Return to Reason: Four Films by Man Ray

Metropolis(de)

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

Wanted- A Home(en)

Mina Rogers (Mary MacLaren) is unfairly cast out into the cruel, cruel world by her crotchety old uncle. She searches for a new home, resorting to deception so that she will be taken in. Along the way she meets a doctor, certain mysteries surrounding her are solved, and the doctor asks her to marry him.

The Passion of Joan of Arc(fr)

A classic of the silent age, this film tells the story of the doomed but ultimately canonized 15th-century teenage warrior. On trial for claiming she'd spoken to God, Jeanne d'Arc is subjected to inhumane treatment and scare tactics at the hands of church court officials. Initially bullied into changing her story, Jeanne eventually opts for what she sees as the truth. Her punishment, a famously brutal execution, earns her perpetual martyrdom.

Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl(en)

The love story of an abused English girl and a Chinese Buddhist in a time when London was a brutal and harsh place to live.

Pandora's Box(de)

The rise and inevitable fall of an amoral but naive young woman whose insouciant eroticism inspires lust and violence in those around her.

The Gold Rush(en)

A gold prospector in Alaska struggles to survive the elements and win the heart of a dance hall girl.

The Latin Boys: Volume 2(en)

Feast your eyes on a second volume of short stories set in South America that explore growing pains, first loves, political upheaval, gay parenting and coming out. The 6 short films are: Seat Belt [Cinturón de seguridad] (2018); Before It's Too Late [Antes Que Seja Tarde] (2019); Ajar [Entreabierto] (2018); Guacho (2018); The Grey Zones [Las zonas grises] (2019); Orizaba's Peak [Pico de Orizaba] (2017).

Topos(el)

During its 85-minute running time, this jarring experimental film takes a no-holds-barred look at the way women have been treated and depicted in Western art.

The Sky is Falling(es)

Chicken, a desperate hippie junkie living in a small Spanish village, is finding it difficult to separate fantasy and reality. This isn't helped by the villagers practising magic and child sacrifice, or his involvement with a group of boozy expatriates lost in their own dreams and regrets.

Mulholland Drive(en)

Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.

Blow-Up(en)

A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.

Behind the Door(en)

Oscar Krug is looked upon with suspicion by his neighbors because of his German name. When the US is drawn into the war with Germany, he enlists and travels the seas with his wife, Alice Morse. During a submarine attack Alice is snatched from Krug's side by a German officer. Krug now lives to have his revenge, and when the opportunity presents itself, he will have it.

The Last Laugh(de)

An aging doorman, after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious hotel, is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbours and society.

A Beautiful Rush(en)

Like a ticking time-bomb, Ronnie tries to hold his personal relationships and artistic career together while struggling with a debilitating writers block. "A Beautiful Rush" is a silent film that explores what it means to be selfish and lose sight of the blessings life has graced us with.

Tortured Souls(ru)

L'Âge d'or(fr)

The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.

The Bright Shawl(en)

Charles Abbott is implicated in the death of his friend Escobar, brother to the woman he loves.

Bookkeeper Kremke(de)

In this realistic, unsentimental portrait of Germany’s dire economic situation, a middle-aged payroll clerk loses his job due to technological advances and, unable to find another, descends into despair. The film’s director, Marie Harder, was one of only a few women directors of the time and was also the head of the German Social Democratic Film Office. She made only two known films before her accidental death in exile in Mexico in 1936.

The Buddenbrooks(de)

Four-generation story-saga dealing with the decline of a middle-class Lübeck family. The first adaptation of a Thomas Mann book was also Gerhard Lamprecht’s first major film.

The Light Unseen(en)

A girl marries a wealthy pawnbroker in order to get money for her poor lover, who is an artist. When the pawnbroker dies, his son forces the girl to marry him, but he is killed and she marries the artist. Various problems arise after their marriage, but eventually they are happy together.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More(en)

Four tales unfold in Wes Anderson's anthology of short films adapted from Roald Dahl's beloved stories, "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar", "The Swan", "The Rat Catcher", and "Poison."

The House(en)

Across different eras, a poor family, an anxious developer and a fed-up landlady become tied to the same mysterious house in this animated dark comedy.

Prospero's Books(en)

An exiled magician finds an opportunity for revenge against his enemies muted when his daughter and the son of his chief enemy fall in love in this uniquely structured retelling of the 'The Tempest'.

Brand Upon the Brain!(en)

After returning home to his long-estranged mother upon a request from her deathbed, a man raised by his parents in an orphanage has to confront the childhood memories that have long haunted him.

Anuja(en)

When a brilliant nine-year-old working in a sweatshop gets a chance to attend school, she must make a difficult choice for her and her sister's future.

Heavy Traffic(en)

A white dropout struggles to become a cartoonist and filmmaker, drawing inspiration from the harsh, gritty world around him. Still sharing his rundown apartment with his middle-aged parents, an oafish slob of an Italian father and a ditzy nutcase of a Jewish mother, he's ridiculed and looked down upon by his friends, hypocrites who run with violent gangs and the Italian Mafia, and a shallow Black girl who makes her living downtown with the pimps and pushers. The cartoonist gets a chance to pitch a film idea to a movie mogul, but the story proves too outrageous: a far-future Earth, depleted by war and pollution, where a mutant antihero challenges and kills God.

Blue(en)

Against a plain, unchanging blue screen, a densely interwoven soundtrack of voices, sound effects and music attempt to convey a portrait of Derek Jarman's experiences with AIDS, both literally and allegorically, together with an exploration of the meanings associated with the colour blue.

Prelude: Dog Star Man(en)

A creation myth realized in light, patterns, images superimposed, rapid cutting, and silence. A black screen, then streaks of light, then an explosion of color and squiggles and happenstance. Next, images of small circles emerge then of the Sun. Images of our Earth appear, woods, a part of a body, a nude woman perhaps giving birth. Imagery evokes movement across time. Part of the Dog Star Man series of experimental films.

Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond(en)

Offbeat documentarian Chris Smith provides a behind-the-scenes look at how Jim Carrey adopted the persona of idiosyncratic comedian Andy Kaufman on the set of Man on the Moon.

7th & Union(en)

Ex-fighter Raymundo forms an unlikely bond with a disgruntled man whose life and relationship with his daughter are unraveling. The men join forces to win a fight that could very well save Raymundo, his wife and their child.

Only God Forgives(en)

Julian, who runs a Thai boxing club as a front organization for his family's drug smuggling operation, is forced by his mother Crystal to find and kill the individual responsible for his brother's recent death.

Nothing Personal(en)

Alone in her empty flat, from her window Anne observes the people passing by who nervously snatch up the personal belongings and pieces of furniture she has put out on the pavement. Her final gesture of taking a ring off her finger signals she is leaving her previous life in Holland behind. She goes to Ireland, where she chooses to lead a solitary, wandering existence, striding through the austere landscapes of Connemara. During her travels, she discovers a house that is home to a hermit, Martin.

In the Soup(en)

An aspiring young filmmaker gets involved with an eccentric gangster for the financing of his first film.

Call Me Crazy: A Five Film(en)

A psychotherapist helps a law student cope with schizophrenia in one of five interconnected tales dealing with mental illness.

Electrick Children(en)

Rachel is a rambunctious girl from a polygamist colony in southern Utah. On Rachel’s 15th birthday, she finds a forbidden cassette tape. Having never seen anything like it before, Rachel plays the cassette tape, and finds glorious rock & roll thereupon. Weeks later, Rachel realizes a miracle has occurred - and the cassette tape must have something to do with it. She leaves her family and runs away to the closest city: Las Vegas. There she searches for the singer of the band on the cassette tape.

Amblin'(en)

Two wanderers, a young man and a young woman, meet in the desert and decide to travel on together. The two travellers walk and hitch-hike their way down the road to their destination, the beach, becoming friends and lovers.

A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate(en)

When Marie St. Clair believes she has been jilted by her artist fiance Jean, she decides to leave for Paris on her own. After spending a year in the city as a mistress of the wealthy Pierre Revel, she is reunited with Jean by chance. This leaves her with the choice between a glamorous life in Paris, and the true love she left behind.

The Sweet East(en)

A high school senior from South Carolina gets her first glimpse of the wider world, picturesque cities, and woods of the Eastern seaboard on a class trip to Washington, D.C.

The Souvenir(en)

A shy but ambitious film student falls into an intense, emotionally fraught relationship with a charismatic but untrustworthy older man.

I'm Thinking of Ending Things(en)

Nothing is as it seems when a woman experiencing misgivings about her new boyfriend joins him on a road trip to meet his parents at their remote farm.