Cinema Guild
1) Marwencol
Formats
Description
Jeff Malmberg's landmark documentary MARWENCOL follows the story of Mark Hogancamp, a victim of a brutal beating, who in response created a fantastic miniature world. As he documents the town's dramas with his camera, the dolls become living characters in an epic tale of love, adventure, resurrection and revenge. When his photos are discovered by the art world, Mark is suddenly forced to choose between the safety of his imaginary world and the real...
Description
A lost masterpiece of cinema, now restored and available for the first time in years. An ode to rural France and the simple joys of life, Dominique Benicheti captures the daily routine and rituals of his cousin Jules, a blacksmith, living with his wife, Felice, on a small farm in the French countryside.
Formats
Description
In the dead of night, a group of men—among them, a police commissioner, a prosecutor, a doctor and a murder suspect—drive through the Anatolian countryside, the serpentine roads and rolling hills lit only by the headlights of their cars. They are searching for a corpse, the victim of a brutal murder. The suspect, who claims he was drunk, can't remember where he buried the body. As night wears on, details about the murder emerge and the investigators'...
4) Maidan
Description
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 between Russia and the West. 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. Official Selection...
5) Our Body
Description
French documentary titan Claire Simon observes the everyday operations of the gynecological ward in a public hospital in Paris. In the process, she questions what it means to live in a woman’s body, filming the diversity, singularity and beauty of patients in all stages of life. Through these many encounters, the specific fears, desires and struggles of these individuals become the health challenges we all face, even the filmmaker herself.
Description
After renouncing his long-held Christian beliefs and walking away from his critically-acclaimed band, Pedro the Lion, musician David Bazan retreated into a solitary life of touring solo, struggling to rebuild his worldview and career from the ground-up, and to support his family of four. STRANGE NEGOTIATIONS finds David a decade into his journey, during which he has become a sort of reluctant prophet to Americans reeling from their country’s own...
Description
The first Mardi Gras in America was celebrated in Mobile, Alabama in 1703. In 2008, it is still racially segregated. A fascinating investigation into our nation's history and traditions, this acclaimed, award-winning documentary illuminates the complexities of race relations in 21st century America. Winner of the Truer Than Fiction Award at the **Film Independent Spirit Awards**. Nominated for the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the **Sundance Film...
8) Counting
Description
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. COUNTING measures street life, light and time, noting not only surveillance and overdevelopment but resistance and its phantoms as manifested in music, animals and everyday magic Winner of Best Cinematographer at **DOC LA**. Official Selection...
Description
A stark testimonial of the previously unseen and unheard, this documentary plunges us into the lives of young teenage girls sharing temporary quarters at a rehabilitation and correction center on the outskirts of Tehran. STARLESS DREAMS is an unforgettable cinematic portrayal of restored innocence and humanity. Winner of the Amnesty International Film Prize at the **Berlin International Film Festival.** Winner of the Best Documentary Award at the...
10) Sunless Shadows
Description
Mehrdad Oskouei’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed Starless Dreams (2016), SUNLESS SHADOWS takes another look at the lives of teenage girls in an Iranian juvenile detention center. But this time the focus is narrowed: each of the film’s principal subjects is serving time for the murder of a male family member. One by one, Oskouei invites them to go into a room alone, push the red button on the camera and address their accomplices or their...
Description
THE ISSUE OF MR. O'DELL examines the lifelong work of a pioneering civil rights organizer Jack O’Dell, who was a close colleague and advisor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the years before the March on Washington. But after President John F. Kennedy named him the number five Communist in America, O’Dell was eventually forced out of King’s organization. In soft-spoken interviews, O’Dell discusses systemic racism, past and present, and dissects...
12) Chinese Portrait
Description
China in all its diversity. Shot over the course of ten years on both film and video, the film consists of a series of carefully composed tableaus of people and environments, each one more extraordinary than the last.
13) Raising Bertie
Description
Recorded over six years, RAISING BERTIE delivers an authentic and tender portrait of the lives of three young boys as they face a precarious coming of age within Bertie County, a rural African-American community in North Carolina. Another harrowing work from the acclaimed documentary powerhouse Kartemquin Films, the film shows the process of growing up in a place afflicted by generations of economic and educational segregation.
15) Last Things
Description
An experimental film that looks at evolution and extinction from the perspective of the rocks and minerals that came before humanity and will outlast us. With scientists and thinkers like Lynn Margulis and Marcia Bjørnerud as guides and quoting from the proto-Sci-fi texts of J.H. Rosny, Deborah Stratman offers a stunning array of images, from microscopic forms to vast landscapes, and seeks a picture of evolution without humans at the center.
16) Survival Prayer
Description
Following individual food harvesters as they gather and prepare for the winter, SURVIVAL PRAYER celebrates the modern ways of a remote indigenous community and bears witness to a profound relationship between individuals and the land that sustains them.
Description
An immersion into the rich ecosystem of Sable Island, a remote sliver of land in the Northwest Atlantic, the film follows Zoe Lucas, a naturalist and environmentalist who has lived there for over 40 years collecting, cleaning and documenting marine litter that persistently washes up on the island's shores. Shot on 16mm and created using eco-friendly filmmaking techniques, GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE is a playful and reverent collaboration with the natural...
Description
A meditative exploration of our relationship with silence, sound and the impact of noise on our lives. Patrick Shen gathers experts, audiologists, and academics to examine not only the cognitive effects of constant noise, but also what we lose culturally when we have less silence. Official Selection at the **SXSW Film Festival**. Nominated for Best Documentary at the **Atlanta Film Festival** and at the **Cleveland International Film Festival.** *"A...
Description
Filmed in Cuba over the course of ten years, Los Últimos Frikis tells the story of iconic Cuban heavy metal band Zeus and their three-decade fight to be heard. When Zeus formed in the 1980s, rock music was illegal and rockers were derisively called los frikis—the freaks. Fidel Castro’s communist government saw rock and roll as a mortal threat sent by a capitalist enemy. In the face of repression, Zeus rose to infamy as a counter-cultural phenomenon...
20) Cousin Jules
Description
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. "*Four Stars! A genuinely extraordinary work of art.*" - ***Time Out NY***