Cinema Studies

An enthralling journey through the history of Indian cinema, Celluloid Man is a portrait of P.K Nair, the legendary founder-director of the National Film Archive of India. Featuring extensive interviews and film clips, this is a gorgeous cinematic tribute to 'India's Henry Langlois' and to the importance of preservation.

A stirring documentary about the very beginning of Rwanda's film industry, Finding Hillywood looks at the people - the filmmakers, festival organizers, and audience - that are part of this blossoming film community and shows how it has become a beacon of hope and healing for a country still grappling with its past.

A collaboration between two Chinese artists, Xu Ruotao and Huang Xiang, and acclaimed American filmmaker J.P. Sniadecki, Yumen is a documentary-fiction hybrid that tells the story of a ghost town, a once-thriving oil-rich community in China's western Gansu province, through a series of wandering characters and inventive vignettes. Produced with the support of SEL

An illuminating and extremely rare documentary profile of one of the great filmmakers of our time, Bela Tarr. Filmed during the production of The Turin Horse, his final film, Tarr Bela: I Used To Be A Filmmaker features clips, behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with longtime collaborators such as Mihaly Vig, Erika Bok and Tarr's wife and co-director Agnes Hranitzky.

A lost masterpiece, now exquisitely restored, Dominique Benicheti's Cousin Jules is a beautiful, immersive documentary portrait of a farmer living with his wife in the French countryside. One of the earliest documentaries to be shot in CinemaScope with stereo sound, it is a record of a time and a way of life that has long ago vanished.

A dazzling and delightful mystery about love and its follies from filmmaker Matías Piñeiro - named one of "20 Directors to Watch" by The New York Times - VIOLA follows a young woman who joins a small Shakespeare theater company in Buenos Aires and becomes entangled in a seductive roundelay of romantic dalliances, intrigue and revelation.

Produced at Harvard's groundbreaking Sensory Ethnography Lab (Sweetgrass, Leviathan, the upcoming Manakamana), People's Park is an exhilarating single shot documentary that immerses viewers in an unbroken journey through an urban park in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, offering a fresh gaze on public interaction, leisure and self-expression in China.

One of the most critically-acclaimed documentaries in recent years, Leviathan is a groundbreaking, immersive portrait of the contemporary commercial fishing industry. Directed by the award-winning filmmakers of Sweetgrass and Foreign Parts, Leviathan is a purely visceral, cinematic experience.

A thrilling debut by a major new voice in world cinema, Kleber Mendonça Filho's Neighboring Sounds is a film about the long-suppressed history of class and racial oppression that continues to haunt contemporary Brazilian society.

A heartbreaking and hilarious film of repeating patterns and circumstance, The Day He Arrives, from the celebrated Korean auteur Hong Sangsoo, is a meditation on relationships, filmmaking, and the unknowable forces that govern our lives. An official selection of the Cannes Film Festival.

A richly textured essay film on landscape, art, history, life and loss, Patience (After Sebald) offers a unique exploration of the work and influence of internationally acclaimed writer W.G. Sebald (1944-2001), author of "The Emigrants," "Austerlitz" and "The Rings of Saturn." Featuring contributions from major writers, artists and thinkers, this is the first film on this important writer.

Widely considered one of the most important filmmakers in world cinema, Béla Tarr is the director of such revered films as Satantango and Werckmeister Harmonies. The Turin Horse, which Tarr has said will be his last film, is a breathtaking masterpiece that uses an obsucre Nietzsche anecdote to tell a story about human dignity and survival.

Winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival - and one of the best reviewed films of the year - Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is the new film from the celebrated director of Distant and Climates. Stunningly photographed, the film follows a murder investigation into the Anatolian countryside that rattles the investigators' own beliefs and truths.

In this inspiring documentary, filmmaker Nelson George explores a singular neighborhood in Brooklyn that gave rise to an African-American arts movement in the late 20th century as vibrant as the Harlem Renaissance. Through interviews with Spike Lee, Chris Rock, Lisa Jones Chapman, Branford Marsalis, Lorna Simpson, and many others, Brooklyn Boheme celebrates the rise of a new kind of African-American artist.

A luminous exploration of the creative process from one of the world's most important filmmakers, Pedro Costa's Ne Change Rien is a spare, hypnotic portrait of French chanteuse Jeanne Balibar. Photographed in shimmering black-and-white and featuring a soundtrack of haunting jazz-inflected pop songs.

Winner of multiple awards, Marwencol explores the real and imaginary worlds of Mark Hogancamp, who, as therapy for a vicious attack, built a 1/6th scale WWII-era town in his backyard populated with dolls that enact epic stories of violence, longing and revenge.

Through a passionate mixture of private videos, uncensored interviews and school-day adventures, the young children of Singleton Charter Middle School, the first school to open in New Orleans after Katrina, have created a revealing portrait of urban youth at the heart of an ongoing American crisis.

The conversion of a state-owned munitions factory into luxury high-rise apartments allows for an acute appreciation of Socialism's impact on the Chinese people and the complex social changes transforming the country in this masterful new documentary from Jia Zhang-ke.

What does it mean to be exiled in your own country? In the aftermath of Katrina, two filmmakers embark on a road trip to meet displaced evacuees. An important American documentary, The Axe in the Attic tackles questions of race, class, and the breakdown of trust between a government and its citizens.

An urgent, beautifully crafted examination of urban sprawl and its impact on the environment, The Unforeseen is a critically-acclaimed, award-winning documentary from director Laura Dunn and executive producers Terrence Malick and Robert Redford.