Dona welcomes us inside the parisian erotic cabaret she works at. The hollow corridors act as a second stage where she and her colleagues get ready and share their thoughts.
Social & External
Documentary on Les Charlots, known as The Crazy Boys in the English-speaking world, a group of French musicians, singers, comedians and film actors who were popular in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s.
From transvestites to transformers, we will follow the trail that will lead us in different and famous Parisian music-halls, such as the mythical Alcazar of Paris, La Grande Eugène. Whether they are below or beyond their character, often these men who are looking for themselves look at life with the humor of despair. Why this need to "transform" themselves? Why is it always the men who cross-dress and not the women? Why did the public flock to these shows in the 1970s and 1980s? Interpretations of famous characters such as Diana Ross, Josephine Baker, Billie Holiday, the Peter Sisters, the Andrew Sisters, Zizi Jeanmaire, Judy Garland, Sarah Bernhardt, among others, contribute to making this musical document an essential testimony of this era.
Adopted from South Korea, raised on different continents & connected through social media, Samantha & Anaïs believe that they are twin sisters separated at birth.
It’s Girl Scout Cookie season, and four tenacious girls strive to be a top-selling “Cookie Queen,” navigating an $800 million business in which childhood and ambition collide.
Mae West achieved great acclaim in every entertainment medium that existed during her lifetime, spanning eight decades of the 20th century. A full-time actress at seven, a vaudevillian at 14, a dancing sensation at 25, a playwright at 33, a silver screen ingénue at 40, a Vegas nightclub act at 62, a recording artist at 73, a camp icon at 85 - West left no format unconquered. She possessed creative and economic powers unheard of for a female entertainer in the 1930s and still rare today. Though a comedian, West grappled with some of the more complex social issues of the 20th century, including race and class tensions, and imbued even her most salacious plotlines with commentary about gender conformity, societal restrictions and what she perceived as moral hypocrisy. Mae West: Dirty Blonde is the first major documentary film to explore West's life and career, as she "climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong" to become a writer, performer and subversive agitator for social change.
Antonio Gracia José (1942-2011), known as “Pierrot,” was a prominent member of the Barcelona art scene, a pioneer in the filmmaking of underground short films and Fantaterror movies, writer and playwright, magazine editor, movie poster painter, cartoonist and cabaret showman.
Approximately half a year after the strip debut that shook Japan, the original strip movie realized in collaboration with SOD and Asakusa Rockza is completely recorded. In addition to the bewitching stage at Rockza, a passionate strip image in the sun will be unveiled for the first time! There is no doubt that it will be the biggest shocking work in 2010! [* This work is an image video] [* Bonus footage, bonus images, etc. are not included]
Bambi was born Jean-Pierre Pruvot in a tiny Algerian village in 1935. Even as a child, she refused to meet the expectations of her extended family, choosing instead to find a way to become the woman she always knew herself to be. A Cabaret Carrousel de Paris performance in Algiers in the 1950s proved to be all the encouragement she needed to emigrate to the French capital, assume the stage name of ‘Bambi’ and lead the life she longed for on the music-hall stages.
Italian documentary film shot in several European towns (Berlin, Hamburg, London, Paris, Venice) as well as in Rome's De Paolis Studios. The movie features a series of strip-tease numbers intermixed with real-life scenes and interviews.
In a drought-struck region in India, suffering from climate change and a high suicide rate amongst farmers, a group of resilient women farmers, who recently lost their husbands, is coming together with a local psychologist to learn counselling and help others in grief.
«this short film visits memories of the past, truths of the present + hopes for the future. healing for sisters who are in process, in ritual.» (Rikkí Wright)
Marie-Philip is a PhD student and part-time professor who loves cats and Harry Potter. But one week before her 29th birthday, she is diagnosed with breast cancer. For a year, without false modesty, we follow her through each step as she confides in us with shocking honesty. An ode to life, to courage and to the resilience of all those who fight every day against disease.
The Crazy Horse has staged unique shows on Paris' avenue George V every evening since 1951. Enjoy some of the most spectacular numbers seen at Crazy Horse in an exceptional film shot in High Definition video, including previously unreleased sequences of the dancers and their lives backstage!
Filmmaker Sophie Dros enters into a dialogue with strong women in a powerfull document about being a woman in the Netherlands today. Inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's essay The second sex, filmmaker Sophie Dros (winner of the NFF Debut Competition 2017) talks to four women and a group of young girls. Together they go in search of universal stories; about dealing with expectations, empathy and connection, desires, fear, need for confirmation and losing control.
The oldest Quebecois Benedictine convent open its gates to a documentary filmmaker for the first time. Observed up close, life behind its walls is busier than one would expect. About twenty cloistered nuns, most of them over 70, share their daily life with diligence and humor. A contemplative portrait of a community of sisterhood and solidarity emerges, punctuated by prayer, work and games evenings.
Julia and Johanna, from the high-rise flats of Rosengård in Malmö, inseparable for as long as they remember. Curled up beside each other at night, carrying equal memories of abduction and abuse in their home country Azerbaijan. In Blood Sisters we follow their journey from twin sisters in symbiosis to young women trying to stand on their own feet.
A humorous yet raw and authentic study of women’s reproductive labour across the marriage-market continuum, including, sex work, erotic dancing, surrogacy and egg donation, paid domestic work and unpaid domestic/care work across India, while also offering a comparison of the law’s highly differential regulation of these apparently disparate forms of female reproductive labour.
What might be revealed in the process of inviting strangers to act out and respond to 1970s feminism forty years later? Between 2015 and 2017, hundreds of strangers in communities all over the US were invited to read aloud and respond to letters from the 70s sent to the editor of Ms. Magazine–the first mainstream feminist magazine in the US. The intimate, provocative, and sometimes heartbreaking conversations that emerge from these spontaneous performances make us think critically about the past, present, and future of feminism.
An amateur fighter is lured by a trafficking syndicate specializing in elite underground fighting where her brutal captor forces her to fight or face certain death.
This searing investigative work shadows a group of activists risking unimaginable peril to confront the ongoing anti-LGBTQ program raging in the repressive and closed Russian republic. Unfettered access and a remarkable approach to protecting anonymity exposes this under-reported atrocity–and an extraordinary group of people confronting evil.
In 1972, a seemingly typical shoestring budget pornographic film was made in a Florida hotel: "Deep Throat," starring Linda Lovelace. This film would surpass the wildest expectation of everyone involved to become one of the most successful independent films of all time. It caught the public imagination which met the spirit of the times, even as the self-appointed guardians of public morality struggled to suppress it, and created, for a brief moment, a possible future where sexuality in film had a bold artistic potential. This film covers the story of the making of this controversial film, its stunning success, its hysterical opposition along with its dark side of mob influence and allegations of the on set mistreatment of the film's star.
When Pippa and Thomas move into their dream apartment, they notice that their windows look directly into the apartment opposite – inviting them to witness the volatile relationship of the attractive couple across the street. But what starts as a simple curiosity turns into full-blown obsession with increasingly dangerous consequences.
Ten of Muhammad Ali's former rivals pay tribute to the three-time world heavyweight champion.
Catherine, a novelist with an insatiable sexual appetite, becomes a prime suspect when her boyfriend is brutally murdered -- a crime she had described in her latest story.
Drawn from a never before seen cache of personal footage spanning decades, this is an intimate portrait of the Sri Lankan artist and musician who continues to shatter conventions.
A look behind the curtain of Washington politics following three "renegade" Republican Congressmen as they bring libertarian and conservative zeal to champion the President’s call to “drain the swamp.”
The Double Deuce is the meanest, loudest and rowdiest bar south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and Dalton has been hired to clean it up. He might not look like much, but the Ph.D.-educated bouncer proves he's more than capable – busting the heads of troublemakers and turning the roadhouse into a jumping hot spot. But Dalton's romance with the gorgeous Dr. Clay puts him on the bad side of cutthroat local big shot Brad Wesley.
An exploration of the heavy metal scene in Los Angeles, with particular emphasis on glam metal. It features concert footage and interviews of legendary heavy metal and hard rock bands and artists such as Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Megadeth, Motörhead, Ozzy Osbourne and W.A.S.P..
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
The courtroom and publicity battles between the superstar wrestler and the notorious website explode in a sensational trial all about the limits of the First Amendment and the new no holds barred nature of celebrity life in an internet dominated society.
Some of Sin City's most hard-boiled citizens cross paths with a few of its more reviled inhabitants.
Alex Gibney explores the phenomenon of Stuxnet, a self-replicating computer virus discovered in 2010 by international IT experts. Evidently commissioned by the US and Israeli governments, this malware was designed to specifically sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme. However, the complex computer worm ended up not only infecting its intended target but also spreading uncontrollably.
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves.
After being slain by a group of criminals, a man is reborn with animal-like superpowers and makes it his mission to right the wrongs of his city.
When New York is caught in the grip of a sadistic serial killer who preys on patrons of the city's underground bars, rookie cop Steve Burns infiltrates the S&M subculture to try and lure him out of the shadows.
When his wife and daughter are senselessly murdered, a grieving man finds himself caught up in a war between a group of charismatic vigilantes and the crime that infests their city.
Chelios faces a Chinese mobster who has stolen his nearly indestructible heart and replaced it with a battery-powered ticker that requires regular jolts of electricity to keep working.
Upon discovery of a shard of what could be the Loc-Nar, a miner named Tyler becomes possessed with an insatiable hunger for power and a thirst for immortality. On his way to the planet of youth, Tyler wipes out most of a space colony and kidnaps a beautiful young woman. His only mistake is that he doesn't kill her sister, Julie, who then sets out on a mission of rescue and revenge.