Cinema Studies

Following his harrowing documentary, It's Always Late for Freedom, director Mehrdad Oskouei continues his exploration of a male juvenile detention facility near Tehran. Last Days of Winter follows these young men in the days leading up to the Iranian New Year, as they take stock of their lives.

Here Come the Videofreex tells the enthralling story of a pioneering collective of video journalists known as the Videofreex who in the 60s and 70s became the forerunners of public access television and the modern internet news era as they deployed the first handheld video cameras to report and observe the world around them.

An immersive and transporting experience directed by Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-liang (Stray Dogs), Journey to the West focuses on the figure of the Walker, a character loosely based on the life of Xuanzang, a seventh-century Buddhist monk who painstakingly traversed Asia for seventeen years in search of "the void."

A gripping and moving story that illustrates the impact cosmopolitan recognition has on an isolated population, From Iran: A Separation details the reception of the speech Asghar Farhadi (About Elly) gave when his film A Separation won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

In fifteen linked chapters shot in locations ranging from Moscow to New York to Istanbul, Counting merges city symphony, diary film, and personal/political essay to create a vivid portrait of contemporary life.

Victor returns to Buenos Aires after his father’s death and a stay in Mexico to prepare a radio production of "Love’s Labour’s Lost." Reuniting with his repertory, he finds himself sorting out complicated entanglements with girlfriend Paula, sometime lover Ana, and departed actress Natalia, as well as his muddled relations with the constellation of friends involved with the project.

A visionary masterwork from the renowned director of Colossal Youth, Pedro Costa’s Horse Money is a mesmerizing odyssey into the real, imagined and nightmarish memories of the elderly Ventura, a Cape Verdean immigrant living in Lisbon.

With the return of their friend Ahmad from Germany, a group of old college pals (two married couples and a brother and sister, along with three young kids) decide to reunite for a weekend outing by the Caspian Sea. The fun starts right away as they quickly catch on to the plan of lively Sepideh, who has brought along Elly, her daughter’s kindergarten teacher, in hopes of setting her up with recently divorced Ahmad.

Jauja is the story of a man’s desperate search for his daughter, a solitary quest that takes him to a place beyond time, where the past vanishes and the future has no meaning.

What is the job of a diplomat for a country that does not exist? With this question, acclaimed filmmaker Eric Baudelaire initiates a wide-ranging correspondence with his friend Maxim Gvinjia, former Minister of Foreign Affairs for Abkhazia, a country with physical borders, a government, and its own flag, but has not been recognized as a nation.

An enthralling tale of love, temptation and betrayal, directed by major post-New Wave auteur Philippe Garrel and starring his son, actor Louis Garrel. Shot in lustrous, widescreen black and white by the great Willy Kurant (Masculin Feminin, Under Satan’s Sun).

A deluxe collector"s set featuring three early masterworks by visionary Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark, Alexandra) in newly translated and restored director"s cuts: Whispering Pages (70 min), a brooding, beautiful film inspired by nineteenth-century Russian literature, primarily Dostoevsky"s "Crime and Punishment"; Stone (79 min), a mysterious fable about a young night watchman"s encounter with the ghost of Chekhov; and Save and Protect (133 min), a visually sumptuous adaptation of Flaubert"s "Madame Bovary".

A haunting masterpiece and possibly the last film from the great Tsai Ming-liang, Stray Dogs is a visually powerful work about a single father and his two young children trying to survive on the streets of Taipei. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

The roles women are expected to play in today's society, and the difficulties in balancing career and family, are the central issues deftly explored in Robert Greene's acclaimed documentary Actress. Using elements of melodrama and cinema verit", the film follows the travails of a former actress-turned-housewife as she prepares to make a comeback.

In Norte, the End of History, one of the world"s most uncompromising cinematic visionaries, Filipino director Lav Diaz delivers an extraordinary reimagining of Dostoevsky"s "Crime and Punishment" that is both an intimate human drama and a cosmic treatise on the origin of evil.

Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa, Maidan chronicles the civil uprising that toppled the government of Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovich and has since developed into an international crisis. Filmed in stunning long takes, sans commentary, Maidan is a record of a momentous historical event and an extraordinary study of the popular uprising as a social, cultural and philosophical phenomenon.

Never before available, Thom Andersen's landmark documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself explores the tangled relationship between the movies and their fabled hometown – as seen entirely though the films themselves.Newly remastered, this kaleidoscopic tour through the metropolis' real and cinematic history, from the silent era to modern times, is an extraordinary achievement, unlike any documentary that has come before or since.

A revelatory documentary by Thom Andersen (Los Angeles Plays Itself) and film critic Noel Burch, Red Hollywood, which has been remastered and re-edited, examines the films made by the victims of the Hollywood Blacklist and offers a radically difference perspective on a key period in the history of American cinema.

A fascinating investigation into the work of photographer and cinema pioneer Eadweard Muybridge, Thom Andersen’s (Los Angeles Plays Itself, Red Hollywood, Reconversao) much-lauded documentary incorporates a biographical overview of its subject with a re-animation of his historic sequential photographs as well as concise and innovative analysis.

A master of the essay film, Thom Andersen (Los Angeles Plays Itself, Red Hollywood) surveys the work of Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura - winner of his profession's highest honor, the Pritzker Prize - whose astonishing, often-controversial projects embrace decay, the passage of time, local history, and nature.