abstract trip” which reveals new aspects of the personality and the cinematographic vision of one of the exceptional authors of contemporary cinema. Personal portrait of David Lynch and his creative universe.

A Forbidden Orange

Spain, 1970s. A Clockwork Orange, a film considered by critics and audiences as one of the best works in the history of cinema, directed by Stanley Kubrick and released in 1971, was banned by the strict Franco government. However, the film was finally premiered, without going through censorship, during the 20th edition of the Seminci, the Valladolid Film Festival, on April 24, 1975. How was this possible?

Boulevard! A Hollywood Story

Dickson Hughes and Richard Stapley, two young composers and romantic partners, are caught in the web of silent film star Gloria Swanson when she hires them to write a musical version of Sunset Boulevard, her 1950 film directed by Billy Wilder.

The Cinematograph: Birth of an Art

Throughout the 19th century, imaginative and visionary artists and inventors brought about the advent of a new look, absolutely modern and truly cinematographic, long before the revolutionary invention of the Lumière brothers and the arrival of December 28, 1895, the historic day on which the first cinema performance took place.

RKO 281

In 1939, boy-wonder Orson Welles leaves New York, where he has succeeded in radio and theater, and, hired by RKO Pictures, moves to Hollywood with the purpose of making his first film.

The Untameable Kirk Douglas

The story of actor Kirk Douglas, the man and the legend, one of the last stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. An epic journey through the 20th century and the entire history of Hollywood. A testimony of the huge scope of his life and the scale of the myth. The untameable Kirk Douglas, the ragman's son.

Meryl Streep: Mystery and Metamorphosis

Meryl Streep is one of the most versatile and successful actresses of all time and is still considered a superstar after 50 years of career. She fascinates filmmakers and audiences alike with her broad range of expression.

The Strange Life of Dr. Frankenstein

In 1818, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a powerful and timelessness novel which eternal theme is nothing other than man's quest for the secret of life. Since then, the Creature became a pop culture icon, overshadowing the novel and Doctor Frankenstein himself.

Notes on an American Film Director at Work

Filmmaker Jonas Mekas follows his friend, film director Martin Scorsese, and his cast and crew, through various locations during the shooting of his film The Departed, released in 2006.

Deep Throat: When Porn Makes Its Premiere

Deep Throat, a pornographic film directed by Gerard Damiano, a film-loving hairdresser, and starring Linda Lovelace, a shy girl manipulated by a controlling husband, was released in 1972 and divided audiences, who began to talk openly about sex, desire and female pleasure; but also about violence and abuse; and about pornography, until then an almost clandestine industry, as a revolutionary cultural phenomenon.

The Voice of Thaïs

Clara Mingueza, an actress from Barcelona, sets out to move the mortal remains of Elena Jordi (1882-1945), vaudeville star, actress and the first woman director of Spanish cinema, to her hometown, while trying to find a copy of Thaïs, the only film she directed.