Online Film Guide

Countertransference

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

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.

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.

Lulu and Jimi

In 1950s Germany on a sunny afternoon in an amusement park, Lulu, a prized beauty from a well-heeled, white German family, meets Jimi, the impossibly handsome son of a damaged African American World War II veteran, and falls head over heels in love. Lulu’s scheming mother, Gertrud, together with her secret lover, Schultz, the chauffeur, and a wicked old shrink, Von Oppeln, do all in their power to tear the two lovers apart, but the trio are only the first of many obstacles that will stand in the way of the couple's passion. Thus starts Oskar Roehler’s dazzling feature film Lulu and Jimi, a stylish, musically infused romance that plays as hot and heavy as the chemistry between the interracial lovebirds.Roehler crafts a colorful, magical world full of visual whimsy, revved up with a sizzling soundtrack of rock and roll, as Lulu and Jimi’s love sweeps out the stale air of the 1950s. Actors Jennifer Decker and Ray Fearon turn in magnetic performances as Lulu and Jimi, a couple that fearlessly takes on the evil powers of a deeply bigoted society. Roehler’s Lulu and Jimi is a sexy and exceedingly entertaining watch that aims to set hearts thumping and fingers snapping as you wait to see if love saves the day.

We Feel Fine

WE FEEL FINE is an exploration of human emotion on a global scale. Every few minutes, WE FEEL FINE takes sentences that include words "I feel" or "I am feeling" from all blogs that have been published in the last few minutes, and visualizes them in 6 different movements.

Mystery Team

If Encyclopedia Brown, the kids from American Pie, and Nancy Drew all had sex, their baby would probably look something like Mystery Team, a wonderful blend of innocent and seedy humor from the Derrick Comedy group. Already an Internet phenomenon, they transition gloriously into the realm of feature films.When they were kids, the Mystery Team solved pint-size mysteries like “Who stuck his finger in the pie?” Now it's senior year of high school, and they are still solving mysteries the same way. Though each member of the team has a supposed specialty—Jason is the Master of Disguise; Charlie is the Strongest Kid in Town; and Duncan is the Boy Genius—they are really just stunted and naïve kids. When a little girl asks them to find out who killed her parents, Jason realizes they have an opportunity to prove to the town, and themselves, that they are real detectives. A dark comedy that hits on classic mystery conventions, Mystery Team cleverly places the naïve innocence of yesteryear within the jaded, crime-laden world of today. What makes the ludicrous premise work so magnificently is the impeccable chemistry among the three leads. This is a film for anyone who is nostalgic for a time when solving a mystery was the greatest feeling in the world, but adult enough to like a little raunchy humor.

Short Term 12

A film about kids and the grown-ups who hit them.

Recipient of the 2009 Jury Prize in U.S. Short Filmmaking

The Informers

Sex, drugs, and new wave...Los Angeles in the early 1980s: a time of excess and decadence, and nobody captures it better than Bret Easton Ellis as he coadapts his own acclaimed novel for the screen. Its multistrand narrative deftly balances a vast array of characters, who represent both the top of the heap (a Hollywood dream merchant, a dissolute rock star, an aging newscaster) and the bottom (a voyeuristic doorman and an amoral ex-con). Connecting his intertwining strands are the quintessential Ellis protagonists—a group of beautiful, blonde young men and women who sleep all day and party all night, doing drugs—and one another—with abandon, never realizing that they are dancing on the edge of an abyss.Gregor Jordan returns to Sundance (Two Hands and Buffalo Soldiers played at previous Festivals) with a glamorous and gritty exposé of a culture where too much was never enough. He presents both the seductive and repellent sides of a time when safe sex meant being on the pill. Featuring a truly all-star cast who are at the top of their game, The Informers is a scathing descent into the morally bankrupt core beneath L.A.'s superficial beauty. It is both titillating and horrifying as it captures an era on the verge of an implosion whose effects we are still feeling today.

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