Cinematic Era: 2008 Vintage

The well ordered world of a security man in an electronics store is disturbed and a young shop assistant is bemused when a homeless man arrives to make a purchase.

A brief biography of film director Ishiro Honda.

China keeps claiming sovereignty over Taiwan. The USA believes the Tech industry of the island nation needs to be protected. Prominent international experts from both sides, China vs. USA, Empires At War explores all the issues that could lead to war.

Basketball is the backdrop against which this coming of age lesbian Indie flick is set. A touching story of young ladies irresistibly drawn together against their will.

Thinking in Loop: Three videos on iconoclasm, ritual and immortality. Combining theoretical texts and film footage, the topic of these videos is, actually, video as a medium: the use of the image within the video, the analogy between video and essay, the difference between private and public use of the video, the video running in loop as a contemporary form of ritual. The film footage is not used here as a mere illustration to make the text more comprehensible, or to make certain theoretical positions more evident. Rather, these video lectures thematize the gap between what we hear and what we see, and reflect on the relationship between image and word in our media driven world.

For a month, a documentary filmmaker has lived with the people in the small town in the forest in Hälsingland. We get to meet the prematurely retired game warden Örjan with a great passion for dogs, hunting and music.

A parody short by Hu Ge.

New demands for entertainment helped give birth to the popular song.

Dock Ellis, a Major League Baseball pitcher during the sixties and seventies, candidly describes "beaning" Reggie Jackson in retaliation for the home run that he hit off of him during the 1971 All-Star Game.

What are the connections between healthy bodies and healthy bank accounts and skin color? How do social policies and the way we organize work and society affect health? Solutions lie not in more pills but in more equality.

A woman opens her eyes: she finds herself in a kind of torture chamber. Footsteps approach, but at the last moment she finds a way to escape. On her way out of her prison, she descends deeper and deeper into her personal hell.

Join host Billy Ray Cyrus on a journey into the hollers and runs of Appalachia to discover the proud legacy of the region's mountain folk. Learn how hillbillies, long misunderstood as isolated and backward, actually have a 300-year history of achievement that has contributed significantly to our national identity.

POSSESSED enters the complicated worlds of four hoarders; people whose lives are dominated by their relationship to possessions. The film questions whether hoarding is a symptom of mental illness or a revolt against the material recklessness of consumerism. When does collecting become hoarding and why do possessions exert such an influence on our lives?

Before World War II, Ikego village was an idyllic agriculture community. The Imperial Navy took over the village and the hills to build the largest ammunition preserve in Asia. When Japan lost, these facilities were taken over by the US Navy, and are now housing for the American soldiers.

Documentary about the history and development of Qiqihar city.

Island (2008) is a 12-minute black-and-white video that surveys the distinctive terrain of Gotland, an island off the eastern coast of Sweden. Projected on a large wall in Vancouver, Island uses prolonged static shots to immerse the viewer in an austere landscape.

In the near future, in Adachi Ward, Tokyo, a ‘Welfare Cutoff Squad’ is formed to plug the gaps in the deteriorating public finances. Their objective is to strip welfare recipients of their entitlement to benefits. However, as these recipients would rather live on welfare than work, concepts of ethics and morality are virtually non-existent. Thus begins a sordid battle between the Cutoff Squad and the residents…

Part of Bill Viola's "Transfigurations" series, this work shows a mother and her daughters enacting a transfiguration when they choose to pass through a threshold of water and briefly enter an illuminated realm.

Saturday June 14, 2008, at the invitation of the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk’s Foundation, Paul McCartney gave a free concert in Independence Square, Kyiv, Ukraine. This groundbreaking event has been named the Independence Concert.

A man in a grey coat roams the city. He is interested in boys and men. Those good enough for him will get a green bag. Marija is home alone. She is the only woman to get a green bag. But the film does not end quite there.

The attempt to accompany the creative process (with the inevitable difficulties and silences) of five women-dancers-choreographers, in their experience of creating a work of dance theater.

A drama about a group of criminals who are targeting rich and successful...

Seasons is a film that follows seven of the worlds top mountain bikers through the course of four seasons of one year - The film explores what it means to be a full time rider as told through the lives of downhill racers/slopestyle competitors and big mountain freeriders

Open Surgery is a short animation film about an open heart surgery where death comes to play his part. The animation was made as the second year student film (2008) of my study, 3D computer animation and visual effects, at Utrecht School of the Arts.

A thriller captured in real time from the point of view of a six year old girl named Hanah. Through the eyes of Hanah, we experience a normal, almost boring evening for Hanah and her friend Toby. It starts with laughter as a group of bickering, cranky anger management members gather. Hanah's night suddenly turns to screams as the group is methodically attacked and killed. Hanah and Toby, protected by a female firefighter, Tyler, escape and journey through a remote area in macabre game of hide and seek.

The film's story is about a couple who, upon entering a wedding party, are mistaken for siblings who have come from abroad and become involved in a strange incident.

A happily married couple with a beautiful young daughter finds their idyllic life in the country becoming a waking nightmare when they move into a house where time stands still and the ghosts of the past wander free.

The protagonist of Alba is a boy weaken by a severe illness. In order to defeat the disease, represented by a evil dragon, the boy becomes a dauntless knight…

First day in a new school. Margot is scared to become the scapegoat once again. Only this time could shift.

A film about director Andja Arnebäck's family: “When I was pregnant with my first child and doing ultrasound, I thought about the coincidence that my child and I both exist. My Mom has told me that they wanted to forcibly sterilize my grandmother. Through archives and in meetings with my grandmother's two brothers, Axel and Knut, I investigate what really happened when they grew up in Gothenburg. ”

Why is it that often when we get what we want, we still feel empty? We work so hard to succeed, but our lives just end up becoming more about us. Can success turn on us? Can we get caught up in a smaller world where our lives are all about the things that we want? Or is there another way to live? Where life is about more than just us. Where we see people in need and we do something about it. Where our world is expanding because we are sharing our success. And maybe in attempting to save someone else from their suffering, we find out that we are actually the ones being saved.

Plagued by blindness, sloth, and devotion, a troubled scene from Little House On The Prairie offers itself up to karaoke exorcism.

The making of an unfinished film about phobias. Says the director. Behind the screens, he discusses at length (with e.g. Coffin Joe) about the aesthetic boundaries of the project: volunteers under controlled circumstances become immersed in their phobias in order to film the fear on their faces.

José Saramago, the Portuguese writer awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, is one of the greatest references in Portuguese literature. In this documentary, with the title of one of his most emblematic works, we are taken to cover part of his life.

Idiosyncratic composer, unique musician and ground-breaking film director…..Frank Zappa packed more into his short lifetime than most men would manage in two. His restless, challenging, creative spirit meant that he never stood still during a career that bought huge critical and commercial success – Zappa sold more than 60 million albums both as a solo artist and with the Mothers of Invention. The life and work of Frank Zappa are examined in this superb new critical review, which features new in-depth interviews with industry insiders, rock journalists and respected critics plus highlights from the songs that re-drew the face of rock music.

"Return to the Rafters" documents fans and members of the Boston Celtics during their historic championship-winning 2007-08 NBA season.

Adam's positive energetic comedy and rampant spontaneity have seen him collect rave reviews, and a legion of fans across Australia, Great Britain, Ireland and Europe. He has not surprisingly bagged a swag of awards in recent years including a Helpmann Award in 2007, and been nominated three times for the prestigious Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. "Joymonger" delivers one of Adam's most acclaimed shows, recorded live with AUSLAN interpreter Leanne Beer at Melbourne's Athenaeum Theatre. "Hills delivers stand up so effortlessly brilliant you wonder why some comedians even get out of bed" The Guardian, London "If you cannot enjoy Adam Hills you cannot have a pulse. Four Stars" The Scotsman "Hills's wit is incisively dry and sharp and his observations are bitingly precise" Sunday Herald Sun

Alix is a woman of 27 looking for the only thing she is incapable of: love.

Guy Maddin directed this short biopic on the castrato known as the Manitoba Meadowlark, Dov Houle, who performed on tour with the film “Brand Upon the Brain!”

Two independently thinking software professionals are bound by marriage. They remain united because of the maturity they show in dealing with their differences.

Fifty years after his death, this musical and psychological portrait of Ralph Vaughan Williams explores the passions that drove a giant of 20th-century English music.

Wisnu is a student with a duty to make a documentary film-themed casual sex. The main source, of course, is his friend accomplished in terms of sex, namely Askar and Mario. Askar found his future wife to be a virgin, this is contrary to his habit of changing girlfriends and now, Askar a relationship with a model named Wendy. While Mario who also frequently have sex with her boyfriend, Manda of the same opinion and has always supported Vishnu to have sex at his age who has reached 23 years.

A timid and sensitive man quits his 9-5 job to pursue his dream of becoming a watercolor painter. However, his neighbors and love will not agree with his new endeavor.

Short documentary revealing how the sound effects were created for Maddin's film "Brand Upon the Brain".

A journey into the American Wild West, between Past and Present, from Buffalo Bill's last gleaming hopes, to the Native Americans resurrection.

This DVD captures - in two versions, Original and Remix - Limp Bizkit's performance at Germany's biggest and most prestigious rock event, held annually in Nuremberg, the famous Rock In The Park Festival in June of 2001

Yuko Mizushima encounters an alternate version of herself, and subsequently explores her sensuality in a series of connected vignettes.

This is an excellent version of one of the greatest of all comic operas, featuring superb singing and orchestral playing. And it's not just the two headliners; listen, for example, to the entrance of the stepsisters at the beginning of Act One. Nevertheless, some viewers may find the staging problematic, with singers in clown-like costumes and sets featuring human-sized rodents. Those seeking a more conventional production might want to consider the Houston Grand Opera DVD, also on Decca, with Cecilia Bartoli and Raul Jimenez. Both sets are wonderful, but, for me, Joyce Didonato and Juan Diego Florez are slightly to be preferred. Highly recommended.

A cinematic exploration of one man’s fixation, told through poetry and interpretive dance.

Sonny, Richael, Steen and Patric dream of doing the perfect heist, but all have very different ideas about how it's done right. The tension rises as they have to spend a night in jail - after yet another failed heist. However, as the night progresses they have to come to terms with each other, in order to plan the perfect heist.

Ever-naked adult-film star Katie Morgan answers an arousing series of sex questions posed by viewers, callers, e-mailers, and others.

Tough kids from tough backgrounds living dangerous lives - these are the young people of the Oasis, a grimy brick youth refuge in inner-city Sydney. No story is too horrific, no circumstance too dire, no kid too damaged for its tireless director, Captain Paul Moulds. Father figure, counselor, saviour and an orphan himself, Paul is nothing short of a legend amongst those who stumble in at breaking point with nowhere left to go. This raw observational documentary filmed over two years captures Paul's daily battle to save these lost children of the so-called "Lucky Country".

Bruce Campbell discusses his memories of making Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat.

In 2007, the artist Jaan Toomik says that the ideas that brought him success no longer attract him. He wants to do something new - a feature film. It doesn't have a concrete form yet, and until it takes shape, he makes sketches. He films, paints, analyzes, but it's all like an echo from the past. The future is hidden in his inner world, where he does not let others. Art is born from loneliness, is his realization.

Metaxourgio* is a famous and historical neighborhood of Athens, Greece. The film captures a stroll through today's Metaxourgio neighbourhood and focuses on its "refinement" of recent years. Michalis Afolayan, actor, street musician, juggler and son of Nigerian immigrants, plays the role of guide.

An attempt to let one's identity emerge by piercing fragments of 8mm film shot over some 20 years. The filmmaker's muttering and breathing reverberate over a series of visual images that invoke the primitive pleasure of an image coming into focus. This is a tribute to the culture of 8mm film, which is nearing its end, and a personal film directed with an approach that sets it apart from other films.

A documentary film tells the true story of the locals in southern of Thailand through the life of 4 families that live in different provinces, but hand and share their kindness to one another. The reality of their life is arranged into the story disclosing beautiful sides of the southern of Thailand and changing the point of view about the violence that's been happened in the area.