Helen Hedy

A writer whose lover is a woman widowed three times begins to suspect she may be responsible for her husbands' deaths.

The central element in this film is formed by the preparation for and execution of a performance. The performance, a parachute jump, is carried out by an artist (Perrenet) and his girlfriend during the opening of an exhibition. As spectators to the performance, which takes place in the artist’s studio, an art dealer and several friends have been invited. The art dealer enters first, followed by Armand, who looks at some paintings made by Zwartjes; they spout the usual ‘gallery nonsense’. The art dealer appears most interested in the girlfriend. ‘My latest creation’ is how Amand introduces her. The guests who arrive thereafter are introduced in short, independent sections.

In a monumental building a group of scientists submit women to obscure experiments in which sexuality and cruelty constantly merge into one another. "Pentimento" is an art-historical term for a hidden image underneath the actual image giving an indication of how the latter evolved to its current state.

In the late 19th-century, the Tippel family moves to rural Stavoren in search of greener pastures. However, their dreams are quickly shattered, as teenage Katie is terrorized by a male-dominated society who only see her as an object. Her situation worsens when, following her father's sacking and her elder sister's descent into alcoholism, her mother decides that, rather than starving, Katie becomes a prostitute.

The story of Jacob Fabian, a somewhat liberal Berlin advertising copywriter who witnesses the collapse of the prewar German society during the 1930s.

"The Great Magician" - A portrait of Frans Zwartjes (1927-2017), sometimes called 'the most important experimental filmmaker of his time' by the American essayist Susan Sontag.

An Antwerp journalist finds his daily life increasingly disrupted by unexplained phenomena, such as an authentic letter from 1919 that refers to an event taking place at a much later date. Because these disturbances are consistently linked to the name “Joachim Stiller,” the journalist becomes obsessed with it. The resolution, which is closely tied to his traumatic experiences from the Second World War, takes place with a psychiatrist—and later at an abandoned railway station in an Antwerp suburb. Interwoven with this is a subplot about an Antwerp art dealer who believes he can become rich through a new form of painting. To achieve this, he takes a mentally disabled artist hostage. The narrative also follows various romantic entanglements involving the journalist, which ultimately lead to his happy experience of fatherhood.