Gus Van Sant
It unfolds over eight days of sleep-deprived chaos and follows Jack, a down-on-his-luck fitness expert living with his mother in Los Angeles, who takes a maniacal swing at fame and fortune, trying to realize his version of the American dream.
A seven-part film collaboration between award-winning director Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Elephant) and Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele.
Our world becomes a stage in the fourth episode as Silvia arrives for an audition in a theatre together with a friend who offers encouragement. As the dancers warmup and get into costume, she performs on the stage where she encounters faces both fresh and familiar. A group warmup exercise takes an elemental turn.
In this first episode of the seven-part film collaboration between award-winning director Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, My Private Idaho, Elephant) and Alessandro Michele, Gucci Creative Director, we follow the lead Silvia during her eccentric morning routine on Roma, which includes a scene in which, to the rhythm of a Billie Eilish song, she throws a dress from the balcony (from the first Gucci show by Alessandro Michele, from the Fall Winter 2015 women's line). Silvia is seen going through the mail, which includes colorful Gucci show invitations as well as a mysterious brochure, and then is distracted by a television talk by writer and philosopher Paul B. Preciado until an unexpected visitor arrives. At the same time, in another room, a music group rehearses a song that Kim Gordon wrote for this miniseries.
On an errand to the post office to send a postacard, Silvia's day continues to unfurl in unanticipated directions. Idly eavesdropping on conversations in the line of unusually well-dressed customers, she begins to focus intently on the participants of an intriguing phone call, including an elegant gentleman, in an artful blurring of the boundaries between reality and reverie.
We return to the apartment where the day began, but this time meet characters in the homes surrounding, gaining a voyeuristic view into their lives, fantasies and unguarded private moments. These vignettes captured through the frames of the windows ultimately combine into a reversal of perspective, as Silvia once more takes centre stage.
Our world becomes a stage in the fourth episode as Silvia arrives for an audition in a theatre together with a friend who offers encouragement. As the dancers warmup and get into costume, she performs on the stage where she encounters faces both fresh and familiar. A group warmup exercise takes an elemental turn.
On an errand to the post office to send a postacard, Silvia's day continues to unfurl in unanticipated directions. Idly eavesdropping on conversations in the line of unusually well-dressed customers, she begins to focus intently on the participants of an intriguing phone call, including an elegant gentleman, in an artful blurring of the boundaries between reality and reverie.
In this second episode directed by Gus Van Sant and Alessandro Michele, we follow Silvia to the neighborhood café, where she meets a friend, played by Arlo Parks, the musician and poet from London. They have a meandering conversation until realising they are surrounded by others in a variety of surreal situations. Silvia’s companion leaves to head off on a sightseeing trip around Rome in a car with some friends. The return of the mysterious flyer sets in motion a journey inside a world where all is not as it seems.
On the rocky path to sobriety after a life-changing accident, John Callahan discovers the healing power of art, willing his injured hands into drawing hilarious, often controversial cartoons, which bring him a new lease on life.
Features Kevin White, Aramis Hudson, Zach Saraceno, Nico Hiraga, and Olan Prenatt skating, having fun, and getting into all of the hijinks that we’ve come to expect from the Civ.
The personal and political struggles, setbacks and triumphs of a diverse family of LGBT men and women who helped pioneer one of the last legs of the U.S. Civil Rights movement from its turbulent infancy in the 20th century to the once unfathomable successes of today. The period piece tells the history of the gay rights movement, starting with the Stonewall Riots in 1969.
A suicidal American befriends a Japanese man lost in a forest near Mt. Fuji and the two search for a way out.
An abandoned tumbledown theater in the outback of Paraíba state is the initial setting of a film about cinema, which explores the testimonials of the novelist and playwright Ariano Suassuna and other filmmakers such as Ruy Guerra, Julio Bressane, Ken Loach, Andrzej Wajda, Karim Ainouz, José Padilha, Hector Babenco, Vilmos Zsigmond, Béla Tarr, Gus Van Sant and Jia Zhangke. They all respond to two basic questions: why do they make movies and why do they serve the seventh art. The filmmakers share their thoughts about time, narrative, rhythm, light, movement, the meaning of tragedy, the audience‘s desires and the boundaries with other forms of art.
I Don’t Belong Anywhere - Le Cinéma de Chantal Akerman, explores some of the Belgian filmmaker’s 40 plus films. From Brussels to Tel-Aviv, from Paris to New-York, this documentary charts the sites of her peregrinations. An experimental filmmaker, a nomad, Chantal Akerman shares her cinematic trajectory, one that has never ceased to interrogate the the meaning of her existence. Thanks in great part to the interventions of her editor, Claire Atherton, she delineates the origins of her film language and her aesthetic stance.
The discovery of an illicit love affair leads two young Angelenos on a violent, sexually charged tour through the dark side of human nature.
The story of an impossible love between a woman named Fred and a transgender woman named Laurence who reveals her inner desire to become her true self.
A salesman for a natural gas company experiences life-changing events after arriving in a small town, where his corporation wants to tap into the available resources.
Unused footage from Gus Van Sant's 1991 film My Own Private Idaho is re-contextualized in James Franco's tribute to River Phoenix.
The Advocate for Fagdom unites the puzzle pieces one by one. Testimonies are combined with rare archive images. Art galeries present movie extracts that are succeeded by images shot on location. And the other way round. Writers, film makers, art galeries owners, actors and actresses, photographers, producers, friends and loved ones all join in a game of interpretation, analysis or simple anecdotes. John Waters, Bruce Benderson, Harmony Korine, Gus Van Sant, Richard Kern, Rick Castro and others deliver their impressions, theories and confessions. Everything blends into the fascinating portrait of a singular person blessed with singular talents. A complex personality at war not with a system but all systems. The portrait of a man constantly moving between his punk attitude and extreme sensibility.
A riveting and emotional journey into the world of writer William S. Burroughs, a man considered as cold as an iceberg on a winter night.
Seventy critics and filmmakers discuss cinema around the conflict between the artist and the observer, the creator and the critic. Between 1998 and 2007, Kléber Mendonça Filho recorded testimonies about this relationship in Brazil, the United States and Europe, based on his experience as a critic.
Behind the scenes documentary of Gus Van Sant's "Paranoid Park." Felix Andrew: director, cinematographer, editor. Dane La Chiusa: titles and original drawings. Joel Shelton, composer. Additional music: "Songs" by Ethan Rose, "Sangue de Bairro" by Chico Science e Nacao Zumbi. Made in 2006. Length: 27 minutes
Alex, a teenaged skateboarder, is interviewed by Detective Richard Lu about the death of a security guard severed by a train who was apparently hit by a skateboard. While dealing with the separation process of his parents and the sexual heat of his virgin girlfriend Jennifer, Alex writes his last experiences in Paranoid Park with his new acquaintances and how the guard was killed, trying to relieve his feeling of guilty from his conscience.
A collective film of 33 shorts directed by different directors about their feeling about cinema.
Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, Wes Craven and Alfonso Cuaron are among the 20 distinguished directors who contribute to this collection of 18 stories, each exploring a different aspect of Parisian life. The colourful characters in this drama include a pair of mimes, a husband trying to chose between his wife and his lover, and a married man who turns to a prostitute for advice.
A chronological look at films by, for, or about gays and lesbians in the United States, from 1947 to 2005, Kenneth Anger's "Fireworks" to "Brokeback Mountain". Talking heads, anchored by critic and scholar B. Ruby Rich, are interspersed with an advancing timeline and with clips from two dozen films. The narrative groups the pictures around various firsts, movements, and triumphs: experimental films, indie films, sex on screen, outlaw culture and bad guys, lesbian lovers, films about AIDS and dying, emergence of romantic comedy, transgender films, films about diversity and various cultures, documentaries and then mainstream Hollywood drama. What might come next?
Le Marais is a singular short film, taken from the collection of films set in Paris, used for Gus Van Sant's "Paris: Je t'aime". Two customers walk into a paint business, asking for help, one character has the compulsion to speak to another - and while language barriers restrict the growth of their relationship, the desire for one another is there.
A lyrical telling of the coming of age of a 13-year-old boy who learns to cope with his new found sexuality and his unrequited love for the cool kid in school.
Making-of documentary of Gus Van Sant's 'My Own Private Idaho'.
Behind-the-scenes documentary of one morning on the set of "Gerry" directed by Gus Van Sant.
Disc 1: Oh. You Pretty Things, Queen Bitch), Five Years, Starman, John I'm Only Dancing, The Jean Genie, Space Oddity, Drive-in Saturday, Life on Mars?, Ziggy Stardust, Rebel Rebel, Young Americans, Be My Wife, "Heroes," Boys Keep Swinging, D.J., Look Back in Anger, Ashes to Ashes, Fashion, Wild Is the Wind, Let's Dance, China Girl, Modern Love, Cat People (Putting Out Fire), Blue Jean, Loving the Alien, Dancing in the Street (with Mick Jagger) Disc 2: Absolute Beginners, Underground, As the World Falls Down, Day-In Day-Out, Time Will Crawl, Never Let Me Down, Fame '90, Jump They Say, Black Tie White Noise, Miracle Goodnight, Buddha of Suburbia, The Heart's Filthy Lesson, Strangers When We Meet, Hallo Spaceboy, Little Wonder, Dead Man Walking, Seven Years in Tibet, I'm Afraid of Americans, Thursday's Child and Survive.
When Jay and Silent Bob learn that their comic-book alter egos, Bluntman and Chronic, have been sold to Hollywood as part of a big-screen movie that leaves them out of any royalties, the pair travels to Tinseltown to sabotage the production.
A collection of interviews recorded for the making of the 1995 documentary "The Celluloid Closet," on the subject of LGBT representation in film history.
Gus Van Sant tells the story of a young African American man named Jamal who confronts his talents while living on the streets of the Bronx. He accidentally runs into an old writer named Forrester who discovers his passion for writing. With help from his new mentor Jamal receives a scholarship to a private school.
Portland, 1988. Filmmaker Gus Van Sant shoots Drugstore Cowboy, the project that will bring he and his collaborators a formidable burst of mainstream attention. Starring Matt Dillon, Kelly Lynch, and Heather Graham, the film follows a roving quartet of drug addicts — and, consequently, drug thieves, especially from the businesses of the title — who wash up in Portland's then-gritty Pearl District. A death among their own spooks the leader of the pack into trying to clean up, and an encounter with a sepulchral junkie priest does its part to convince him further. Or maybe we should call him a Junkie priest, portrayed as he is by a controversial cameo from writer William S. Burroughs. "I'm going back to the old days," Burroughs says of his role early in the above documentary on the making of Drugstore Cowboy. "The old days when they used to give people morphine in jail. The old days before the methadone programs."
A naive drifter runs away from his army father in hopes of making it on the car racing circuit. In Las Vegas, he meets a young scam artist, who develops a crush on him. He is then introduced to a whole gang led by a young hustler. The racer-to-be then gets a lesson in the wild side, getting involved in one situation after another. Patsy Kensit makes a cameo as another hustler and Daryl Hannah appears as the scam artist's surrogate mom.
A young female embezzler arrives at the Bates Motel, which has terrible secrets of its own. Although this version is in color, features a different cast, and is set in 1998, it is closer to a shot-for-shot remake than most remakes, Gus Van Sant often copying Hitchcock's camera movements and editing, and Joseph Stefano's script is mostly carried over. Bernard Herrmann's musical score is reused as well, though with a new arrangement by Danny Elfman and recorded in stereo.
Strange Parallel is a documentary/short film revolving around the American singer/songwriter Elliott Smith. The film features interviews with Elliott himself as well as fans, friends and other acquaintances of his (including Gus Van Sant, Larry Crane, and the members of Quasi). The film also includes snippets of Elliott Smith performing as well as footage of him recording an unreleased song, "Brand New Game". The film sometimes moves out of reality, with acted-out, metaphorical sequences that involve Elliott considering purchasing a mechanical hand (a "robot hand" ) to improve his music.
Will Hunting has a genius-level IQ but chooses to work as a janitor at MIT. When he solves a difficult graduate-level math problem, his talents are discovered by Professor Gerald Lambeau, who decides to help the misguided youth reach his potential. When Will is arrested for attacking a police officer, Professor Lambeau makes a deal to get leniency for him if he will get treatment from therapist Sean Maguire.
A close-up of Allen Ginsberg reciting his “skeletons” poem is bluescreened and dissolved against archival film and video clips, and backed by musicians to create a sort of song that becomes an American anthem.
The short film was made from material shot for a Levi’s commercial on which Gus Van Sant was given complete freedom. Van Sant delivered the ad, and separately made his own short film; one that feels complete in and unto itself.
A controversial portrayal of teens in New York City which exposes a deeply disturbing world of sex and substance abuse. The film focuses on a sexually reckless, freckle-faced boy named Telly, whose goal is to have sex with as many different girls as he can. When Jenny, a girl who has had sex only once, tests positive for HIV, she knows she contracted the disease from Telly. When Jenny discovers that Telly's idea of "safe sex" is to only have sex with virgins, and is continuing to pass the disease onto other unsuspecting girls, Jenny makes it her business to try to stop him.
Suzanne Stone wants to be a world-famous news anchor and she is willing to do anything to get what she wants. What she lacks in intelligence, she makes up for in cold determination and diabolical wiles. As she pursues her goal with relentless focus, she is forced to destroy anything and anyone that may stand in her way, regardless of the ultimate cost or means necessary.
Sissy Hankshaw is born with enormous thumbs that help her hitchhiking through the US from a young age. She becomes a model in advertising and her NY agent 'the Countess' sends her to his ranch in CA to shoot a commercial, set against the background of mating whooping cranes. There, she befriends Bonanza Jellybean, one of the cowgirls at the beauty- ranch.
An indictment ballad of all the different political groups in America.
In this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's "Henry IV," Mike Waters is a gay hustler afflicted with narcolepsy. Scott Favor is the rebellious son of a mayor. Together, the two travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho and finally to the coast of Italy in a quest to find Mike's estranged mother. Along the way they turn tricks for money and drugs, eventually attracting the attention of a wealthy benefactor and sexual deviant.
Portland, Oregon, 1971. Bob Hughes is the charismatic leader of a peculiar quartet, formed by his wife, Dianne, and another couple, Rick and Nadine, who skillfully steal from drugstores and hospital medicine cabinets in order to appease their insatiable need for drugs. But neither fun nor luck last forever.
An older man meets and becomes fascinated by a younger man in this somewhat autobiographical work.
Gus Van Sant, dissatisfied professionally, counts five ways to end his life.
Mala Noche is the film debut from director Gus Van Sant. The film portrays the unanswered love of an American man toward a young Mexican man.
"The Discipline of D.E." is a short 16mm film directed by Gus Van Sant. It’s based on a story in “Exterminator!” by William Burroughs that at times reads like Buddhist noir: "DE is a way of doing. DE simply means doing whatever you do in the easiest most relaxed way you can manage which is also the quickest and most efficient way, as you will find as you advance in DE.You can start right now tidying up your flat, moving furniture or books, washing dishes, making tea, sorting papers. Don't fumble, jerk, grab an object. Drop cool possessive fingers onto it like a gentle old cop making a soft arrest.”
A short parody of the iconic shower murder scene from Hitchcock's "Psycho" framed as a shampoo commercial. This short was produced for the LA-based comedy theater group Our Lady of Laughter and used as part of their show "Rabies!" in 1979.
Equal parts personal essay, intense rumination, and playful satire, this movie laments the death of the American Video Store while it searches for the missing human element in today's digital landscape.
Directors W. Alexander Jones and Carolann Stoney turn their cameras on Liv Osthus, one of the best-known artists working in Portland’s adult entertainment industry. She also happens to be a published author, musician, breast cancer survivor, mother, and daughter of a preacher. Better known as Viva Las Vegas, Osthus grew to wide notoriety when, along with a handful of other strippers, she faced down Portland city council for greater protections for sex workers. In a city with the highest number of strip clubs per capita in the country (and probably strippers), this unique woman not only revels in the glorious grit of the profession, but also manages to raise social perceptions with her creative successes, bravery, and artistry.
