Manuel on the Island of Wonders

Manuel on the Island of Wonders

Limited Series 1984 · 3 eps · ★ 7.2 · Kids, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Mystery, Drama

Ended

This three part French TV serial for children (alternate versions exist as a feature, Manoel’s Destinies, and a 4 part Portuguese TV serial, Adventure in Madeira) is the favourite of many devotees of Raúl Ruiz. This is because it ties the enchantment and mystery of Lewis Carroll, Carlo Collodi and the Brothers Grimm to the filmmaker’s experiments with narrative strategies and what he calls the pentaludic model of storytelling (where characters are thrown dice-like into combinations and situations governed by the play of Chance and Destiny).

Created by Raúl Ruiz

Networks: RTP1, Antenne 2

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The One-Eyed Man

The One-Eyed Man · 1980

The One-Eyed Man

With his body now devoid of substance and able to fly, N. wanders looking for a way to return to life and reintegrate into the world.

Chuquiago

Chuquiago · 1977

Racial, social and cultural aspects of La Paz (called Chuquiago by the Aymaras) seen through four stories.

Of Great Events and Ordinary People

Of Great Events and Ordinary People · 1980

Of Great Events and Ordinary People

MovieDocumentary

In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in Paris’ eleventh arrondissement. But, contrary to the producers’ expectation, the Left lost. Ruiz seized on this anti-climax to make a documentary about nothing except itself – a film whose central subject is forever lost in digression and ‘dispersal’, harking back to his Chilean experiments of the ‘60s. Its political content is deliberately left negligible: it’s hard to tell at the end who did actually win the election, let alone why.

Mysteries of Lisbon

Mysteries of Lisbon · 2010

Mysteries of Lisbon

MovieDramaHistory

The tragic story of the many lives of Father Dinis, his dark origins and his pious works, and the different fates of all those who, trapped in a sinister web of love, hate and crime, cross paths with him through years of adventure.

Palombella rossa

Palombella rossa · 1989

Palombella rossa

MovieComedyDrama

Michele is an MP for the Italian Communist Party who loses his memory in a car crash, though hardly anyone around him seems to notice. During a crucial water polo match on the eve of election day, he gradually begins to remember his past life, revealing a man whose personal and political identity crisis mirrors that of Italian communism itself.

Richard III

Richard III · 1986

Richard of Gloucester uses murder and manipulation to claim England's throne.

Abastecimiento

Abastecimiento · 1973

MovieDocumentary

It explores the problem of the shortage caused in Chile during the Unidad Popular. It shows the actions of a minister, a bourgeois housewife and a grassroots group of the JAP (Juntas de Abastecimiento y Precios) promoted by the government to alleviate this crisis.

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting · 1978

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting

MovieDramaMystery

Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series' significance.

Brise-glace

Brise-glace · 1990

MovieDocumentary

Collaborative experimental project on which three director made different films about the Swedish icebreaker "Frej".

The Suspended Vocation

The Suspended Vocation · 1978

The Suspended Vocation

The film centers on a Dominican monk named Jérôme (played by one actor in colour and another actor in black-and-white) and his interactions with various higher-ups within the French Catholic Church. Ruiz's intention was to reflect the ideological arguments that plagued Latin American left-wing political parties.

Genealogies of a Crime

Genealogies of a Crime · 1997

Genealogies of a Crime

MovieCrimeDrama

An attorney defends a young man on trial for killing his aunt — a psychiatrist who took him in to study possible homicidal tendencies.

Mammame

Mammame · 1986

A Ruizian adaptation of Jean-Claude Gallotta's iconic wordless ballet choreography.

Mysteries of Lisbon

Mysteries of Lisbon · 2011

Mysteries of Lisbon

The tragic story of the many lives of Father Dinis, his dark origins and his pious works, and the different fates of all those who, trapped in a sinister web of love, hate and crime, cross paths with him through years of adventure and misfortune in the convulsed Europe of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. (A longer television version of the film of the same name, released in 2010.)

To Each His Own Cinema

To Each His Own Cinema · 2007

To Each His Own Cinema

MovieComedyDrama

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

Time Regained

Time Regained · 1999

In early 1920s France, an author, lying on his deathbed, looks at various photographs and is flooded with memories of the people and events that have shaped his life.

The Film to Come

The Film to Come · 1997

The Film to Come

If any single piece can act as a key to Ruiz, it may be the 1997 short Le Film à Venir (The Film to Come). The titular film is a holy fragment of celluloid that can only be seen by a secret society known as the Philokinetes. They watch it on a loop, somnambulating through a life that is unreal by comparison. It is the belief of the Philokinetes that film has an existence “independent from humans. Cinema, they said, is the primeval soup of a new life form. There from were to emerge pure screening creatures. Which is to say, non-topical beings.” - n+1

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