Fall 2021

An urgent and vital documentary, Bulletproof explores the complexities of violence in our schools by looking at the ways we try to prevent it. The film travels across the United States, observing the longstanding rituals that take place in and around schools: homecoming parades, basketball practice, morning announcements. Unfolding alongside these scenes are a collection of newer traditions: lockdown drills, teacher firearms training, metal detector screenings, and school safety trade shows.

THE MAGNITUDE OF ALL THINGS

When Jennifer Abbott lost her sister to cancer, her sorrow opened her up to the profound gravity of climate breakdown. This cinematic journey by the Sundance award-winning director (The Corporation) takes us around the world to witness a planet in crisis: from Greta Thunberg's condemnation of world leaders to Australia’s catastrophic fires and dying Great Barrier Reef to the island nation of Kiribati, drowned by rising sea levels.

UNDER TOMORROW'S SKY

Under Tomorrow's Sky follows renowned architect Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV, whose work argues for transforming cities with “high rises on a human scale,” stacked structural volumes with open spaces and greenery around them that feel like vertical villages. This inspiring documentary shows Maas’ influence on contemporary architecture, and examines how his designs are offering innovative solutions for the city of the future.

HER SOCIALIST SMILE

Though her life generated voluminous literature, most people ignore the fact that iconic deaf-blind author Helen Keller (1880–1968) was one of the most passionate socialist advocates of her time. Continuing his work of patient and insightful political filmmaking, director John Gianvito (Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind) resurrects Keller's radical views, which have been largely suppressed or sanitized over the years.

MAURICE HINES: BRING THEM BACK

An intimate portrait of an outspoken showman who with humor and grace navigates the highs and lows of a seven-decade career, and a complex relationship with his superstar brother, Gregory Hines. Maurice and friends — Chita Rivera, Mercedes Ellington and Debbie Allen — tell tales from his seven-decade career, while reflecting on the ever-present challenges of being a gay, black man in show biz.

FRUITS OF LABOR

A Mexican-American teenage farmworker dreams of graduating high school, when ICE raids in her community threaten to separate her family and force her to become her family's breadwinner. Fruits of Labor is a lyrical, coming-of-age documentary feature about adolescence, nature and how ancestors paved the way. Director Emily Cohen Ibáñez documents life guided by the spirit world through her hardships and joys in modern America.

HAMTRAMCK, USA

An incisive documentary exploring life and democracy in America's first Muslim majority city. The film follows Kamal Rahman, a Bangladeshi candidate for Mayor, Fadel al-Marsoumi, a 23 year old Iraqi immigrant for City Council, and the current mayor, Karen Majewski, Hamtramck’s first female mayor. Through the exploration of the city's rich history and this heated election, Hamtramck, USA wrestles with identity politics, power dynamics, and the immigrant experience in America.

WHERE DOES YOUR HIDDEN SMILE LIE?

Hailed by Jean-Luc Godard as "the best film ever made about editing and cinema," Pedro Costa's intimate documentary records with great sensitivity and insight the exacting process by which the iconoclastic filmmaking team of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet re-edit their film Sicilia!. They discuss (and argue) over each cut and its effect, and incorporate comments about the influence of figures as diverse as Chaplin and Eisenstein. Presented in a new digital restoration.

FORGET ME NOT

Forget Me Not follows three unwed mothers staying at a shelter in the countryside on Jeju Island-in South Korea. Each one has to decide if she wants to keep the baby or give it up for adoption. Engelstoft’s sensitive portrait brings us close to a forbidden world and through her own experience as a Korean adoptee, she gives a deeply personal and extraordinary insight into a culture in which women can't choose their own fate.

BAATO

Every winter Mikma and her family travel by foot from their village deep in the Himalaya of Nepal to sell local medicinal plants in urban markets. This year, construction of a new highway to China has begun in their roadless valley, and things are never going to be the same. With the new road will come new challenges, new opportunities, and ultimately a new way of being to those who live along its path.

ANERCA, BREATH OF LIFE

Anerca is a fascinating exploration into the breathing techniques of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic. There are two types of breathing, life-sustaining breath, and that which expresses existence. The film composes a poetic ethnography inspired by the singing, dancing, forms of contemporary existence and, above all, the vital breath of these nomad communities mistreated by history.

THE CASE YOU

Just how far is it acceptable to push actors in the name of cinema? And at what point do you cross the boundary where acting becomes sexual assault? These are the questions raised by the testimony of six young women who were manipulated and sexually abused during an audition. They are currently fighting a legal battle and have banded together to tell their story on camera, in a sort of antidote to the toxic audition.

INGRID CAVEN: MUSIC AND VOICE

Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama, Saint Laurent) seized on the idea of making a cinematic tribute to Ingrid Caven (a former member of R.W. Fassbinder’s cinematic troupe) when he first heard her sing at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, but the portrait he eventually made finds her exploring a more expansive range of performance styles and moods. A showcase for a truly sui generis musician—a sort of cabaret singer for the 21st century—and a respectful tribute to one artist from another.

THE METAMORPHOSIS OF BIRDS

This extraordinarily beautiful and emotionally rich documentary finds filmmaker Catarina Vasconcelos sifting through the memories and dreams of her ancestors. In prismatic images, we get the sense of a family’s entire lineage, starting with her naval officer grandfather, who married her grandmother on her 21st birthday before spending extended periods at sea. It's the beginning of a generational saga, told in shards of memory and voiceover.

THE AMERICAN SECTOR

Universal Studios in Florida, a Hilton Hotel in Dallas, Museum of World Treasures in Kansas, and private homes in the Hollywood Hills are just some of the places that slabs of the Berlin wall have ended up on display. From coast to coast, The American Sector documents the present remnants of the wall’s architecture while evoking the past with home video footage, offering a new perspective on history, what we ascribe to it, and how easily it is scattered.

AFTERNOON

Tsai Ming-Liang’s films (Days, Goodbye Dragon Inn, Rebels of the Neon God) typically have few lines of dialogue. He must have saved all his words for Afternoon, a conversation between him and his muse, actor Lee Kang-sheng, filmed in four static takes as the two sit next to each other in front of the camera. The visibly moved director talks to Lee about mortality, his beloved grandfather, sexuality, and their special bond in this laying bare of intimate thoughts. This is a must-see companion piece to Tsai’s rich body of work.

THE POWER OF KANGWON PROVINCE

Presented in a beautiful restoration and newly translated, Hong Sangsoo’s breakthrough second feature is an early masterwork from the prolific filmmaker. Playing with structure, perspective and time – elements that would become hallmarks of his later work – the film follows a young woman, Jisook, who, fresh off her relationship with a married man, joins two girlfriends for a vacation in the mountainous Kangwon region and quickly makes the same mistakes.

VIRGIN STRIPPED BARE BY HER BACHELORS

Award winning director Hong SangSoo dishes up a fresh take on modern courtship. When filmmaker Young-soo introduces his wealthy gallery owner friend Jae-hoon to another friend, the female television writer Soo-jung, the table is set for a complicated triangular relationship.

RED POST ON ESCHER STREET

When filmmaker Tadashi Kobayashi begins to hold open auditions for a new studio-sponsored film, a wave of experienced and aspiring actors scramble to apply, yearning for a chance to work with the genius director. Recalling the spirit of Irma Vep and Day For Night, this singular film from legendary director Sion Sono (whose latest film, Prisoners of the Ghostland, starring Nicolas Cage is currently in theaters) is a bitingly funny paean to the creative spirit.

THE WORKS AND DAYS

“An utterly confident, magisterial effort that will stand the test of time [and] a salute to the possibilities provided by cinema, a celebration of life.” (Cinema Scope), The Works and Days is an eight-hour feature shot for a total of 27 weeks, over a period of 14 months, in a village of 47 inhabitants in the mountains of Kyoto Prefecture, Japan. It is a geographic description of the work and non-work of a farmer. A portrait, over five seasons, of a family. It is a film that takes the time to spend time and hear people out.

SOMETHING, ANYTHING

From award-winning filmmaker Paul Harrill (Light From Light) Something, Anything is both a meditative character study and an unconventional romance. When a tragedy shatters her plans for domestic bliss, a seemingly typical Southern newlywed gradually transforms into a spiritual seeker, quietly threatening the closest relationships around her.

HERE FOR LIFE

“A film of great compassion and political and aesthetic ambition in which the idea of a collective is prioritised for a change, but without sacrificing or downplaying the individual voices and idiosyncrasies that it comprises... Beautifully exuberant and optimistic" (Sight & Sound), Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Adrian Jackson's documentary, Here for Life, follows ten unruly Londoners as they navigate their wild and wayward way towards a co-existence far stronger than 'community'.