The Marvellous Spiral

Documentary about the history of Philippine cinema.

The glorious and tragic story of American athlete and actor Johnny Weissmuller (1904-84), Olympic swimmer, water polo player and the only true Tarzan, an archetypal character and myth of cinema, that of the original Hollywood blockbusters (1932-48).

An inventive remembrance of the impact of the Hollywood blacklist on two American classics, rendered as a visually mesmerizing dialogue between Carl Foreman and Elia Kazan.

A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

In the early nineties, before the massive gentrification of many of New York's then slums, several young people from very disparate backgrounds left their broken homes and ventured onto the brutal streets of the city. United by their love of skateboarding, they formed a family and built a unique lifestyle that eventually inspired Kids, a groundbreaking and outrageous film directed by photographer Larry Clark and released in 1995.

Filmmaker Julia interviews people who photograph sunsets. During filming, a man demands that she deletes the pictures of him. When she refuses, an argument ensues.

After “Letter From a Time of Exile”, the director is back in Lebanon where he discovers that his dreams about his country are an illusion and that the exile in your homeland is by far the worst exile. Programmer's Note: Borhane Alaouié returns to Beirut from his exile. His documentary film constitutes a new letter at the start of the 21st century in reply to the letters of the 1980s. The reconstruction process appears to affect stones more than people.

This is not merely another film about cinema history; it is a film about the love of cinema, a journey of discovery through over a century of German film history. Ten people working in film today remember their favourite films of yesteryear.

Documentary illustrating the birth of sound cinema.

A personal meditation on Rumble Fish, the legendary film directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983; the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, where it was shot; and its impact on the life of several people from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay related to film industry.