The Future of an Illusion (1997) is a poetic, semi-documentary portrait of Havana on New Year’s Day, following seven characters whose lives intertwine amid the crumbling beauty of the city. An old widow, a young prostitute, a fallen aristocrat, a jobless couple, a weary coachman, a lonely child, and a wandering poet each face their own illusions of change, love, and escape. Through their stories, Franco de Peña crafts a lyrical meditation on hope and disappointment, where the promise of renewal fades into the quiet persistence of everyday survival.
Hamburg, Germany, 1939. Getting a passage aboard the passenger liner St. Louis seems to be the last hope of salvation for more than nine hundred German Jews who, desperate to escape the atrocious persecution to which they are subjected by the Nazi regime, intend to emigrate to Cuba.
Havana, Cuba, 1990. René González, an airplane pilot, unexpectedly flees the country, leaving behind his wife Olga and his daughter Irma, and begins a new life in Miami, where he becomes a member of an anti-Castro organization.
During the revolution, a high-stakes gambler arrives in Cuba seeking to win big in poker games. Along the way, he meets and falls in love with the wife of a Communist revolutionary.
In this fascinating Oscar-nominated documentary, American guitarist Ry Cooder brings together a group of legendary Cuban folk musicians (some in their 90s) to record a Grammy-winning CD in their native city of Havana.
Shot in Havana and processed at Phil Hoffman's Film Farm, Marcel Beltrán Fernández's Casa de la noche explores those same histories from the point of view of an insider, as a lived experience that is evocatively mirrored through ripped and torn celluloid.
Will Cubans be able to safeguard their heritage of pristine Nature and preserved ecological treasures under this new era, as they are facing the combined pressure of money and tourism?
The dynamic PR-agent Hannah is starting up her dream-job in the Hochstedt Company producing toys and soon falls in love with her firm's junior executive director, Wolfgang.
The true story of a Prussian aristocrat working for German military intelligence during World War II, who, with a group of fellow devout Christians, plotted to assassinate Hitler with a bomb in his briefcase.
A young man makes ends meet by selling camotes in his small providence town, has zero luck getting with the ladies, and is too broke to afford the hookers of the town.
BEAUTIFUL FUNERALS is a hand-painted double-step-printed film composed of 1) dense blackness variously punctuated by brilliantly colored jewel/flower-like shapes AND 2) interruptive white sections which are fuzzily dotted with blurred whites and criss-crossed by black "brushstrokes" and hard-edge straight black and white lines.
A jaded Lower East Side couple have become bored of straight sex, in a bid to spice things up, they decide to imitate some rough sex scenes as seen on TV.
