For the first time, filmmaker Nurith Aviv sits down in front of the camera. As the defenders fall out, her unique life story as the first woman cinematographer in Europe turns out to be the key to her own films.
An unpredictable documentary from a fascinating storyteller, Agnès Varda’s last film sheds light on her experience as a director, bringing a personal insight to what she calls "cine-writing," traveling from Rue Daguerre in Paris to Los Angeles and Beijing.
By taking an interest in sign languages, Nurith Aviv invites us to expand our perception of the human langage. Three generations of deaf and hearing persons, as well as researchers from a specialised laboratory from the university of Haifa make us discover the languages, complex and diverse, that exist today in Israel.
Two childhood friends who have not seen each other for a long time decide to meet again. They talk and look for what could have caused their estrangement: words pronounced in a certain way, an intonation etc. Very quickly, an argument begins and turns into a settlement of accounts.
The interests, obsessions, and fantasies of two singular artists converge in this inspired collaboration between Agnès Varda and her longtime friend the actor Jane Birkin. Made over the course of a year and motivated by Birkin’s fortieth birthday—a milestone she admits to some anxiety over—Jane B. by Agnès V. contrasts the private, reflective Birkin with Birkin the icon.
Beckermann's parents met in Vienna after the Holocaust. Tracing the migratory paths of her family before World War II, Beckerman returns to the European Jewish communities which inspired her childhood stories.
Seven Women, Seven Sins (1986) represents a quintessential moment in film history. The women filmmakers invited to direct for the seven sins were amongst the world's most renown: Helke Sander (Gluttony), Bette Gordon (Greed), Maxi Cohen (Anger), Chantal Akerman (Sloth), Valie Export (Lust), Laurence Gavron (Envy), and Ulrike Ottinger (Pride). Each filmmaker had the liberty of choosing a sin to interpret as they wished. The final film reflected this diversity, including traditional narrative fiction, experimental video, a musical, a radical documentary, and was delivered in multiple formats from 16, super 16, video and 35mm.
An unusual visit to a large, empty apartment. But is it empty or not? Maybe a family has lived there or is going to live there. Maybe a young girl is going to escape from there. Maybe some of the old-timers who lived there never left. The walls themselves tell the stories of the time passing by.
Roland-Garros, 1981: For the very first time, a documentary team is allowed to shoot sequences in the backstage of the French Open of tennis of Roland-Garros. William Klein's camera takes us on the heels of the greatest players of the time: Björn Borg, Jimmy Connors, Ivan Lendl, Chris Evert-Lloyd, John McEnroe, Martina Navratilova, Yannick Noah, Guillermo Vilas... Miles of film. Historical pictures, a thousand and one details, a thousand and one unusual scenes. A declaration of love from a tennis lover.
Venturing from Venice Beach to Watts, Varda looks at the murals of LA as backdrop to and mirror of the city’s many cultures. She casts a curious eye on graffiti and photorealism, roller disco & gang violence, evangelical Christians, Hare Krishnas, artists, angels and ordinary Angelenos.
A devoted yet stressed out housewife takes a holiday to relax, and falls in love with another woman: a guitar-playing hippie who lives in a commune.
The intertwined lives of two women in 1970s France, set against the progress of the women's movement in which Agnes Varda was involved. Pomme and Suzanne meet when Pomme helps Suzanne obtain an abortion after a third pregnancy which she cannot afford. They lose contact but meet again ten years later. Pomme has become an unconventional singer, Suzanne a serious community worker - despite the contrast they remain friends and share in the various dramas of each others' lives, in the process affirming their different female identities.
Based on documents compiled by leading French philosopher Michel Foucault, this unique and original film charts the gruesome events which took place in a Normandy village in 1835, when a young man, Pierre Rivière, murdered his mother, sister and brother before fleeing to the countryside. With a cast made up of real-life villagers from the area where the events took place, the detailed re-enactments and careful attention to the gestures of their ancestors serve to create an intense and sometimes disturbing atmosphere of hyper-realism. Details of the crime and of the trial that followed are told from varied perspectives, including the written confession of Pierre himself, and form a rich and complex narrative that interrogates the concepts of “truth” and “history”.
An Iranian man and a French woman stroll around the city of Isfahan, Iran and find that their love is mirrored perfectly in the architecture and mosaics of the city's mosques.
An intimate portrait of the small shops and shopkeepers of the Rue Daguerre in Paris, a picturesque street that has been the filmmaker’s home for more than 50 years.