Talking About Trees

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.

A bunch of British working class amateur filmmakers with nothing left to lose tackle one of Hollywood's greatest musicals in order to save their beloved Club. Britain’s oldest amateur filmmaking club struggles to survive, as its members grow old amid flickering memories and hardships. In the northern industrial town of Bradford, England, a handful of diehard amateur filmmakers desperately cling to their dreams, and to each other, in this warm and funny look at shared artistic folly that speaks to the delusional dreamer in us all.

Equal parts documentary, essay, and narrative,"Captain Elliot's Circle" is mostly a poetic interaction with an obscure corner of Chinese and British history. Constructed using primary source documents about the taking of Zhoushan, Britain's first choice for a seaport, in the late 1830s,this movie uses Captain Charles Elliot's reluctance to brutalize the Chinese to reflect on the cyclical nature of history and the power structures that move it. The long takes used throughout function to illustrate the dramatically different ways in which people who lived in the mid-19th century perceived time. Additionally, it represents the psychological effect of living on an island regardless of what era you were born in.The last third of the movie focuses on a young woman whose strange day job has taken her far away from the island of Zhoushan generations after Captain Charles Elliot was last there. "Captain Elliot's Circle" was shot on location in Zhoushan and Hangzhou.

Local filmmaker Woo Ming Jin and his crew traversed across Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore to find 'Seruan Merdeka' (1947) - the first film made in Malaya post-WWII, and also the first film in the history of Malaysian cinema to feature a biracial cast of Malays and Chinese. While tracking the film's whereabouts, Woo met many locals along the way, whom he interviewed in an effort to find out more about the country's history.

Pixar director Peter Sohn takes viewers on a humorous personal journey through the inspiration behind Disney and Pixar’s feature film “Elemental.” “Good Chemistry: The Story of Elemental” traces his parents’ voyage from Korea to New York, explores his dad’s former grocery shop in the heart of the Bronx, and delves into his choice of a career in animation, rather than the family business.

Filmmakers stay at a haunted lodge and find themselves in over their heads when they encounter something otherworldly.

A young woman rediscovers a letter from an old friend, forcing her to reconcile with the past.

The Purdue men's basketball team enjoyed a record-breaking season in 2023-24, reaching the National Championship game and winning a school-record 34 games. This is its story of its journey to Phoenix.

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.

A history of movie magic from 1895 to 1995, showing primitive effects used in such films as "A Trip to the Moon" up to the state of the art effects used in "Apollo 13" and "The Abyss."

A feature-length documentary on the life and work of Wisconsin grindhouse cinema auteur Bill Rebane, featuring historians, critics, and filmmakers, plus cast and crew members who worked with Rebane himself.

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.

A patient camera glides over the everyday objects: still lives on the wall, flowers in the vase, a swaying drop light. The sun enters the cosy home where Noëlla sits smoking at her laptop, playing Solitaire. The situation is hopeless. She’s going to lose against the computer once again. All the while her son-in-law, Pierre, is organising everything she needs, pragmatic and friendly: breakfast, the (last) doctor’s visit – and then the transfer.

A 60-minute salute to American International Pictures. Entertainment lawyer Samuel Z. Arkoff founded AIP (then called American Releasing Corporation) on a $3000 loan in 1954 with his partner, James H. Nicholson, a former West Coast exhibitor and distributor. The company made its mark by targeting teenagers with quickly produced films that exploited subjects mainstream films were reluctant to tackle.

For the first 50 years of film history, the newsreel was a fixture in American movie theaters. From 1911 to 1967, these shorts proved an influential source of information – and misinformation – for generations of American moviegoers. Television news and public affairs programs became a great improvement over the scanty information offered by the newsreels. This documentary offers insight into a medium which has disappeared.