Beyond Melodrama: Kathryn Bigelow on Douglas Sirk

A fascinating and absorbing documentary about the making of Jerzy Skolimowski's cult favourite, DEEP END, which was shot in 1970 as a US-German co-production on location in London and Munich. The film's two stars, Jane Asher and John Moulder-Brown, 23 and 17 years of age at the time respectively, meet for the first time in 40 years and discuss their on-screen and off-screen relationship in candid detail, while director/writer Skolimowski chronicles the production history from the writing of the script to the film's acclaimed first showing at the Venice Film Festival. Director of photography Charly Steinberger revisits some of the original locations and explains how he managed to shoot almost the entire film with a hand-held camera. Also on board are production designer Anthony Pratt, editor Barrie Vince, and actor Christopher Sandford, each of whom contributes his own version of how DEEP END was part of the sixties' "swinging London"; and at the same time tilted it on its head.

Featuring interviews with daughter Nicola Lubitsch, film historians Enno Patalas and Jan-Christopher Horak and filmmaker Tom Tykwer (among others), Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin documents the life of the legendary filmmaker from his birth in 1892 to his departure for Hollywood in 1923. The documentary is sprinkled with excerpts from Lubitsch's rarely-seen early work (both as actor and director) and offers fascinating insights into the German film industry in the silent era.

Featuring brand new interviews with producer Douglas Wick, screenwriter Wesley Strick, and special effects artist Rick Baker, THE BEAST INSIDE: CREATING »WOLF« examines the making of Mike Nichols’ WOLF (1994) in all its stages from original idea to final appearance.

Legendary French film director and Nouvelle Vague co-founder Claude Chabrol takes us back to the mid-fifties, when he and then-fellow film critic François Truffaut met and interviewed Alfred Hitchcock under hilarious circumstances. Chabrol then describes how he went on to write, with Eric Rohmer, the first book on Hitchcock, and even served as a consultant when Hitch came to Paris to direct his film TOPAZ. Several key scenes from Hitchcock movies, with a special emphasis on UNDER CAPRICORN, are discussed and dissected.

When Francois Truffaut approached Alfred Hitchcock in 1962 with the idea of having a long conversation with him about his work and publishing this in book form, he didn't imagine that more than four years would pass before Le Cinéma selon Hitchcock finally appeared in 1966. Not only in France but all over the world, Truffaut's Hitchcock interview developed over the years into a standard bible of film literature. In 1983, three years after Hitchcock's death, Truffaut decided to expand his by now legendary book to include a concluding chapter and have it published as the "Edition définitive". This film describes the genesis of the "Hitchbook" and throws light on the strange friendship between two completely different men. The centrepieces are the extracts from the original sound recordings of the interview with the voices of Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, and Helen Scott – recordings which have never been heard in public before.

This absolutely top-notch documentary by Robert Fischer is a fascinating look back at not just the film in question, but Fassbinder's meteoric career which ended all too soon with his untimely death. Archival footage of Fassbinder is utilized (including several fascinating snippets culled from interviews he did at the disastrous Cannes premiere of Despair), as well as many others involved in the film and its release. Even if you're not a particular fan of Despair, or even in fact of Fassbinder, this is stellar documentary film making and is an intriguing look at one of the most enigmatic masters of the New German Cinema.

In June 2015, forty-five years after OUT 1 was made, the filmmakers went to Paris to interview cast and crew members and to revisit some of the film’s most significant locations. THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS features new contributions from actors Bulle Ogier, Michael Lonsdale and Hermine Karagheuz, cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn, assistant director Jean-François Stévenin and producer Stéphane Tchal Gadjieff, but also rare archival interviews with actors Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Michel Delahaye and, most prominently, illuminating statements by director Jacques Rivette himself from two different archival interviews.

Though he never actually worked in Hollywood, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died in 1982 at the age of 36, was influenced greatly by American studio films of the 1950s and the convention of melodrama (the link most often mentioned is Douglas Sirk).

For over half a century, the filmmaker Edgar Reitz, one of the signatories of the Oberhausen Manifesto and a pioneer of epic film narration, has explored, as a practitioner and theoretician, the rules and limits of cinema, which he always seeks to break and extend in new ways. One example of his tireless search and research are the Geschichten vom Kübelkind, which he co-directed with Ula Stöckl in 1969/70, 22 absurdly funny, subversive and anarchistic short films of different lengths, which consciously oppose all conventions, with incredible success. The films remain unrivalled in their Dadaistic inventiveness.

Don Siegel’s classic crime thriller "Charley Varrick," made in 1972 in the wake of the immensely successful "Dirty Harry," stars Walter Matthau in what is probably the actor’s finest dramatic role, airshow pilot turned crop duster turned bank robber turned mob target Charley Varrick. This feature-length documentary takes the viewer back to the time of the shooting of this cult item and features original interviews with Siegel’s son, Kristoffer Tabori, actors Andy Robinson and Jacqueline Scott, stunt driver and actor Craig R. Baxley, composer Lalo Schifrin and Howard A. Rodman, whose father co-wrote the screenplay.

Evil teenager assassins Rike & Tom want to kill and film the execution of the rock star Daniel Küblböck [or Lana Kaiser to be correct], who is spiritually supported by his dead grandfather Johnny, with the support of the mysterious Baltazar! Will our well-intentioned wizard succeed to survive this Christmas related mess and learn to forgive the others while beign kidnapped and almost executed, even if that means stickin' his finger in cakes, rollin' in tha snow like a cat or having psychedelic music dreams? (and singin' some bangers in the meanwhile!)

Short documentary about sequences removed from the film.

In his film "Far From Heaven", Todd Haynes refers very respectfully to Douglas Sirk's "All that Heaven Allows". Fassbinder was also strongly influenced by Sirk's work. Haynes now explains this double fascination.

In the heart of the mysterious Amazon region lives a people whose roots are deeply anchored in the layers of time: the Matsés people, also known as the Jaguar People. Award-winning film producer Roberto Fischer, anthropologist Andrey Matusovskiy and expedition leader Alexey Kolbov provide rare insights into the life of the Matsés in the largest rainforest on earth.

Film scholar Janet Bergstrom discusses Sternberg's 1930 film starring Marlene Dietrich.

Actors Rüdiger Vogler, Hanns Zischler and Lisa Kreuzer reflect on their work in front of the Robby Müller’s camera for Wim Wender’s seminal road movie KINGS OF THE ROAD (Im Lauf der Zeit, 1976).