The Beholder
The making of a portrait is an intimate experience, one which can be a pleasurable event for both parties or one that's fraught with difficulties. Either way, to paint someone's picture is a unique way of really getting under their skin. In a world where anyone can make a realistic likeness on their cellphone, the importance of the painted portrait remains: as an emblem of power and prestige, as a political act and ultimately as a memorial. These themes and many others are explored through the work of three of Ireland's most notable portrait painters: James Hanley, Mick O'Dea and Brian Maguire.
The Samurai of Ayothaya
Based on a true historic figure, Yamada Nagamasa, a Japanese adventurer who went to Ayothaya in the 16th century and became a soldier in King Naresuan's army. After the war in Burma it's restless in Ayothaya, because of a mysterious group of men that terrorizes and plunders the city. Yamada goes after them and discovers that the men are rebelious Japanese samurai. Now he has to fight his own countrymen.
Union
A film by Paul Clipson.
Body Double 22
Brice Dellsperger's reprise of Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut
David Blaine: Beautiful Struggle
A made-for-TV documentary about the many endurance related feats that David Blaine performed between 1999 and 2008. These include being entombed for 7 days, being encased in ice for 63 hours, standing atop a 100 foot pillar for 35 hours, living in a plexiglass case without food for 44 days, and attempting two different breath-holding world records. The film documents his preparation for these stunts and includes both broadcast and behind-the-scenes footage of the stunts themselves.
Frosty Man and the BMX Kid
In this short James Rolleston (Boy) stars as a Kiwi lad who banters with an elderly bearded fulla (Bruce Allpress) who claims to be God; the 'BMX Kid' challenges him to a Lake Wakatipu bomb competition to prove it. Kiwi stuntman/director Tim McLachlan's film was a finalist in Your Big Break, a filmmaking contest run by Tourism New Zealand which attracted over 1000 scripts from around the globe. Five finalists were given the chance to turn their scripts into a short film. The brief was to "capture the spirit of 100% Pure New Zealand — the youngest country on earth".
Happenstance
A woman's suicide attempt is interrupted by a flower delivery man in a bear costume.
Metrobranding
While people in Western Europe were used to choose between hundreds of brands, the communist Romanian used to have a different experience: all our life we lived with only one brand for each basic product. Imagine the importance that this 'mono-brands' could acquire for the lives of those who made them and for the lives of those who consumed them. A love story between man and object.
Mexican Bloodbath
Saltillo, a small dusty town south of the Mexican border, caught in a war of greed and corruption. A man named Bishop returns home after his parents are executed at the hands of a ruthless drug lord El Chilango. He swears to avenge the deaths of his loved ones and take down every person involved at the cost of losing himself and his new love Lucia, the wife of his new arch rival El Chilango.