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Visionary Auteurs: Five Decades of mk2
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Founded in 1974 by Bucharest-born Marin Karmitz, mk2 has through its 50 years been involved in the production, distribution, and exhibition of films by a line-up of directors that reads like a who’s who of French and international cinema, including Bruno Dumont, Gus Van Sant, Xavier Dolan, Samira...
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Summer at Sea
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Sand and surf provide a sun-kissed setting for characters to lose their worries, inhibitions, and sometimes minds in this summertime series of beach-related films. The collection spans tortured romances to campy beach romps to Brighton Beach memories, showing the tidal pull of the ocean for filmm...
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Three by Manoel de Oliveira
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Portuguese master Manoel de Oliveira was, like his movies, something of a miracle. Born in 1908, he directed well into his hundreds, weaving beguiling tales around melancholic romances, the mysteries of mortality, and the conjuring act of cinema itself. Cherry-picking from Portugal’s rich literar...
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Five from Lucy Kerr
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Prior to her debut feature "Family Portrait," the Texas-born filmmaker and CalArts graduate Kerr made a number of shorts that each inhabit and expand a moment of performance or, sometimes quite literally, of physical suspension. Kerr explores transformation and risk in arenas ranging from a stunt...
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A Season in France
Directed by Mahmet-Saleh Haroun | 96 mins | 2017
Chadean filmmaker Haroun’s first film set in his long-time adoptive home of France is an understated but enormously affecting depiction of the travails faced by undocumented African immigrants in Europe, starring Eriq Ebouaney as a stubbornly pride... -
Blow for Blow
Directed by Marin Marmitz | 89 mins | 1972
The last of mk2 founder Karmitz’s three features as a director was this fiery documentary-style fiction about overworked and underpaid female workers at a textile mill who, pushed to the breaking point by their boss, decide to take him hostage and occupy... -
Brighton Beach
Directed by Carol Stein and Susan Wittenberg | 56 mins | 1980
Old Brooklyn lives again in Carol Stein and Susan Wittenberg’s good-humored 1980 time-capsule documentary about a melting-pot neighborhood of Jewish Soviet immigrants, Puerto Ricans, and other New Yorkers—right next to Coney Island’s a... -
Daughters of Darkness
Directed by Harry Kümel | 87 mins | 1971
Profoundly inspired by the spirit of Belgian Surrealist and Symbolist painting, Kümel’s darkly poetic horror film begins with a young newlywed couple waylaid at a grand hotel en route to England, where they fall under the spell of the elegant Hungarian Cou... -
Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl
Directed by Manoel de Oliveira | 63 mins | 2009
In Oliveira’s rueful romantic tale, an accountant grows obsessed with a formidable young woman he spots in a window across the street, and tries to court her despite his uncle’s snobby disapproval. Ricardo Trepa, who was both Oliveira’s go-to lead a... -
Futuro Beach
Directed by Karim Aïnouz | 107 mins | 2014
In this reflective romance from Brazilian auteur Aïnouz, a lifeguard (Wagner Moura) throws himself into a torrid affair with a motorcycling war veteran whose friend disappears in the ocean, but then struggles to find himself after traveling with his brus... -
Gebo and the Shadow
Directed by Manoel de Oliveira | 95 mins | 2012
Oliveira’s triumphant swansong turns a family dinner into a percolating drama of mortality and morality as a bookkeeper and his wife reckon with their estranged son’s thievery. The cast is a roster of arthouse legends: Michael Lonsdale as the aging ... -
Home Videos
Directed by Matthew Maffei | 17 mins
"Told through personal home movies intertwined with a fictional narrative, 'Home Videos' explores the complexities of parent-child relationships, the hardships of marriage, and how the two directly affect one another." - Matthew Maffei -
I Was at Home, But...
Directed by Angela Schanelec | 95 mins | 2019
One of European art cinema’s most distinctive voices, Schanelec—Silver Bear winner for Best Director at this year's Berlinale—orchestrates a tense elliptical drama that’s part psychological close-up, part middle-class Berlin pastiche. Widowed mother-o... -
Crashing Waves
Directed by Lucy Kerr | 19 mins | 2021
A stuntwoman’s recollection of plunging a car into the ocean is refracted into three segments that reflect upon image creation. -
Little Fugitive
Directed by Morris Engel | 81 mins | 1953
A pioneering influence on the French New Wave, this New York independent classic follows a seven-year-old boy through the hustle and bustle of Coney Island after he runs away from home, spooked by a cruel prank. It’s filmed with close-up immediacy thanks ... -
Family Portrait
Directed by Lucy Kerr | 72 mins | 2023
Deploying masterful Steadicam and ominous sound design, Kerr’s enigmatic and disquieting feature debut takes place one summer day on an idyllic estate in Texas. A large family gathers to take a group picture, only for the matriarch to disappear and the rest ... -
Marwencol
Directed by Jeff Malmberg | 82 mins | 2010
In Malmberg’s mesmerizing, multi-award-winning portrait of healing and obsession, Mark Hogencamp recovers from a brutal assault and alcoholism by building and tending to a miniature plywood town in his backyard. Populating the diorama with dolls based on... -
Sensible Ecstasy
Directed by Lucy Kerr | 7 mins | 2018
Kerr’s three-channel installation turns rides on roller-coasters into something like lives of the saints, through Dreyer-esque close-ups on the emotive faces of passengers. -
Site of Passage
Directed by Lucy Kerr | 7 mins | 2022
Entering the realm of the teenage sleepover, Kerr stages the rituals and games of a group of teenage girls as unnerving choreographies of mystery and intention. -
Night Tide
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Ouroboros
Directed by Basma Alsharif | 77 mins | 2017
Shot in Gaza, Los Angeles, the Mojave Desert, and Brittany, Alsharif’s experimental “homage to the Gaza Strip”—her first film made with actors—is an elliptical, globe-trotting love story, a collection of beguiling reverse-motion imagery, and a tribute “...