Chinese Spring

Bumming in Beijing: The Last Dreamers

A documentary following five young artists from around China, who travelled to Beijing in the 1980s to work as freelancers, exploring their lives, careers, and what aspirations they may have for the future.

Mass-market retailing: The end of a system?

The supermarket chains used to seem unbeatable, capturing the lion’s share of the grocery market. But for some years now they have been in crisis. In the wake of a fierce price war, retailers are resorting to increasingly aggressive commercial negotiation methods at the expense of suppliers, farmers and producers. Further competition is coming from the tech giants as Amazon and Alibaba invest in the food industry. What are the implications of all these changes on working conditions, the quality of our food and the future of our planet?

Reality 86'd

Three bands and crew (a combined total of 13 individuals), 2 Dodge Ram extended cab vans, one equipment truck, one PA system traverse the continental US for six months. A road documentary shot from the inside of the last Black Flag tour ever (the 1986 “In My Head” US tour.) Featuring behind the scenes proceedings and live performances from Black Flag, Painted Willie, and Gone. David Markey was along for the entire trip as the drummer / singer for Painted Willie, documenting the six month tour with his Super-8 camera as it happened. Also features roadie Joe (“Planet Joe”) Cole, soundmen Davo Claasen and Dave “Ratman” Levine, and the tour manager who kept it all together, Mitch Bury. A crucial turning point in American underground rock. The end of the line for a trail blazing American band. Shot in 1986 and completed by director David Markey in 1991 for We Got Power. (futuristika.org)

La fabbrica sospesa

Blue-collar workers, executives, and other people at the Pirelli Bicocca plant talk about the upcoming shutdown of the factory. It's the end for a piece of history of Italian industry and also for a place of memory of workers' struggle: the movie documents the different reactions and scales of awareness determined by class belonging to the functions held in the factory by the interviewees.

Saddle Up For Revenge

Parody of the acclaimed Australian series of the 80s, Return to Eden. Wealthy heiress Stephanie Harper marries athlete Craig Danners, without suspecting that he only wants her money and is having an affair with her best friend, Crystal. Craig and Crystal have a plan to get rid of Stephanie and steal her fortune by making her suffer a terrible accident, which leaves her face disfigured. She is saved by the handsome Doctor Danley, who performed a plastic surgery on Stephanie that turned her into a completely different and beautiful woman. Stephanie starts plotting her revenge against Craig and Crystal, who believe that she died in the accident.

The Last Emperor

A dramatic history of Pu Yi, the last of the Emperors of China, from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City, the object of worship by half a billion people; through his abdication, his decline and dissolute lifestyle; his exploitation by the invading Japanese, and finally to his obscure existence as just another peasant worker in the People's Republic.

The Tobacconist

Vienna, 1937, on the eve of the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany. The young and inexperienced Franz Huchel begins to learn about both the joys and hardships of life by working as an apprentice to the mutilated war veteran Otto Trsnjek in a small tobacco shop, where he meets the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, a regular customer, who will become a valuable friend in times of chaos and uncertainty.

How Lucky China

Follows Long Island’s Mary Lamont Band on their groundbreaking 23,000-mile tour in six cities and provinces across mainland China in 2002.

El Cepa Returns

Forty years later, Guillermo Montesinos, the actor who played José María el Cepa in The Cuenca Crime (1980), directed by Pilar Miró, returns to the various locations where the shooting of the mythical film, narrating the infamous Grimaldos case (1910), took place.

Dallas Buyers Club

Loosely based on the true-life tale of Ron Woodroof, a drug-taking, women-loving, homophobic man who in 1986 was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and given thirty days to live.

Contemporary Photography in America

The film of Michael Engler from the year 1982 showing the different methods of operation of photgraphers Harry Callahan, Mark Cohen, Robert Frank, Ralph Gibson, Duane Michals, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, Garry Winogrand and others

Krasnaya strela

Krasnaya strela is the special train No.1 between Leningrad and Moscow. The film is set in the 1980s during perestroika in the Soviet Union. Kropotov (Lavrov) is communist CEO of a big industrial company in Leningrad. He is crafty and successful in getting a major order from the Soviet Government; building an automated assembly line. But his style of management clashes with his subordinates, talented engineers. Their potential is strangled by Kropotov's manipulative control. The government order is not accomplished and Kropotov gets fired. He is rethinking his outdated business style while on the train No.1 to Moscow.

NA China

The implantation of African traders in Guangzhou is a recent phenomenon, on which Marie Voignier reports through her interlinking portraits of Jackie, Julie, Shanny who have come to set up their business on site. Amidst the monstrous accumulation of merchandise on the endless markets of the megacity, the film follows these African businesswomen grappling with the globalised Chinese economy.

The History of the Civil War

The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.

Amos, une rivière, une forêt, des hommes

The history of Amos, a town in Abitibi-Témiscamingue (Quebec).