Elina Löwensohn
Fragmented memories of a voyeur in 3 chapters: "I grew up" but I’m still falling. "The stalker" who loses his footing. "Memory" and regression.
Bertrand Mandico intends to take over the theater’s spaces with his multi-layered project "Conan la Barbare". Bringing his open-ended interpretation of the stories by writer Robert E. Howard and the ultra-masculine movie by film director John Milius (1992), Mandico surrenders this barbarian world to women. Part show, part shooting set, "Conan la Barbare" will guide the audience through its various acts and stories in a hellish circus of boulders splattered with tears and blood. A film will be shot before Nanterre-Amandiers gets a makeover for future adventures.
Nearly 3 hours of LGBTQ and Coming-of-Age short films and music videos await you in the debut of Altered Innocence’s cinematic mixtape supreme! Films from established auteurs like Peter Strickland, Cam Archer, João Nicolau, and Yann Gonzalez join fresh new voices such as Alexis Langlois, Shaun Hughes, Caroline Poggi, and Jonathan Vinel. Cruising, dancing, naked wrestling, trans terrorism, first love, bullies, femme fatales, band practice, and more is in store!
Louis II de Barrière has been petrified in the ice since the dawn of time. We find him in a forest, luckily he is alive ! Three witch sisters try to defrost it and unravel its musical mystery. We are propelled with them in a colorful and surreal fairy tale.
An epileptic director trying to make a film about the life of famed Romanian actor Elina Löwensohn discovers that her real-life subject bears little resemblance to the star she idolized.
In the summer of 1979, gay porn producer Anne sets out to film her most ambitious film yet, but her actors are picked off, one by one, by a mysterious killer.
Jacques Mayano, a French journalist who has lived a traumatic experience, is recruited by the Vatican to be part of a task force that must investigate the veracity of a supernatural apparition allegedly happened in a small French village.
An abandoned seaside resort. The shooting for a fantasy film about the end of an era wraps up. Two women, both members of the film crew, one an actrice, the other a director, Apocalypse and Joy, are on the verge of concluding their love affair.
In the beginning of the 20th century, five children on the island of La Réunion commit a savage crime. As punishment, a Dutch captain takes them to a supernatural island with luxuriant vegetation and bewitching powers.
Once upon a time there was Louise and her friend, the magician. But his last trick left a bitter taste in her mouth. He disappeared in a curtain of smoke… never to appear again. This is too much for the young woman. Devastated by endless grief, Louise is sent to a psychiatric asylum, resigned to the idea that she will swallow pills till the end of her days. Yet nine months later she gives birth to a child who is likely to have a big problem for his future class pictures, since he’s invisible. But Louise doesn’t care. He’s her angel and, wanting to protect him from this cruel world, she decides to keep his existence a secret. Years later, Louise’s angel has grown up. He even managed to find a girlfriend; Madeleine. The two become inseparable, for Madeleine never judges him. And for good reason: she’s blind.
Every summer, Luce, an eccentric 50-something painter, spends her time in a small and isolated township, which lies in ruins in southern France, surrounded by guests. This summer, these guests are Max Bernier (an old flame, author and alcoholic), her current squeeze (a lawyer named Bisorgueil), and three friends of his whom she has yet to meet: Rhino, Gros and Alex. After finishing their shopping in town, these three unknowns attack an armored truck and make off with 250 kg of gold. They then return to Luce's place, counting on her to hide them until the end of the summer... But certain events will throw a spanner in the works, and the hamlet will transform itself into a battlefield over the course of a very long and turbulent day.
Seances, co-created with the National Film Board of Canada, presents a wholly new way of experiencing film narrative. By dynamically generating a series of film sequences in unique configurations, potentially hundreds of thousands of new stories are conjured by code. Each will exist only in the moment—no pausing, scrubbing, or sharing—offering the audience one chance to see the generated film. This project, co-created by the ever imaginative Guy Maddin, is a visual discourse on the impact of loss within film. All the sequences pay homage to lost silent films from the early day of cinema. Seances is nostalgic but it is also frequently hilarious. Part of the joy and sadness of Seances is that many possible narratives are created but they can be only viewed once before they disappear forever.
A poor miller gets tricked by the Devil and accidentally sells his daughter for a bit of gold. But Satan can't take her because she's too pure and has wept on her hands. So Satan orders the miller to cut her hands off. It's the beginning of the young girl's journey towards freedom.
A film based on Jacques Chessex' novel of the same title; featuring André Wilms as Chessex and Bruno Ganz as Arthur Bloch, Swiss Jew killed by Swiss Nazis.
Two actresses rehearse a play during a week-end in a country house. But one of them digs up a strange thing from earth while walking in the woods. A creature the size of a seal, without any holes nor members. The mass of flesh and skin, covered with hair, breathes loudly. The creature becomes an object of lust for both women. The relationship between the two actresses becomes tense. Both women are desperate to own the thing. This leads to a series of burlesque and violent situations. The two actresses have no idea that they have unearthed "Notre-Dame des Hormones"
Françoise returns to her native Brittany to teach at her alma mater to find that the past of this very particular place still exerts an inexorable pull. A rapturous ensemble piece about the tricks of time and memory, Suite Armoricaine is a work of grand themes and small, surprising details, bursting with ideas and emotion.
Ablou is a young man prisoner of a dream and a park. He meets strange characters who try to lock him up a little more in this long sleep.
According to an English legend, Joan of Arc never died at the stake. Her eyes were seared with hot pokers and she was deflowered by an English stud. She was then sentenced to wander on the battlefields, like a vulture, on the look-out for life and searching for any virgins left alive.
On a Scottish island, a depressive police investigates the disappearance of a girl. The mournful mother is responsible for the disappearance of the inhabitants of the island.
In the heart of the Danube Delta, superstition and religion are mixed together, like the earth and water that make up the mysterious mud from Tekir’s area, not far away. Chased away from her village because of her mysterious pregnancy, Mara finds herself employed at the Europa Hotel, providing treatment for infertile women using this miraculous mud. As she meets the rich and eccentric Mrs. Lili, Mara questions her beliefs and intuitions. The relationship between the two women is the key of the miracle of Tekir, between magic and power, tradition and modernity.
A submarine crew, a feared pack of forest bandits, a famous surgeon, and a battalion of child soldiers all get more than they bargained for as they wend their way toward progressive ideas on life and love.
In Arnarstapi (Iceland), during a cabaret number, a mistress of ceremonies proposes to us a journey into the center of her organs to go and meet the original being. During the journey, the public enters into a trance to reach the ecstasy.
In a world in decay, a woman collects her dead animals and restores them to life by filming them images by image.
The old Salammbo lives alone on a northern island, in total destitution. Haunted by her memories, Salammbo is mistreated by the phantom of her youth, which sometimes taunts, sometimes bends her back so that she no longer sees the blue of the sky.
From its epic conception to its film death, the fantasized and fictitious portrait of the film-maker Walerian Borowczyk : Boro-in-the-box discovers a cruel and obscene world, crosses commonplace and colorful adventures, from Poland to Paris, caressing erotic birds and organic cameras in a phantasmagorical alphabet primer.
Roméo and Juliette are two young actors. They fall in love at first sight, move in together and make a baby. A love story and the founding of a home like millions of others. Except that their little boy, Adam, behaves abnormally. The young parents try hard to persuade themselves that everything is okay but, with the passing of time, they cannot delude themselves anymore: their son has a problem. From now on, war is declared. A war against illness. A war against Death. A war against despair.
The true story of Saartjes Baartman, a black South African worker who moves to London with her master in the early 19th century. Although she dreams of being an artist, once in Europe she is exploited as a sideshow attraction due to her large buttocks and genitalia.
Romaine, a tall thirty-year-old woman, has not found herself yet. She has been living for several years with her boyfriend Justin. When, overnight,the latter drags her after him to Canada in order to start a new life, she blows smoke. Not only does she hate surprises but she is scared to death of taking the plane. Once in Montréal Airport, she dumps Justin after confessing to him things he would rather not have heard. Her Far North adventures can start...
Oana is working. I am watching her. Tonight, the very last file will be closed. She does not want to translate the words of others anymore. She thinks that tomorrow she will start writing her own words. But she will not, I know that…
Christine is a wheelchair-using woman with severe multiple sclerosis. In order to escape her isolation, she makes a journey to Lourdes, the iconic site of pilgrimage in the Pyrenees Mountains, along with other people with varying disabilities. During her stay she begins to regain the use of her limbs. This is in contrast with others, who appear to have stronger faith than Christine but experience only slight, passing improvement. Her fellow pilgrims are eager to call it a miracle; however, as the pilgrimage draws to a close, exactly how accurate a claim this is becomes uncertain.
Tom Flynn, the idealist owner of a left-leaning radical café/bookstore and the quixotic publisher of a hard hitting 911 conspiracy expose, finds himself entangled with a mysterious Eastern European beauty, Kasia, who is on the run from strong hand of a global 911 cover up. In this contemporary take on film noir. When Tom is implicated in the murder of his friend and employee, he is forced to unravel Kasia's complex web of lies. As it turns out, Kasia possesses the smoking gun that proves the identities and methods of the real architects of 911, and Tom Flynn is willing to die to expose the truth. Written by Dave Herman
Bertrand (Mathieu Amalric), a film director, is conducting research for his latest film, and asks a funeral director if he can stay back at his funeral parlour after the close of business. Bertrand cannot resist getting into a coffin, and accidentally knocks the lid down, locking himself in the coffin.
A man returning from a tour of duty is mistaken for his brother by debt-collecting gangsters, while the brother goes on a killing and kidnapping spree with a loose-cannon convict.
Many years after her notorious husband, Henry Fool, fled after killing a neighbor, Fay Grim receives a visit from CIA agent Fulbright, who tells her that Henry is dead, but that some of his journals have been unearthed in France. She sets forth on a globe-trotting odyssey that soon leads to the discovery that he is alive, and his journals are more than they appear to be.
A girl whose heart beats faster than normal and so loudly that it bothers the neighbors seeks both acceptance and escape.
A young woman prepares a recipe for American-style lobster, which calls for cutting the live lobster into pieces, before throwing it, still alive, into boiling oil. Alone in her kitchen, faced with the two lobsters that are still moving, she tries to kill them as cleanly as possible.
In Uruguay, where he lives with his wife and son Thomas, Orlando Vargas suffers from pressure from the government. Permanently watched by a policeman, Orlando seems not to care about danger. He decides to leave with his family to go to Josefina, the last village by the sea before Brazil. There, things move faster: on the day of his arrival, Orlando fails to return home.
Ziggy is a freedom loving Parisian often in debts and usually misunderstood by fellow citizens. Though there's a pretty unique karma he has it when seducing girls due to his carelessness. But on the contrary all the girls disappear after moments spending with him, realizing he's still waiting for "Coppola" to come back to Paris.
In 1919, Mathilde was 19 years old. Two years earlier, her fiancé Manech left for the front at the Somme. Like millions of others he was "killed on the field of battle." It's written in black and white on the official notice. But Mathilde refuses to believe it. If Manech had died, she would know. She hangs on to her intuition as tightly as she would onto the last thread of hope linking her to her lover. A former sergeant tells her in vain that Manech died in the no man's land of a trench named Bingo Crepescule, in the company of four other men condemned to die for self-inflicted wounds. Her path ahead is full of obstacles but Mathilde is not frightened. Anything is possible to someone who is willing to challenge fate...
Excerpts from performances of Hal Hartley's play "Soon", a production inspired by the 1993 events in Waco, Texas involving the religious sect called the Branch Davidians and their collision with the US Federal Government.
After having a nervous breakdown, a popular talk-show host confronts his ex-girlfriend who is dating a cross-dresser.
Juliette is frantically running away from a man when a car hits her. Lying in the street, semiconscious and stunned, she commences counting. She knows that if no one helps her by the time she reaches 100, something terrible will happen.
A vampire in London is searching for the ideal woman to 'redeem' him.
A minimalist, atmospheric, meditation on the theme of "Love" or "Amour" that focuses on reconciliation and forgiveness.
The film's title is a pun, the double meaning referencing both the "wrong genre" and a person with distasteful motives. Insecure novelist Martial Bok (Jacques Gamblin) promotes his new sexy novel La Fille de Dos ("Girl Observed From the Rear") with a round of book-signings and talk-shows. When beautiful hat designer Camille (Monica Bellucci) buys the book, Martial follows her and spies on her as she reads his book and removes her clothing. It's the beginning of his obsession and also an inspiration. After Martial's live-in girlfriend Lucie (Elina Lowensohn) establishes contact with Camille for real, Martial is able to type out another sexy manuscript.
In the Warsau Ghetto of 1943, one man's struggle to keep his family together leads him to the ultimate crisis of faith, and one final chance at redemption. Written by legendary 'Twilight Zone' creator, Rod Sterling.
Norman Reedus stars as Harry Odum, a henpecked, 18-year-old momma's boy in Youngstown, Ohio, who -- with his violent temper -- impresses a local boss of the Jewish Mafia. Soon he's found his calling as a hit man alongside his crack addict partner Arnie Finklestein (Adrien Brody), and he discovers that his rage and complicated psychosis fuel his murderous abilities. Harry also falls for the organization's limping, Hungarian-born maid Iris (Elina Lowensohn), a romance complicated by Harry's Oedipal, sexual relationship with his domineering mother Kate (Deborah Harry).
Old Nat Moyer is a talker, a philosopher, and a troublemaker with a fanciful imagination. His companion is Midge Carter, who is half-blind, but still the super of an apartment house. When he is threatened with retirement, Nat battles on his behalf. Nat also takes on his daughter, a drug dealer, and a mugger in this appealing version of a really 'odd couple'.
When down-on-his-luck photographer Horace meets Jane, a young streetwalker with a sordid lifestyle, they quickly fall in love and embark on a chaotic relationship of highs and lows. However, Jane's growing drug addiction and Horace's own personal demons threaten to tear them apart in this emotional romantic drama.
The same situation is played out in different cities (New York, Berlin and Japan). A lover has to choose whether to commit to a partner who is returning home. In each case there are other people involved, an ex-partner and someone else in a "permanent" relationship, what do they choose to do?
This ultra-hip, post-modern vampire tale is set in contemporary New York City. Members of a dysfunctional family of vampires are trying to come to terms with each other, in the wake of their father's death. Meanwhile, they are being hunted by Dr. Van Helsing and his hapless nephew. As in all good vampire movies, forces of love are pitted against forces of destruction.
The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.
Men and women search for intimacy and meaning in their lives. Shot on a Fisher-Price Pixelvision camera.
Bitter about being double-crossed by the women he loved, (and with the police after him to boot), Bill vows to seduce the next woman he sees, then throw her away. His brother Dennis, meanwhile, is equally determined to track down their long lost father, a revolutionary who has been in hiding for 20 years. For different reasons, both leave New York and head for Long Island, out of money, and short on ideas. D:"Long Island is a a terminal moraine." B:"What's that?" D:"It's the material left behind when a glacier recedes." D:"Gee, then what the hell are we waiting for?"D: "She's a bit jumpy..." B: "Jumpy women are great!"
This short film was packaged on video with Hartley's featurette "Surviving Desire." It affectionately examines the lives of a group of "young, middle-class, white, college-educated, unskilled, broke, drunk" Brookylnites who would love to make something of their lives -- assuming they can pay the rent first.
A boy is on a journey. Things have strayed from their course without anyone knowing why. The unsettling landscape he makes his way through is both real and imaginary. The ruins he plays among and the enigmatic figures he encounters there are threatening and welcoming in turn. They teach him how to become who he is; the half-remembered fragments of the past that somehow return to him. ‘The Wind Blew On’ shows us scenes of a life lived after the end of the world has taken place, and the search for an escape from this fate.
After Blue is a ‘chimeric virgin planet’ upon which only women can survive. When teenager Roxy frees a criminal buried in the sand, a ruthless woman who quickly kills several people. As punishment, Roxy and her mother are exiled, forced to hunt down this criminal and kill her.
A behind the scenes look at Bertrand Mandico's The Wild Boys, captured by actress Elina Löwensohn on her personal Super 8 camera.
Joseph Fulton, a well-regarded fifty-eight-year-old director of romantic comedies, wants to become assistant groundskeeper at a local cemetery. He wants to work outdoors and be close to nature. Meanwhile, he thinks it’s important to have his last will and testament drawn up. But his highly dramatic actress girlfriend thinks he must be dying and that he is just too brave to tell anyone. The rumor spreads and soon everyone he knows—and some he doesn’t—are crowded into his small apartment to say their last farewells.
