500 DIRECTORS LIST / UNLISTED

Adèle's life is changed when she meets Emma, a young woman with blue hair, who will allow her to discover desire, to assert herself as a woman and as an adult. In front of others, Adele grows, seeks herself, loses herself, finds herself.

A documentary on the socio-economic injustice meted out to the slum-dwellers in Bombay, and an attempt to understand the factors responsible for it.

Boy, an 11-year-old child and devout Michael Jackson fan who lives on the east coast of New Zealand in 1984, gets a chance to know his absentee criminal father, who has returned to find a bag of money he buried years ago.

1997 film by Gaston Kaboré

1972 film by Bob Fosse

In the summer of 1983, a 17-year-old Elio spends his days in his family's villa in Italy. One day Oliver, a graduate student, arrives to assist Elio's father, a professor of Greco-Roman culture. Soon, Elio and Oliver discover a summer that will alter their lives forever.

2013 film by Bruno Dumont

Michael Moore comes home to the issue he's been examining throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and by default, the rest of the world).

Tom enters from stage left in white tie and tails, sits at the piano, gets his focus as the orchestra in the pit beneath him warms up, and begins to play Liszt's "Hungarian Rhapsody". Unbeknownst to Tom and the audience, Jerry is asleep across several of the high-note keys inside the instrument, so Tom's playing eventually wakes him. Jerry is pummeled by hammers, bounced by wires, and squeezed by Tom as the cat tries to play the concerto while dispensing with Jerry. Jerry's defensive antics add to the brio of the program and answer Tom with Jerry's own skillful musical attack. By the concerto's end, the duet leaves only one animal standing for the audience's applause.

The little nomad girl, Nansal, finds a baby dog in the Mongolian veld, who becomes her best friend - against all rejections of her parents. A story about a Mongolian family of nomads - their traditional way of life and the rising call of the City.

Based on the tragic true story of China's first prima donna of the silver screen, Ruan Lingyu, chronicling her rise to fame as a movie actress in Shanghai during the 1930s. Nicknamed the 'Chinese Garbo', Ruan Lingyu began her career at 16 and committed suicide at 24.

An emotional journey of a former school teacher, who writes letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, as they search for the father he never knew.

A masterwork of Sri Lankan cinema, this moving saga of family and class conflict was made by Lester James Peries, his country’s foremost filmmaker and a director much admired by India’s Satyajit Ray.
Gamperaliya is regarded as a cornerstone of Sri Lankan cinema, launching upon its release in 1964 ‘a revolution, not only in the way films were made, but also in the content,’ according to producer Anton Wickramasinghe.
Peries sought an alternative to the Bollywood-influenced melodramas that dominated Sri Lanka’s commercial cinema, writing stories that looked at the staple issues of melodrama in a more nuanced way.
The film, adapted from a novel by Martin Wickramasinghe, focuses on Piyal, a teacher and member of the new rising middle class, who falls in love with the daughter of his village’s leading aristocratic clan; the girl’s parents insist upon a marriage to a stuffed shirt of her own class, one that shifting social forces are already rendering obsolete.
Gamperaliya is filmed in an elegant and uncoercive narrative style that has been compared to Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy; its aesthetic choices also have a moral dimension: at every level, this is a movie about the importance of setting aside illusion and exaggeration and seeing things as they are.

Several lost-soul night-owls, including a nightclub owner, a talk radio relationship counselor, and an itinerant stranger have encounters that expose their contradictions and anxieties about love and acceptance.

A young man of the Kainai Nation (Blood tribe) shows us contemporary life of people as he attends a Sun Dance ceremony with the tribe.

The film chronicles three days when a circus visits a small village in Kerala and creates ripples in the lives of the people. During this time, we learn the geography of the village - the banyan tree with leaves like transparent film, the shining water, the light in the sand at sunset…
The film shows the lives of the villagers - school children running to the tent, the village women watching the acrobat perform, the soldier who befriends the circus strong man in a toddy bar, a pump attendant who sits on a rock each day watching a village girl bathe and dry her hair, the dwarf who brings back to the circus a watermelon larger than his head…. The bizarre characters from the circus merge with the local populace.
The circus comes and leaves, and life goes on.
Thambu won Aravindan the National and State film awards for the best director.
Direction & Screenplay: G Aravindan
Cast: Gopi, Nudumudi Venu, Sriraman, Jalaja, members of the Great Chitra Circus
Cinematography: Shaji N Karun
Music: M G Radhakrishnan
When you planned the film THAMBU, what was uppermost in your mind: was it the problems and insecurities of the circus artists or the response of the villagers to the circus tent?
I planned THAMBU as a documentary feature. The film was shot in Thirunavaya on the banks of Bharathapuzha. I came to this village with ten to fifteen circus artistes who had already left their circus company. We did not have a script, and we shot the incidents as they happened. What we did on the first day was to call all the villagers and perform a circus act for them. There were a lot of people who had not seen a circus before. We shot their responses as they were watching. We did not ask them to do anything. After the initial hesitation, they forgot the lights and the shooting and completely got involved in the circus. It was all very original. At that time the village was also getting ready for the Ayappan Vilaku festival, which we used in the film. Finally the whole village got so involved in preparing for its festival, they lost their interest in the circus. The film ends there. In fact it is a location film.
Well, in THAMBU also, there is a discontented young man.
This character was there in the film - young man from an upper middle class family returned from abroad and settled in the native land. I am fascinated by these kind of people. You see similar people in UTTARAYANAM also. This 'return' has been with us for a very very long time. Earlier people 'returned' from Singapore, Burma, Ceylon etc. Now they 'return' from the Gulf. That is the only difference. When they 'come back' they will build a big bungalow and live isolated from the others around. Their relationships are confined to those of similar 'type' - they will of course have their "weekend gatherings". The question is why do they 'come back' if they are unable to or do not want to mix with the people around? My young man is someone who is discontented with this sort of isolation and wants to be in tune with the people and surroundings. He does not like to sit at home. He starts learning to read Malayalam and then ask the circus whether he can join them and ultimately goes away with them.

Just a small comment. Although apparently 'regional', your films, one could say are much broader - Indian. Your comments on contemporary issue reflect more a cynicism towards the present (as in your cartoons) than a nostalgic return to the past.

To get back to the film - the young man has never been to see a circus, has he?
No. When the circus goes back he just goes along with them.

When a circus is on the move, the artists are resting or asleep. They have nothing to expect or remember from the places they visit or stay in. This young man takes a decision to go with them. Why? Perhaps a recognition that he is no different from them! Or is this decision merely coincidental?
He could not get along with his family. To escape the home atmosphere he goes and finds a place under the Banyan tree and learns to read etc. I have included in the film the moment of his decision to join the circus.

At home he was surrounded by rock music while he himself loves classical music. There you see him asking the circus to take him along. The circus manager tells him to get into the van. At that moment he has not identified himself with the circus - he is merely escaping from his environment. No one has taken note of him in the circus company. The film ends with the sequence of him sleeping by the side of the circus clown.

For the circus, this journey is a stagnation. A period of rest, where as for the young man this trip is a progress and escape.
We cannot really say predict what he will become or do... He could become anything...even a circus clown... We are not making it clear. The emphasis is on his escape from the immediate environment.

As you are talking about the journey of the young man, it occurs to me that all your films have this aspect of a voyage to self-discovery or a 'movement' towards betterment of humanity. e.g. in KANCHANA SEETA, Rama carrying the sacrificial fire and going into the Sarayu River; in UTTARAYANAM, Ravi going into the forest; the arrivals and departures of the bogeyman in KUMMATTI according to the seasons; in CHIDAMBARAM Shankaran Kutty's search for peace in his troubled conscience etc. Your films seem to be myriad manifestations of the deep desire of human kind for answers, peace, meaning…?
(Remains silent)

Photographs, period paintings, lithographs and headlines of the Civil War are combined with moving newsreel footage of Civil War veterans, interviews with distinguished historians and first-person accounts in this award-winning documentary by filmmaker Ken Burns. The miniseries vividly embraces the entire sweep of the war: the complex causes and lasting effects of America's greatest and most moving calamity, the battles and the homefronts, the generals and the private soldiers, the anguish of death in battle and the grief of families at home.

2022 film directed by Lukas Dhont

1966 Czechoslovak film directed by Jiří Menzel

Animated shapes dance to Cuban music. This was one of the first animations to be painted directly onto the film.