1991

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, this film is a hilarious and affectionate look at the path to stardom inside the competitive world of opera.

Political heavy-weights populate this urgent and humorous documentary on the detonative mix of art and politics as embodied in the work of infamous "guerilla" poster artist Robbie Conal, a professional painter who estimates that hundreds of thousands of his caricatured paintings-as-posters have been splattered across the United States' urban streets, militantly affixed by himself and his cult following of urban guerilla volunteers to construction sites, traffic light switching boxes and any other surface area large enough to house one of these satirical images. Specializing in what he calls "info-tainment," Conal's posters offer an immediate response to today's headlines through the expressionistically decaying depiction of the socially and politically powerful accompanied by several words of dichotomous text. Beginning in 1986 with the onset of the Iran-Contra scandal, Conal has distributed his work in a way even Andy Warhol might not have dreamed possible. As Conal modestly points out, "these are some of the most famous paintings of any contemporary artist because I make you see them whether you want to or not." The original canvases, from which the posters are reproduced, simultaneously grace elite gallery walls and wealthy collectors' homes. Post No Bills foregrounds the tension between Conal's creative process and the lures of a desperate notoriety achieved through catering to the newsmedia's craving for controversy in his journey to express himself and benefit from the notoriety generated from his endeavors. In September 1990, after "reasonably outspoken" Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates casually stated that "casual drug users ought to be taken out and shot," Conal began collaboration with student Patrick Crowley on a poster criticizing this hyperbolic remark. When an outraged world focused on Los Angeles in March of 1991 with the release of the graphic video footage of the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers, Conal and Crowley took to the L.A. streets his most daring, inciting and inflammatory image to date; a poster depicting the police chief on a full torso N.R.A. shooting target with the text "casual drug users ought to be taken out and beaten. Post No Bills concentrates on this poster of Gates, including an interview with the beleaguered Chief himself, celebrating the potential of this piece of political street art and exposing the dissociation to be made between Conal and his subject matter.

The story of Monsieur de Sainte Colombe, fierce and somber man, grand master of the viola da gamba and professor of Marin Marais, prestigious musician in the court of Louis XIV.

A tough cowboy facing some trouble crosses paths with a lonely woman living in the middle of nowhere.

Legendary martial arts hero Wong Fei-Hung fights against foreign forces' plundering of China. When Aunt Yee arrives back from America, Wong Fei-Hung assumes the role of her protector.

A tangled triangle. In the rural South of the early 20th century, Miss Amelia is the town eccentric, selling corn liquor and dispensing medicine. She takes in her half-sister's son, a diminutive crook-back named Lymon. He suggests they open a café in the downstairs of her large house. Marvin Macy gets out of prison and returns to town; turns out he was married to Amelia but it wasn't consummated. He pleaded, then got angry. Is he back for revenge? Eventually, Amelia and Marvin stage a no-holds-barred fight in the café. Lymon's complicated response to Marvin and to Cousin Amelia figures in the resolution.

China in the 1920s. After her father's death, Songlian is forced to marry the wealthy Master Chen. With three wives already, each living in a separate house, there is fierce competition for his attention and the privileges that are gained.

An abused, partially-deaf girl is helped back into society by two resourceful children.

In WW2, an Italian Army unit of misfits occupies an isolated non-strategic Greek island for the duration of the war.

From start to finish, this is a story of friendship between four street-wise mates who don't mind using violence to achieve the lives that they want. They trust no one but each other, which is vital to their success as mobsters.

1950s Madrid: After military service, Paco looks for work to save up and marry his fiancée. She rejects his sexual advances. So when he rents a room with a cute widow making advances, he caves in.

A dramatization of the American court case that destroyed the legal validity of racial segregation.

Madrid, 1962. More than twenty years after the civil war has finished, a communist comes back to Spain to kill a traitor.

Vada is obsessed with death. Her mother is dead, and her father runs a funeral parlor. When Vada's father hires Shelly, a makeup expert, and begins to fall in love, Vada is outraged and does everything in her power to split them up.

The former famous painter Frenhofer revisits an abandoned project using the girlfriend of a young visiting artist. Questions about truth, life, and artistic limits are explored.

How the discovery of a father's affair affects each member of his family.

Simon Henderson is at boarding school in Canada while his father works in Hong Kong, and his mother lives in England. When his parents visit him in the holidays, Simon discovers that his mother has schizophrenia.

A single mother raises a child prodigy on her own, struggling to give him every opportunity he needs to express his gift.

Two best friends living on the streets of Portland as hustlers embark on a journey of self discovery and find their relationship stumbling along the way.

Old Thorgeir must leave his home far off in the Icelandic 'countryside' and move into a home for senior citizens in Reykjavik. There he meets an old friend from his childhood, Stella. Thorgeir soon becomes unhappy living there and together with Stella he steals a jeep. Together they leave the city for Stella's old home in northwestern Iceland. A drama who asks us: how important is it to have a long life if you have to leave everything that has a meaning for you?

The life of a blind photographer who is looked after by a housekeeper is disrupted by the arrival of an agreeable restaurant worker.

Alex, who's homeless and addicted to alcohol, and Michèle, who's losing her sight, form a relationship while sleeping rough on Paris's Pont-Neuf bridge.

Follows the lives of three young males living in the Crenshaw ghetto of Los Angeles, dissecting questions of race, relationships, violence, and future prospects.

Evelyn, an ordinary housewife, visits a nursing home and befriends the old lady Ninny. Together, they bond over stories from the past about two intrepid women of Whistle Stop Cafe.

A woman who has lost her memory is taken in by a Los Angeles orphanage, and a private eye is enlisted to track down her identity, but he soon finds that he might have a past life connection to her that endangers their lives.