What Does That Nature Say to You

A favourite of Quentin Tarantino, Rolling Thunder is a quintessential revenge film from the 1970s. After eight years of torture in a POW camp, Major Charles Rane (William Devane) returns home to receive a hero’s welcome and is awarded a big cash prize. Struggling to re-adjust to his former life, Rane faces another ordeal as a sadistic gang of thugs set their sights on his prize, killing his family and destroying his hand in the process. Now living only for vengeance, he enlists the help of his war buddy Johnny (Tommy Lee Jones) to exact his own brand of justice.

First released in the early '50s to the public's delight, these nature documentaries were unique in their lively, fictional narrative approach to the subjects' lives, which were recreated with anthropomorphic humor and zest. Even today, and maybe more so, hearing that beavers in Beaver Valley are "always stubborn, always persistent," or that the crayfish shovel mud like "miniature bulldozers" is heartening, reminding one that Disney is The Magical Kingdom. Even more heartening is it that these scientific films, made with the latest cameras and technology, were filmic landmarks, and contain footage that David Attenborough's film crews would only dream of getting; in Mysteries of the Deep, a dolphin gives birth and there are views of coral reef that may not even exist anymore. White Wilderness takes one through the Arctic tundra, a "world of frozen chaos," showing majestic animals alongside the lemming, with their strange, suicidal tendency to jump off cliffs…..

HP Lovecraft finds the book of the dead, the 'Necronomicon', and reads three stories - The Drowned, The Cold and Whispers…

We’re all “cameramen” these days, but the more our YouTube opuses dominate everything from reality TV to the Paranormal Activity movies, the further we get from understanding cinematography as an artform. The elegant Jack Cardiff, a British painter, shooter and ace anecdote-teller (here captured near the end of his magnificent career), will always represent the finer, even fussier side of the lushness of movies. Martin Scorsese, one of this doc’s many articulate testifiers to the Technicolor expert’s importance, puts it well: “Maybe it’s because of where I came from,” Scorsese says, referring to his NYC mean streets. “Neorealism I had right around me. If I wanted to go to a movie, I wanted something…fantastical.”

Spain in the 1930s is the place to be for a man of action like Robert Jordan. There is a civil war going on and Jordan who has joined up on the side that appeals most to idealists of that era – like Ernest Hemingway and his friends – has been given a high-risk assignment up in the mountains. He awaits the right time to blow up a bridge in a cave. Pilar, who is in charge there, has an ability to foretell the future. And so that night she encourages Maria, a young girl ravaged by enemy soldiers, to join Jordan who has decided to spend the night under the stars.

Jasna is a teenage girl living in the poor suburbs in the south of Belgrade, Serbia. She likes to record everything around her using a mobile phone camera. She is making videos of herself, her school friends, family and Djole - the boy of her dreams. Her family is a mess: father is terminally ill and mother is barely coping. That's why she is spending more and more time hanging out with her school friends, partying and drinking. At one of the parties, she finally starts a conversation with Djole and later they develop an intense sexual relationship. When he realizes that she will do anything to be close to him, Djole starts using her as a sexual object. Jasna starts to experiment with drugs and to skip school. Her life is getting out of control and she needs Djole to accept and reciprocate her affections.

Directed by enigmatic and brilliant documentary essayist Chris Marker, THE OWL’S LEGACY is an intellectually agile, engaging, and sometimes biting look at ancient Greece, its influences on Western culture and how many eras have reinterpreted the Greek legacy to reflect their own needs. Each of the 13 episodes is centered on a potent Greek word: from “democracy” and “philosophy” to “mythology” and “misogyny”. Marker convenes and films symposia meals featuring wine and thoughtful conversation in locales including Paris, Tokyo, Tbilisi, Berkeley and an olive grove on the outskirts of Athens.

Cinematic magician, legendary provocateur, author of the infamous HOLLYWOOD BABYLON books and creator of some of the most striking and beautiful works in the history of film, Kenneth Anger is a singular figure in post-war American culture. A major influence on everything from the films of Martin Scorsese, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and David Lynch to the pop art of Andy Warhol to MTV, Anger's work serves as a talisman of universal symbols and personal obsessions, combining myth, artifice and ritual to render cinema with the power of spell or incantation.

Famed Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's final masterpiece, The Sacrifice is a haunting vision of a world threatened with nuclear annihilation that inspired Andrew Sarris (The Village Voice) to proclaim, "You may find yourself moved as you have never been moved before". As a wealthy Swedish family celebrates the birthday of their patriarch Alexander (Erland Josephson, Cries and Whispers), news of the outbreak of World War III reaches their remote Baltic island - and the happy mood turns to horror. The family descends into a state of psychological devastation, brilliantly evoked by Tarkovsky's arresting palette of luminous greys washing over the bleak landscape around their home.

Tony Garnett, one of British television's most critically acclaimed figures, has been responsible for producing some of the most radical and controversial UK drama, and is associated with ground-breaking directors such as Ken Loach.
His directorial debut, Prostitute, is the tale of two women - Sandra (Eleanor Forsythe), an ambitious but naïve Birmingham working girl who moves to London with the hopes of securing wealthier patrons, and Louise (Kate Crutchley) her social worker friend who is fighting to change the antiquated and hypocritical prostitution laws. As both strive to achieve their goals, a cold dose of reality dashes their hopes, and the built-in biases against women in society are unmasked. This frank and controversial exposé is finally presented here fully uncut and uncensored.