Video Letter

Bloodline

May 2008 •English

One man's journey into the world of the so-called 'Bloodline' conspiracy, at the heart of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, where a secret society, the Priory of Sion, claims to have guarded evidence of the marriage of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ, their children and their descendants down through the centuries.

Albert Camus, la tragédie du bonheur

March 1999 •French

Area 51: The Alien Interview

January 1997 •English

A documentary about aliens and UFOs with re-enactments of alien interviews and video of a supposedly real video of an alien being interviewed by government officials.

Every Wall is a Door

March 2017 •French

Drawing on VHS tapes of a programme hosted by her mother on Bulgaria’s national television, the filmmaker gives a pop-style and in-depth chronicle of the gentle – even “over-gentle” – 1989 revolution.

Dark Side of the Moon

October 2002 •French

A French documentary or, one might say more accurately, a mockumentary, by director William Karel which originally aired on Arte in 2002 with the title Opération Lune. The basic premise for the film is the theory that the television footage from the Apollo 11 Moon landing was faked and actually recorded in a studio by the CIA with help from director Stanley Kubrick.

Nos restaurants : Une grande histoire française

December 2023 •French

Orpheus

September 1950 •French

A famous poet in postwar Paris, scorned by the Left Bank youth, is in love with both his wife Eurydice and a mysterious princess. Seeking inspiration, the poet becomes obsessed and follows the princess from the world of the living to the land of the dead.

This Beggar's Description

July 2006 •English

It's a sensitive, moving doc chronicling the life of Tétrault's brother Philip , a Montreal poet, musician and diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. A promising athlete as a child, Philip began experiencing mood swings in his early 20s. His extended family, including his daughter, share their conflicted feelings love, guilt, shame, anger with the camera. They want to make sure he's safe, but how much can they take?

Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive

April 2017 •English

How the inventor of the detective story became his own greatest mystery.

The Back 80

May 2017 •English

Suzanne's life was turned upside down when a Bigfoot ran across the road in front of her one night. As she tries to understand what she's seen the creature arrives at her doorstep and sends her into a downward spiral looking for answers.

The Village Detective: A Song Cycle

April 2021 •English

Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Iceland, July 9, 2016. The surprising discovery of a canister —containing four reels of The Village Detective (Деревенский детектив), a 1969 Soviet film—, caught in the nets of an Icelandic trawler, is the first step in a fascinating journey through the artistic life of film and stage actor Mikhail Ivanovich Zharov (1899-1981), icon and star of an entire era of Russian cinema.

CIVIL WAR SURVEILLANCE POEMS (Part 1)

April 2019 •English

"CIVIL WAR SURVEILLANCE POEMS (Part 1)" is the first installment in a five-part project of experimental and hybrid-form short films contemplating a second American civil war via lyrical nonfiction, mixing call-in radio, twenty years of verité footage from the filmmaker's archive, and robots. Conceptually speculating from sixteen years in the future (and a protracted civil war), the project is partly nostalgic political travelogue, partly a quest to mine the archive for what went wrong, and part prewar surveillance records, the project deconstructs and builds to a clashing ideology, culminating in an installation of sound sculpture, four-walled video and artifacts.

Nobody Wants Your Film

May 2005 •English

Director Peter Judson's semifictitious tale opens a revealing window into the indie filmmaking process, capturing the trivialities, aggravations and enthusiasm that go into completing a picture. Using footage from an indie movie set, e-mails constructing a plotline about distributor difficulties and interviews with indie mainstays such as Steve Buscemi and Sam Rockwell, the film provides a riveting look at one producer's rejections and rewards.

Willatuk: The Legend of Seattle's Sea Serpent

June 2010 •English

Seattle filmmaker Oliver Tuthill Jr. directs this deadpan mockumentary that imparts the legend of Willatuk, a fictitious sea serpent that American Indians first spotted swimming in the waters off Puget Sound in 1736. Narrator Graham Greene explores the history of the mysterious creature that's considered sacred by a Pacific Northwest Indian tribe, which vows to protect it from the competing interests of local hunters.

Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker?

January 2007 •English

Documentary tracing the extreme life of outlaw writer, performance artist and punk icon, Kathy Acker. Through animation, archival footage, interviews and dramatic reenactments, director Barbara Caspar explores Acker's colorful history, from her well-heeled upbringing to her role as the scribe of society's fringe.

Diary of the Dead

May 2007 •English

A group of young filmmakers encounter real zombies while filming a horror movie of their own.

Dragonfly Eyes

August 2017 •Chinese

A young woman's life takes a series of unexpected turns after she leaves the Buddhist temple where she has lived most of her adult life.

Faces of Death

November 1978 •English

A collection of death scenes, ranging from TV-material to home-made super-8 movies. The common factor is death by some means.

Phantom Valley

November 2020 •English

In the desolate countryside, haunted by recurrent dreams, a young drifter finds himself at the borderlands between the living and the dead.

Merton: A Film Biography

January 1984 •English

In his lifetime, Thomas Merton was hailed as a prophet and censured for his outspoken social criticism. For nearly 27 years he was a monk of the austere Trappist order, where he became an eloquent spiritual writer and mystic as well as an anti-war advocate and witness to peace. Merton: A Film Biography provides the first comprehensive look at this remarkable 20th century religious philosopher who wrote, in addition to his immensely popular autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, over 60 books on some of the most pressing social issues of our time, some of which are excerpted here. Merton offers an engaging profile of a man whose presence in the world touched millions of people and whose words and thoughts continue to have a profound impact and relevance today.