Mixing elements of narrative, experimental, pseudo-documentary and essayist cinema, Sophisticated Acquaintance tells the story of a tormented individual whose short life and long death were affected by a great many factors. Klaus Mann (John Gross), a present-day Philadelphia avatar of the real-life European author of Mephisto, lives in the shadow of his father, the eminent intellectual, novelist and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann (Ernst Hohmann). When Klaus pens a controversial essay on "revolutionary suicide" and then acts on it, in protest of the world's selfishness, a group of his contemporaries speak up in filmed interviews about what led him down that path. It is a film about the creative process, the tragic depiction of a strained father-son relationship and, most of all, it is a film about individuality.
Klaus Mann
Gia
Thomas Mann
Bruce Jummaquin
Malcontent
Girl on Bus
Andrew
Mixing elements of narrative, experimental, pseudo-documentary and essayist cinema, Sophisticated Acquaintance tells the story of a tormented individual whose short life and long death were affected by a great many factors. Klaus Mann (John Gross), a present-day Philadelphia avatar of the real-life European author of Mephisto, lives in the shadow of his father, the eminent intellectual, novelist and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann (Ernst Hohmann). When Klaus pens a controversial essay on "revolutionary suicide" and then acts on it, in protest of the world's selfishness, a group of his contemporaries speak up in filmed interviews about what led him down that path. It is a film about the creative process, the tragic depiction of a strained father-son relationship and, most of all, it is a film about individuality.
2007-10-01
8
Klaus Mann had a short life...and a long death.
Max Plugin is a jaded but flamboyant relic of the 1960s. In his teens, Max ran away to California, where he met Teschlock, a charismatic ascetic and guru renowned among a small group of young followers. At that time, when Teschlock asked Max to join him and his disciples on an ashram in India, Max declined and returned home. Now, forty years later, at age 57, Max takes a journey to India to find Teschlock's grave-site, and also himself. His adventures in India, and his Castaneda-esque experiences back home, form the heart of this very unusual road movie.
Filmed April 12, 2003 at a benefit concert held at and for The Anthology Film Archives, the international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of avant-garde and independent cinema. In addition to screening films for the public, AFA houses a film museum, research library and art gallery. The event, which raised money for the Archives and celebrated the life and work of avant-garde film maker Stan Brakhage, featured Sonic Youth providing an improvised instrumental collaboration with silent Brakhage’s films. The band performed with drummer/percussionist Tim Barnes (Essex Green, Jukeboxer, Silver Jews).
Two rival friends guide a young man through the Colombian jungle, hunting for, and finding a tribe of (not so) wild Amazons and a cache of (not so) bright emeralds.
Street vendors in Korea are almost like a national institution, they are so widespread and relied upon. In Little Pond in Main Street a group of vendors band together to create a community radio station but come into conflict with other groups, as well as the government trying to shut them down.
Juana moves with her son Juan from the country to Caracas in search of better work and educational opportunities. When they get there they have to live in a poor home in one of the slums located in the city's outskirts, where they encounter a horrible world full of promiscuity and misery, that is quite different from what they expected and that eventually will lead Juana to self-destruction and Juan to reconsider his life in the city.
White Rhapsody is a 1945 short film directed by Jack Eaton, with Ted Husing narrating. The film explores the popular sport of skiing. It was nominated for an Oscar in the category Best Short Subject, One-Reel. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with UCLA Film & Television Archive in 2013.
Abandoned after his parents' death, a short film actor assumes multiple identities to bond with people in need of love and affection.
Man commits suicide over his wife's infidelity. His father spends the rest of his life trying to figure out which of son's two children is illegitimate.
Admetus, king of Feres, makes an agreement with the Fates to postpone the date of his death, in exchange for someone else taking his place, without knowing that the chosen one will be his beloved wife Alcestis. Desperate, Admetus asks Hercules for help in rescuing Alcestis from death... An animated short film based on the Greek myth of Admetus and Alcestis.
Bettie de Jong performs the same dance nine times, starting and ending in a reclined position. As the film proceeds the camera becomes more and more adventurous.
Over a decade after leaving the religious cult that dominated her childhood, filmmaker Cara Jones grapples with her time in the Unification Church.
A story of two contrasting individuals — a wealthy youngster who loves to live life partying and wooing women, without a care in the world for anything else, and a pregnant woman who loses her husband and is struggling in life. The two of them get stuck in a lift for several hours, turning both their lives upside down.
Illustrates the events of the Ponce Massacre through the life of one of the victims, Ulpiano Perea.
This 10-minute short documentary exploring the shifting state of the American poultry industry was preserved in 2015 from an original nitrate print. More information is available on the film's page in the National Film Preservation Foundation's website, where this version can be found featuring original music by Michael D. Mortilla.
The unusual talents of Johnny Price, a minor league baseball pitcher and trick artist, are showcased in this Pete Smith Specialty. Among other talents, Mr. Price can throw two (and, in certain situations three) baseballs simultaneously to different people. The catchers can be side by side, with one high and one low, or standing on the pitcher's mound and second base while Price throws the ball from the catcher's position. He can even perform these feats while suspended upside-down.
The sixteenth night of the tournament took place on August 8th, 2023 at Act City Hamamatsu in Naka-ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan.
A Texas Ranger poses as a bad-ass biker outlaw and enlists a blind sniper and his seeing-eye coyote to crush a biker gang that took over her county.
A beautiful young woman sets her sights on an aging millionaire. She seduces him, and moves into his mansion with him. She soon tires of him, though, and after she gets rid of him, she goes after his son.
Charlie Kaufman is a confused L.A. screenwriter overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, sexual frustration, self-loathing, and by the screenwriting ambitions of his freeloading twin brother Donald. While struggling to adapt "The Orchid Thief," by Susan Orlean, Kaufman's life spins from pathetic to bizarre. The lives of Kaufman, Orlean's book, become strangely intertwined as each one's search for passion collides with the others'.
To the dismay of Allison Edwards, her bookworm, adoring neighbor, Mary Randolph, falls in love with and marries Jack Van Norman, a rich and handsome former football star. After a few months of marital contentment, Jack becomes infatuated with Rose, an exotic dancer.
A reclusive novelist struggles to find romance and meaning in his life despite disastrous and comedic circumstances.
The film shows a strong bond between two brothers that live in a remote fjord with their parents. We look into their world through the eyes of the younger brother and follow him on a journey that marks a turning point in the lives of the brothers.
The story takes place in the Belgrade mental hospital on Guberevac during the WWI, where notable Serbian writer Petar Kočić spends his last years of life. The safety of mental hospital in a war-torn Belgrade is disrupted when the deputy military governor in occupied Belgrade, Kosta Herman, finds out that Kočić is in the hospital and decides to settle old scores with him.
Story of a wild first love that takes place at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River between the refineries at Pointe-Au-Trembles and the rock culture of Montreal.
Frustrated, because he is forced to produce bad TV-shows, a manager of a TV-station, enters the station and manipulates the ratings, to initiate a TV-revolution.
The lives of Ted and Marion Cole are thrown into disarray when their two adolescent sons die in a car wreck. Marion withdraws from Ted and Ruth, the couple's daughter. Ted, a well-known writer, hires as his assistant a student named Eddie, who looks oddly similar to one of the Coles' dead sons. The couple separate, and Marion begins an affair with Eddie, while Ted has a dalliance with his neighbor Evelyn.
Portrait of the last days of the life of Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco.
"Olivia" captures the awakening passions of an English adolescent sent away for a year to a small finishing school outside Paris. The innocent but watchful Olivia develops an infatuation for her headmistress Julie and through this screen of love observes the tense romance between Julie and the other head of the school Cara in its final months.
A businessman who lives from blackmailing begins to be blackmailed by his own wife who hates him.
To Walk Invisible takes a new look at the extraordinary Brontë family, telling the story of these remarkable women who, despite the obstacles they faced, came from obscurity to produce some of the greatest novels in the English language.
The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive at a different time and place, all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.
A pragmatic U.S. Marine observes the dehumanizing effects the U.S.-Vietnam War has on his fellow recruits from their brutal boot camp training to the bloody street fighting in Hue.
Anson Page, a lawyer with Southern roots leaves New York, his wife and his kids for Georgia. His assignment is to investigate the case of Garvin Wales, a famous writer, now nearly blind and embittered, whose royalties have apparently never reached him. Back in his native South, Page finds himself immediately exposed to what he had fled : racial and class prejudices. But he also meets his former love, Dinah, now married to go-getter uncouth businessman Mickey Higgins. Will he find out whatever happened to 2,000 dollars in rights Wales did not cash? Will Dinah and Anson renew their love story?
Francie and Joe live the usual playful, fantasy filled childhoods of normal boys. However, with a violent, alcoholic father and a manic depressive, suicidal mother the pressure on Francie to grow up are immense. When Francie's world turns to madness, he tries to counter it with further insanity, with dire consequences.
George, stoic and overprotective, travels to Zurich with his daughter Rachel. One is planning physician-assisted suicide; the other has just one day left to intervene.
In a country house at the turn of a century live a family of eccentrics. Anastasia, the beautiful mistress of the manor, enjoys the amorous attentions of her stepson Blarney so openly that her husband Diapanasius takes out his shotgun and shoots her. The rest of the family accepts her end as a matter-of-fact, and soon - her return as a voyeuristic ghost who interferes with their love lifes. Anastasia has a posthumous son Tadeusz, "born" by clambering out of the tree trunk. Anastasia seduces him too, and drives another men so crazy that they kill her another couple of times. Finally, Tadeusz, the arch-rebel, leads a mob on a raid of the old manor.