Online Film Guide

2) Secret Machine

The second of a three-part cycle exploring the unperceivable conditions that frame life; stop-motion animation portrays the futuristic deconstruction of the female protagonist's form.

Western Spaghetti

Everyday objects become delicious ingredients as we learn how to cook spaghetti through stop-motion photography.

Boy Interrupted

Boy Interrupted is a film that raises questions. It asks how a young boy can end his life at the tender age of 15. It struggles to find answers about what kind of family he had and the life he led. By its very nature, it is a naked display of its filmmaker's personal life at its most revealing and perhaps disturbing. How can a mother, we may ask, make a film about the death of her son? What defines this film as a remarkably unique and truth-telling achievement is the way it explores how filmmaking can create closure for its creators as well as its audience. Dana Perry has gathered home movies, photographs, and a variety of different documents to tell the story of her son, Evan: his bipolar illness, his life, and his death, and their impact on those who loved him the most. She interviews his siblings and friends, his doctors and his teachers, and in the process, she chronicles a harrowing and difficult journey. The camera provides insight and revelation, and yet Boy Interrupted is a film that is also full of despair. The film's saving grace is that it functions, in the final analysis, as therapy for both its viewers and its subjects at a most fundamental level. It is an essentially human story, and a parent’s worst nightmare.

Grace

Eight months pregnant, and preoccupied with both a natural childbirth and a pure-body lifestyle, Madeline Matheson, played with merciless compassion by Jordan Ladd, deflects her demanding mother-in-law's insistent pressure for standard hospital treatment, instead opting for the peaceful companionship of a trusted midwife. Though reluctantly compliant, her husband remains supportive of her choices until a sudden tragic accident leaves her unborn baby lifeless inside of her. Madeline remains determined to carry the stillborn baby to term, where she miraculously wills the delivered corpse into life. But it is not too long before the increasingly isolated mother realizes that something is not right with baby Grace, and she must make horrible sacrifices to keep her living.In his feature debut, writer/director Paul Solet assuredly approaches the medium, displaying a cocksure confidence in his construction of this modern horror fable. He relies upon a precise and slow-building technical elegance, supplemented by fearless performances and the ever-elusive gift of a genuinely frightening story, to violate the sanctity of a mother’s love and create true horror. Seething with a kind of sophisticated terror uncommon for its genre, Grace effortlessly uncoils an atmosphere of immense discomfort and subtle intensity, while quietly creeping into the spine and slicing into our most primal fears.

TAMPER

In the film Minority Report Tom Cruise wears gloves that grab and move computer images in space. The consulting scientist who invented the technology for the production has now developed it into a full fledged operating system. New Frontier is proud to unveil this new media technology that may very well revolutionize the way we edit film. TAMPER provides an editing room of mild derangement where visitors become cinema collage artists, using their hands directly to grab and recompose film elements such as characters, props, architecture, captured from different movies.

  • TAMPER
  • John Underkoffler, Oblong Industries

Chop Off

An exposition of the dark, fearful recesses of the human psyche through the body modifications of performance artist R.K., who literally risks life and limb.

Shorts Program III

How do you cope when a bad day at work only gets worse at home? When that cool party with the adults turns into something… unexpected? And, well, when maybe the baby you just gave birth to isn’t quite meeting your needs. With sleight of hand, these films offer fearless, transcendent alternatives to common solutions. Pay no regard to mental stability—an utterly inappropriate therapist; a brilliant, yet untethered, musician; and one giant, creepy pencil will bend and blow your mind. To this wonderfully eccentric magic show of Shorts Program III, just say, “Chimay.”

Spring Breakdown

For Judi, Gayle, and Becky, tragically unhip bosom buddies pushing 40, “make-your-own-pizza night” constitutes the pinnacle of revelry. But when Judi’s fiancé turns out to be gay, Gayle’s face repulses a blind guy, and Becky’s beloved cat kicks the bucket, they’re ready for real pampering. Dusting themselves off, the trio heads for some R&R;on South Padre Island, where Becky’s supposed to chaperone her boss’s daughter. What they don’t know is that spring break has sprung, and there’s no turning back.Skanky, semen-doused hotel rooms? Scantily clad upchucking coeds? Sweaty, cramped beer-foam parties? Judi and Gayle morph into unstoppable party animals, leaping into the vapid, anarchic euphoria without so much as a hiccup. Gayle’s latent popularity fantasy becomes a living wet dream as she’s inducted into a sorority of sweet, half-starved half-wits. Judi unlocks seventh heaven as she drinks her way to blissful oblivion and a life-changing night with a sexy, confused jock. Becky, our staunch ecofeminist, remains firmly on the sidelines, devoted to her principles and flowing skirts…until she and her young ward swallow a bit of spring-break elixir themselves. An outlandish, quick-witted romp that jubilantly leaves none immune to ridicule, Spring Breakdown chews up our geeky gals and spits them out triumphant powerhouses—confident that being who they truly are is way cooler than fitting in.

Michael Portnoy: Provocateur (commissioned by provocateur films)

Assuming various characters, Portnoy will interview modern day icons about life and art. Deceptively charming and provocative, Michael will disarm guests as he entertains and provokes them in the same breath. Michael Portnoy will create a combined interview/performance piece that strays far beyond the normal, safe four walls of the conventional TV box. In this day of endless self-serious satellite tour interviews, Portnoy will create something new. By marrying A Charlie Rose seriousness to a sense of radical absurdity, Portnoy will create a place for serious conversation that never takes itself too seriously a sort of Daily Show of Art and Culture.

Little Minx Exquisite Corpse: She Walked Calmly Disappearing into the Darkness

A young man tries to sort out what has happened during the chaos of a street shooting.

The Watch

Two young men find a surprise connection during an impromptu sleepover.

Helen

Featuring a riveting performance by the gifted Ashley Judd and infused with intelligence and detail by Sandra Nettelbeck, a storyteller who clearly knows intimately the parameters of this universe, Helen transcends the usual limitations that besiege portraits of mental illness and depression. In truth, for all that we’ve learned about depression—its causes, its cures, and the breadth of its affliction—the old clichés and stigmas still dominate our tales and popular culture. What Nettelbeck and her colleagues have accomplished is an unapologetically moving examination that offers no simplistic answers and refrains from reductively singular happy endings.Helen focuses on a woman with an apparently perfect life: a successful academic, she seems happily married with a wonderful daughter. But we witness a sudden breakdown and a journey that is enigmatic and heartbreakingly real. When solutions prove elusive and Helen is hospitalized, she forges a relationship with Mathilda, a fellow traveler who both aids and traumatizes her life’s course. When death seems the only answer, and the safe haven of family gives no respite, the pain of bipolarity is exhausting and overwhelming. Told with poignancy and insight—and ultimately concluding with as much courage as inevitable sadness—Helen is the work of artists whose craft and sensibility are special.

My Surfing Lucifer

Using found footage, this film introduces us to the short life of Bunker Spreckels, Clark Gable's stepson and a surfing legend.

Lymelife

Scott Bartlett (Rory Culkin) is a typical 15-year-old boy growing up in late-1970s Long Island. His suburban existence is primarily marked by a nerdy interest in Star Wars, fending off bullies at high school, his longtime crush on neighbor/best friend Adrianna Bragg (Emma Roberts), and navigating the dysfunctional terrain of his parents' rocky marriage—all against the paranoid backdrop of a Lyme disease outbreak, which has freaked out Scott's high-strung mother, Brenda (Jill Hennessy), and has already claimed Adrianna's father, Charlie (Timothy Hutton), as a victim. With Charlie out of work due to his illness, Adrianna's mother, Melissa (Cynthia Nixon), takes a job working for Scott's father, Mickey (Alec Baldwin), a successful real-estate developer, and soon embarks on a messy affair. When eldest son Jimmy (Kieran Culkin) returns from army training and confronts his father about Mickey's less-than-discreet adultery, both families are forever changed by the devastating consequences.Drawing from their own childhoods, director Derick Martini and his brother and cowriter, Steven Martini, bring a palpable sense of place and authenticity to Lymelife. Their alternately funny and emotionally devastating script, brought to life by a talented roster of actors, poignantly reinvents both the suburban drama and the coming-of-age story at the same time.

El General

“How do we reconcile the contradictions between our personal family memories and our country’s collective memory?” When filmmaker Natalia Almada asks this question, the answer is her latest film, a tour de force of cinematic imagination bristling with beauty, contradiction, and the epic scope of Mexico’s last 100 years of history. Stunningly realized, Almada’s filmic meditation is framed as a search through the memory of her grandmother, whose reminiscences revolve around her father, Plutarco Elías Calles, one of Mexico’s most prominent and controversial presidents. A general during the Mexican Revolution and then president from 1924 to 1928, Calles was known both for his deeds as a revolutionary hero and the brutal tactics he employed during his presidency. His life and legacy embody both the promise and betrayal of Mexico’s poignant history. For Almada, the exploration of her extraordinary personal link to Mexico’s past becomes a lens through which she explores the qualities of cinema that have formed the fulcrum of her artistic practice over her career. Archival and original footage, Hollywood films, and still photographs are woven with original music and meticulously edited audio archives to reveal a hypnotic and deeply compassionate portrait of the Mexican people and the forces that have shaped their country.

Recipient of the Directing Award: U.S. Documentary.

Beekeepers

The Beekeepers is an experimental documentary film that explores Colony Collapse Disorder: due to the changing environment, bees all over the world are dying. With beekeeping threatened with extinction, Richard Robinson's film charts the history of this ancient profession, searching for answers to its current plight while daring the documentary form to be as artful and mysterious as its subject.

All Grown Up, Now Where To Go?

Over the last 25 years, the independent film movement has been a coming-of-age story. Creativity and personal expression once consigned to the margins gradually evolved into a diverse movement of unprecedented vitality and popularity. But where is the independent film movement right now? How can it maintain creative energy and freedom? What needs to change in order to preserve the range of voices and aesthetics that make this a thriving component of our culture?

Mary and Max

{Mary and Max} is unique. A claymation animation by Academy Award–winning filmmaker Adam Elliot (Harvie Krumpet), it tells the simple story of a 20-year pen-pal friendship between two very different people: Mary Dinkle, a chubby, lonely 8-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max Horowitz, a 44-year-old Jewish man, who is severely obese, suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, and lives an isolated life in New York City. It is very much a triumph of emotion, insight, and eccentricity—a complete delight.Animation's ability to capture the intricate complexity of life has never been on display in as absorbing fashion as with the storytelling of this Australian filmmaker, who truly makes you forget what you are watching. The originality of the voices in this ever-spinning kaleidoscope of innocence and idiosyncrasy comes straight from an incredibly rich imagination and complete artistic vision. This desire for acceptance and love amid the pain of existence is masterfully narrated by Barry Humphries and fleshed out by the voices of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette.This film that explores friendship, autism, taxidermy, psychiatry, alcoholism, where babies come from, obesity, kleptomania, trust, copulating dogs, sexual and religious differences, agoraphobia, and more, and is rooted in a very personal relationship, is proof of why we go to the movies and a truly exceptional portrait of compassion and love.

Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall

A tour of the world's largest shopping mall, located near Guangzhou, China, and designed to be a celebration of consumerism and Vegas-like spectacle.

Wet Season

A stop-motion tribute to the filmmaker's father, who passed away six years ago.

Casting

An Israeli-born artist Omer Fast’s emotionally moving four channel installation,The Casting, a U.S. Army sergeant recounts two incidents: a romantic liaison with a young German woman who mutilates herself and the accidental shooting of an Iraqi. The two tales are seamlessly woven together into a script which was given to actors to perform in silent tableaux. The Casting won the 2008 Whitney Biennial prize.

Endgame

South Africa...the late 1980s. The African National Congress (ANC) wages an armed struggle against apartheid; President P.W. Botha clings to the last threads of power; the country is on the brink of bloody insurrection. In a gripping thriller based on real-life events, Endgame drops us into this brutal conflict’s control centers: Nelson Mandela’s prison, Botha’s chambers, ANC headquarters, and, to our surprise, the rented car of a British businessman. It turns out that Consolidated Gold, a British mining concern, convinced that peaceful resolution in South Africa serves their interests, has initiated covert, unofficial talks between opposing sides. Brilliantly building suspense befitting the situation’s high stakes, Endgame chronicles this dangerous mission, where Michael Young, Consolidated’s head of public affairs, doggedly assembles a reluctant, yet impressive, crew to confront intractable obstacles in the way of reconciliation. ANC leader Thabo Mbeki and Afrikaner philosophy professor Willie Esterhuyse are chief among them. Zeroing in on the growing emotional empathy between Mbeki and Esterhuyse, which becomes the linchpin for the talks, this enormously moving story dramatizes the way that meticulous strategies, combined with serendipity, finally unlock change. While Mandela endures house arrest, terrorist bombs threaten the dialogue, and Botha’s regime gives way to F.W. de Klerk’s leadership, an unlikely cadre, secreted in a distant British manor, pave the way to black South African freedom and form a template for peace negotiations around the world.

Countertransference

An awkward woman with assertiveness issues finds her problems multiplied in therapy.

Dear Beautiful

Paul and Lauren, a married couple, are caught between the catastrophe of an unprecedented epidemic and their own troubled relationship.

Hot Dog

A plucky canine hero joins the fire company to save the world from house fires and gain the affection he so richly deserves, but things don't turn out the way he planned.

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