For forty years Alejandro Farfán has been making and showing films in El Pedregal. Now located in the heart of Caracas, this community was a small village when Alejandro first went to the cinema. This is a portrait of a local film-maker and of El Pedregal itself, exploring the place and its memories.
Category: Short
An adaptation of the renowned Portuguese Letters, originally written in French and attributed to Soror Mariana Alcoforado. As letters may have been written by Soror, in the Convent of Nossa Senhora da Conceição in Beja, to her lover Noel Bouton, Count of Chamilly.
A lyrical and yet at the same time passionate ‘situation report’ on the living conditions of Hungarian Gypsies. With this, his first significant work, Sándor Sára, who went on to become one of the most influential figures in Hungarian film as both cinematographer and director, aimed not only to document but also to take a standpoint on this critical topic. The exposition of the film determines the context: newspaper articles and socio-photos reporting on the plight of the Roma, listing numbers and statistics, and in the follow-on Sára depicts the problem through motion pictures.
This exquisite Soviet animated adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 fairy tale tells the story of a water-dwelling maiden, Rusalochka, who trades her voice for legs after falling in love with a human prince. The story transitions between the black and white human world of Copenhagen, where tourists believe in love but not in mermaids, and the gorgeously vibrant visuals of the underwater mermaid kingdom, accompanied by Aleksandr Lokshin’s haunting music.
An uncompromising look at the ways privacy, safety, convenience and surveillance determine our environment. Shot entirely at night, the film confronts the hermetic nature of white-collar communities, dissecting the fear behind contemporary suburban design. An isolation-based fear (protect us from people not like us). A fear of irregularity (eat at McDonalds, you know what to expect). A fear of thought (turn on the television). A fear of self (don’t stop moving). By examining evacuated suburban and corporate landscapes, the film reveals a peculiarly 21st century hollowness… an emptiness born of our collective faith in safety and technology. This is a new genre of horror movie, attempting suburban locations as states of mind.
Don Owen’s groundbreaking short drama tells the story of two young women who go to the city to work in a dress factory, and who share a room to ease their expenses and their loneliness. The film shows the currents that brought them together and the facets of their natures that first made them seem compatible but eventually drove them apart. Their story reflects, to a degree, the situation of anyone who has ever shared the life of another.
This film is based on the famous horror story by Ambrose Bierce. It tells of a hunter whose young wife dies of fever. Her grief stricken husband prepares her body for burial, but during the night the forces of nature intervene to create a horrific and macabre ending.