Nominated for 12 Ophir Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. – The Israeli Academy of Motion Pictures & Television
This quirky and wry comedy follows three Jewish Israeli siblings – Dorona and brothers Netanel and Shai – who, in the wake of their mother’s death, learn the man who raised them is not their biological dad. The revelation sends them on a road trip from Israel across France to discover the truth about their real father.
The sixth feature from writer-director Shemi Zarhin explores an unraveling family secret and the bittersweet journey of self-discovery that follows.
After stumbling upon a bizarre “competitive endurance tickling” video online, wherein young men are paid to be tied up and tickled, reporter David Farrier reaches out to request a story from the company.
But the reply he receives is shocking – the sender mocks Farrier’s sexual orientation and threatens extreme legal action should he dig any deeper.
So, like any good journalist confronted by a bully, he does just the opposite: he travels to the hidden tickling facilities in Los Angeles and uncovers a vast empire, known for harassing and harming the lives of those who protest their involvement in these films.
The more he investigates, the stranger it gets, discovering secret identities and criminal activity. Discovering the truth becomes Farrier’s obsession, despite increasingly sinister threats and warnings.
With humor and determination, Farrier and co-director Dylan Reeve summon up every resource available to get to the bottom of this tickling worm hole.
HELD OVER!
• Official Selection – Sundance Film Festival – U.S. Premiere
• Official Selection – COLCOA
• Official Selection – Film Fest DC
• Official Selection – San Francisco Int’l Film Festival
Warsaw, December 1945: the second World War is finally over and French Red Cross doctor Mathilde (Lou de Laage) is treating the last of the French survivors of the German camps.
When a panicked Benedictine nun appears at the clinic begging Mathilde to follow her back to the convent, what she finds there is shocking: a holy sister about to give birth and several more in advanced stages of pregnancy.
A non-believer, Mathilde enters the sisters’ fiercely private world, dictated by the rituals of their order and the strict Rev. Mother (Agata Kulesza, Ida).
Fearing the shame of exposure, the hostility of the occupying Soviet troops and local Polish communists and while facing an unprecedented crisis of faith, the nuns increasingly turn to Mathilde as their beliefs and traditions clash with harsh realities
The Professor: Tai Chi’s Journey West is the first major feature documentary about Tai Chi and one of its greatest masters, Cheng Man-Ching, a man who brought Tai Chi and Chinese culture to the West during the swinging, turbulent 60’s.
Though Cheng is an important transformational figure, his teachings have been overlooked.
This documentary film tells the story of his remarkable life and features Tai Chi as a martial art and a spiritual practice. Over the past decade, the filmmakers shot approximately fifty hours of footage in New York, North Carolina, and California.
Starting at 6:30 PM, Chung Yueh-Ching, Founder and Director at Heights of Wellness will demonstrate Tai Chi Quan and Tai Chi Sword forms. Stay after the film to hear Ching talk about the history of Tai Chi as a martial art and spiritual practice plus Q&A!
“100-year old Lovebirds” Byong-man Jo and Gye-yeul Kang, have been inseparable companions for the past 76 years.
Living in their small home by the river, they wear traditional Korean clothes, go shopping at the local market, have picnics with neighbors, and enjoy dance parties. Every night they go to sleep holding each other’s hands.
Observing this fragile couple for 15 months, director Mo-Young Jin acts as a fly-on-the-wall, capturing their twilight days with tender moments that reveal simple acts of affection–from a good-natured leaf fight to a gentle caress of the cheek.
A blockbuster in its native Korea, where it would go on to become the country’s biggest independent film of all time, MY LOVE, DON’T CROSS THAT RIVER presents an unforgettable story of true love that transcends both generations and cultures.
HELD OVER!
Raised on hip-hop and foster care, defiant city kid Ricky (Julian Dennison) gets a fresh start in the New Zealand countryside. He quickly finds himself at home with his new foster family: the loving Aunt Bella, the cantankerous Uncle Hec (Sam Neill), and dog Tupac.
When a tragedy strikes that threatens to ship Ricky to another home, both he and Hec go on the run in the bush. As a national manhunt ensues, the newly branded outlaws must face their options: go out in a blaze of glory or overcome their differences and survive as a family.
Equal parts road comedy and coming-of-age drama, director Taika Waititi masterfully weaves lively humor with emotionally honest performances by Sam Neill and Julian Dennison.
Vienna, 1930. Count von Kozsnom has lost his thirst for life, and his marriage cooled centuries ago.
Fortunately, Sigmund Freud is accepting new patients the good doctor suggests the Count appease his vain wife by commissioning a portrait of her by his assistant, Viktor.
But it’s Viktor’s headstrong girlfriend Lucy who most intrigues the Count, convinced she’s the reincarnation of his one true love.
Soon, the whole crowd is a hilarious mess of mistaken identities and misplaced affections in this send-up of the vampire genre, proving that 500 years of marriage is enough.
Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, the new film from acclaimed director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet) is a gripping, human tale of survival.
On the losing side of a civil war in Sri Lanka, a Tamil soldier (Antonythasan Jesuthasan) poses as the husband and father of two other refugees in order to escape their ravaged homeland. Arriving in France, the makeshift “family” sets about establishing a new life—only to find themselves once again embroiled in violence on the mean streets of Paris.
A heartrending saga of three strangers united by circumstance and struggle, Dheepan is both a tour-de-force thriller and a powerful depiction of the immigrant experience.
In 1982, three 11 year olds in Mississippi decided to do a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It took them all 7 summers of their youth. They finished every scene…execpt one. That final scene would take another 25 years.
Raiders! follows the twenty-five year reunion of most of the original cast and crew, now in their early 40s, in Ocean Springs, MS to finally complete the adaptation with this last missing scene in the summer of 2014.
This insightful and heartfelt documentary reveals for the first time the full behind-the-scenes story of Chris Strompolos’ and Eric Zala’s inspiring journey to finally finish their labor of love. Raiders! digs deep into their friendship and their mutual persistence to complete a seemingly ridiculous and impossible task, reminding us of the innocence and purity we had as children to follow our dreams no matter how crazy or stupid others said they are.
At 3 PM we will screen the documentary: RAIDERS! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made.
After that, at 4:45, we’ll have live Q&A with Eric Zala, director of The Adaptation.
Then at 5:30, we’ll screen the cult classic: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Adaptation.
Come for the whole event, or come for any part(s) of the program!
One Day Only – Wednesday, June 15, 7:15 PM
Oscar-winning documentary director Charles Ferguson turns his lens to address global climate change in a new film showing the breadth of the climate challenge, the power of solutions already available, and the remarkable people working to save our planet – from American farmers and African villagers to Indonesian anti-corruption officials and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.
HELD OVER!
Toni trains as a boxer with her brother at a community center in Cincinnati’s West End, but becomes fascinated by the dance team that also practices there. Enamored by their strength and confidence, Toni eventually joins the group, eagerly absorbing routines, mastering drills, and even piercing her own ears to fit in.
As she discovers the joys of dance and of female camaraderie, she grapples with her individual identity amid her newly defined social sphere.
Shortly after Toni joins the team, the captain faints during practice. By the end of the week, most of the girls on the team suffer from episodes of fainting, swooning, moaning, and shaking in a seemingly uncontrollable catharsis. Soon, however, the girls on the team embrace these mysterious spasms, transforming them into a rite of passage.
Toni fears “the fits” but is equally afraid of losing her place just as she’s found her footing. Caught between her need for control and her desire for acceptance, Toni must decide how far she will go to embody her new ideals.
HELD OVER!
The latest film from the creators of the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom and the critically-hailed Best of Enemies, follows members of the Ensemble as they gather in locations across the world, exploring the ways art can both preserve traditions and shape cultural evolution.
Blending performance footage, personal interviews, and archival film, director Morgan Neville and producer Caitrin Rogers focus on the personal journeys of a small group of Silk Road Ensemble mainstays – Kinan Azmeh (Syria), Kayhan Kalhor (Iran), Yo-Yo Ma (France/United States), Wu Man (China), and Cristina Pato (Spain) – to chronicle passion, talent, and sacrifice.
Through these moving individual stories, the filmmakers paint a vivid portrait of a bold musical experiment and a global search for the ties that bind.
In the middle of the Aegean Sea, on a luxury yacht, six men on a fishing trip decide to play a game.
During this game, things will be compared, measured and blood will be tested.
Friends will become rivals, but at the end of the voyage, when the game is over, the winner will wear the victorious signet ring: the “Chevalier.”
Tango is an integral part of Argentinian culture, so before the 7:30 PM film on Tuesday, May 31 The Hartford Argentine Tango Society is coming to get visitors into the swing of it!
Starting at 5:30 PM, listen to the unique rhythms and pauses of Argentine tango music, DJ’ed by Angelo Martucci. Then watch as Argentine tango performer Muna Swairjo and partner perform the passionate dance of tango and vals. While you watch the dancing and listen to the music, enjoy a glass of Argentine Malbec from our bar!
After experiencing Argentina’s most celebrated traditions, you’ll be ready to fully appreciate the skill and passion of the professional dancers in Our Last Tango!
This Israeli film tells the story of Hagit, a young woman with mild mental deficiency, works in a toilet-paper factory. She lives with her mother Sarah, a divorcee who gave up her life for her daughter.
Hagit strives for independence and Sarah is torn between her desire to protect her, and her own will to live.
When a relationship develops between her and the son of the factory owner, Hagit hides it from her mother. The announcement of the closing of the factory shakes Hagit and Sarah’s life and jeopardizes Hagit’s love story.
Sunset Song is Terence Davies’ intimate epic of hope, tragedy and love at the dawning of the Great War.A young woman’s endurance against the hardships of rural Scottish life, based on the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, told with gritty poetic realism by Britain’s greatest living auteur.
The film takes place during the early years of the twentieth century, with the conflicts and choices a young woman experiences reflecting the struggle between tradition and change; a struggle that continues to resonate today. Set in a rural community, Sunset Song is driven by the young heroine Chris and her intense passion for life, for the unsettling Ewan and for the unforgiving land.
The First World War reaches out from afar, bringing the modern world to bear on the community in the harshest possible way, yet in a final moment of grace, Chris endures, now a woman of remarkable strength who is able to draw from the ancient land in looking to the future.
Sunset Song is at once epic in emotional scale and deeply romantic at its core, given power by Terence Davies’ unflinching poetic realism.
Men & Chicken is a darkly hilarious slapstick comedy starring Mads Mikkelsen (“Hannibal,” ingeniously cast against type) about a pair of socially-challenged siblings who discover they are adopted half-brothers in their late father’s videotaped will.
Their journey in search of their true father takes them to the small, insular Danish island of Ork, where they stumble upon three additional half-brothers – each also sporting hereditary harelips and lunatic tendencies – living in a dilapidated mansion overrun by barn animals.
Initially unwelcome by their newfound kin, the two visitors stubbornly wear them down until they’re reluctantly invited to stay. As the misfit bunch get to know each other, they unwittingly uncover a deep family secret that ultimately binds them together.
This inventively bizarre and outlandish comedy is directed by acclaimed, Oscar-winning director Anders Thomas Jensen and also stars David Dencik (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.)
Forty years after her death, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), one of the 20th century’s most brilliant and influential philosophers, remains a figure of fierce controversy.
A German Jew who fled Europe for New York in 1941, she was the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), Men in Dark Times (1968) and other studies of history, violence, anti-Semitism, revolution, and power. But none were more provocative than Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) in which she coined the phrase, “the banality of evil,” to describe how a man as seemingly insignificant as Eichmann could be responsible for mass murder.
Arendt was pilloried for her criticism of some Jewish leaders (especially Chaim Rumkowski) and criticized for a love affair with her professor, Martin Heidegger, a Nazi supporter.
In this no-holds-barred documentary, Director Ada Ushpiz lets Arendt’s critics have their say, but she also features the woman herself, most dramatically, in a 1964 interview for German television in which she shares fascinating insights into Eichmann: “His inability to speak was connected to his inability to think.”
Rarely has an intellectual, even one as public in her pronouncements as Arendt, incited so much anger, praise, devotion, and scorn.
