The Critic

Four lives that could not be more different and a single passion that unites them: the unconditional love for their cinemas, somewhere at the end of the world. Comrades in Dreams brings together six cinema makers from North Korea, America, India and Africa and follows their efforts to make their audiences dream every night.

Japanese Masao Maruyama, co-founder of the Madhouse studio and producer of the cult films Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers talks about the fantastic universe of mangaka and filmmaker Satoshi Kon (1963-2010), one of the most brilliant and fascinating authors of world animation, ten years after his death.

In Spain, a poor country ruined by the recent Civil War (1936-39), and in the midst of Franco's dictatorship, a film school was created in Madrid in 1947, which became, almost unintentionally, a space of freedom and pure experimentation until its closure in 1976.

The personal and professional story of Ilona Staller, known as Cicciolina, is probably unique: she left communist Hungary and moved to Italy, where she found a fertile environment for a life dedicated to scandal.

The story of French filmmaker Jean Rollin (1938-2010), one of the most singular voices of European cult cinema, deeply misunderstood and widely misrepresented.

A personal meditation on Rumble Fish, the legendary film directed by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983; the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, where it was shot; and its impact on the life of several people from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay related to film industry.

As artificial intelligence becomes ever more sophisticated, the film industry is split between enthusiasm at what the technology can achieve and concern over the future for human workers in the industry. Will actors and actresses be replaced by machines? An overview on the coming wave of AI in cinema.

The video revolution of the 1970s offered unprecedented access to the moving image for artists and performers. This Is Not a Dream explores the legacies of this revolution and its continued impact on contemporary art and performance. Charting a path across four decades of avant-garde experiment and radical escapism, This Is Not a Dream traces the influences of Andy Warhol, John Waters and Jack Smith to the perverted frontiers of YouTube and Chatroulette, taking in subverted talk shows and soap operas, streetwalker fashions and glittery magic penises along the way.

A compelling personal journey with David Stratton, as he relates the fascinating development of our cinema history. David guides us from his boyhood cinema experience of Australia in England, where he saw the first images of this strange and exotic landscape via the medium of film, to his migration to Australia as a ‘ten pound pom’ in 1963 and onto his present day reflections on the iconic themes that run through our cinematic legacy. All of this reflects a passionate engagement in a uniquely Australian medium. Parallel and at the heart of the series is the story of an industry whose growing pains David has witnessed over a lifetime. Alongside David, the protagonists of this history are the giants of Australian cinema – both behind the camera and in front of it.

Rome, Italy, June 1993. Antonietta De Lillo and Marcello Garofalo interview legendary Italian film director Lucio Fulci (1927-96).

In 1948, French singer Charles Aznavour (1924-2018) receives a Paillard Bolex, his first camera. Until 1982, he will shoot hours of footage, his filmed diary. Wherever he goes, he carries his camera with him. He films his life and lives as he films: places, moments, friends, loves, misfortunes.

The story of a group of actresses who, in the Spain of the seventies, and in the midst of the democratic Transition, decided to appear nude in the films of that time of radical political change, defying the rigid and deeply rooted social rules.

Act of Violence Upon a Young Journalist is a film shot in 1988 and released on VHS in 1989; a mysterious cult work of Uruguayan cinema surrounded by strange theories about Manuel Lamas, its unknown creator. Until now.

Walt Disney said “We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.” Outside of Walt himself there are few people who have brought together and united more animators in the history of the genre than Craig "Spike" Decker and Mike Gribble, known to all as Spike & Mike. They created an animation festival that helped launch the careers of John Lasseter, Peter Lord, Will Vinton, Bill Plympton and Mike Judge to name just a few. Their Spike & Mike festival had an enormous impact on animation that was felt the world over. The festival was known as much for the breakthrough animation it presented as the outrageous antics of the founders.

In Spain, on May 11, 1896, at the Price circus, the first moving images ever shown in the country are projected. From that event, the Spanish actor Antonio Resines intends to compile a series of anecdotes to shape the amazing history of Spanish cinema, holding several conversations with prominent figures of the Spanish film industry.

In the early nineties, before the massive gentrification of many of New York's then slums, several young people from very disparate backgrounds left their broken homes and ventured onto the brutal streets of the city. United by their love of skateboarding, they formed a family and built a unique lifestyle that eventually inspired Kids, a groundbreaking and outrageous film directed by photographer Larry Clark and released in 1995.