Directed by Atom Egoyan • 1984 • Canada
Starring Patrick Tierney, Berj Fazlian, Sirvart Fazlian

Atom Egoyan’s striking debut finds the director already working through the themes of technology, isolation, and identity that recur obsessively throughout his work. Peter (Patrick Tierney) is cataton...

Directed by Christian Blackwood • 1982 • United States, West Germany
Starring Eartha Kitt

Filmed in 1982 at the legendary singer’s remote home and during multiple live performances, ALL BY MYSELF: THE EARTHA KITT STORY is a deeply moving and personal glimpse into the star’s life and career. Know...

Directed by Lars-Eric Kjellgren • 1953 • Sweden
Starring Eva Henning, Sonja Wigert, Hjördis Petterson

Strikingly shot in inky chiaroscuro, this stylish, twist-laden mystery—something like a Swedish riff on Otto Preminger’s noir classic LAURA—features a striking performance from Eva Henning as (w...

Directed by William Lustig • 1980 • United States
Starring Joe Spinell, Caroline Munro, Gail Lawrence

Banned across the world for its graphic violence (enhanced by the landmark gore effects of Tom Savini), this relentlessly shocking cult classic remains one of the most notorious and influential ...

Directed by Charles Burnett • 1983 • United States
Starring Everett Silas, Jessie Holmes, Gaye Shannon-Burnett

Recut and restored twenty-five years after its ill-fated premiere, Charles Burnett’s second feature is an eye-opening revelation—wise, funny, heartbreaking, and timeless. Pierce Mundy w...

Directed by Werner Herzog • 1971 • West Germany

Considered by many to be the quintessential masterpiece among Werner Herzog’s early works, FATA MORGANA can be described as an expressionist documentary. Consisting of three parts, the film is an absorbing collection of images shot in an around the...

Directed by Christopher Nolan • 1999 • United Kingdom
Starring Jeremy Theobald, Alex Haw

Before he became a sensation with the twisty revenge story MEMENTO, Christopher Nolan fashioned this low-budget, 16 mm black-and-white neonoir with comparable precision and cunning. Providing irrefutable evi...

Directed by Cauleen Smith • 1998 • United States
Starring Toby Smith, April Barnett, Will Power

A rediscovered treasure of 1990s DIY filmmaking, Cauleen Smith’s DRYLONGSO embeds an incisive look at racial injustice within a lovingly handmade buddy movie/murder mystery/romance. Alarmed by the rat...

Directed by Jim Jarmusch • 1984 • United States, Germany
Starring John Lurie, Richard Edson, Eszter Balint

With this breakout film, Jim Jarmusch established himself as one of the most exciting voices in the burgeoning independent-film scene, a road-movie poet with an affinity for Americana at it...

Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1976 • United States

Following her time living in New York in the early 1970s, Chantal Akerman returned to the city to create one of her most elegantly minimalist and profoundly affecting meditations on dislocation and estrangement. Over a series of exactingly compo...

Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien • 1980 • Taiwan
Starring Kenny Bee, Anthony Chan Yau, Chang Ping-Yu

One of the great poets of modern cinema, Hou Hsiao-hsien, made his feature debut with this sweet and lighthearted romantic comedy. Pop star Kenny Bee plays the poor city boy who, while working as an e...

Directed by Al Reinert • 1989 • United States

In July 1969, the space race ended when Apollo 11 fulfilled President Kennedy’s challenge of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” No one who witnessed the lunar landing will ever forget it. Al Reinert’s documentary FOR...

Directed by Youssef Chahine • 1958 • Egypt
Starring Youssef Chahine, Farid Shawqi, Hind Rostom

Youssef Chahine established his international reputation with this masterpiece, which, though initially a commercial failure in Egypt, would become one of the most influential and celebrated works in ...

Directed by John Coney • 1974 • United States
Starring Sun Ra, Barbara Deloney, Raymond Johnson

Avant-jazz mystic Sun Ra brought his pioneering Afrofuturist vision to the screen with this film version of his concept album. It’s a wild, kaleidoscopic whirl of science fiction, sharp social comment...

Directed by Tony Maylam • 1977 • United Kingdom

British documentary film-maker and producer Tony Maylam invigorated the sports documentary genre with WHITE ROCK, an idiosyncratic and utterly engaging account of the XII Olympic Winter Games Innsbruck 1976. He did so by placing music front and cen...

Directed by Orson Welles • 1975 • France, Iran, Germany

Trickery. Deceit. Magic. In F FOR FAKE, a free-form sort-of documentary by Orson Welles, the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully reengages with the central preoccupation of his career: the tenuous lines between illu...

Directed by René Laloux • 1973 • France

Nothing else has ever looked or felt like director René Laloux's animated marvel FANTASTIC PLANET, a politically minded and visually inventive work of science fiction. The film is set on a distant planet called Ygam, where enslaved humans (Oms) are the pla...

Directed by Seijun Suzuki • 1966 • Japan
Starring Tetsuya Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Tamio Kawaji

In this jazzy gangster film, reformed killer Tetsu’s attempt to go straight is thwarted when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang. Director Seijun Suzuki’s onslaught ...

Directed by Richard Lester • 1964 • United Kingdom

Meet the Beatles! Just one month after they exploded onto the U.S. scene with their Ed Sullivan Show appearance, John, Paul, George, and Ringo began working on a project that would bring their revolutionary talent to the big screen. A HARD DAY’S...

Directed by Agnès Varda • 1965 • France
Starring Jean-Claude Drouot, Claire Drouot, Marie-France Boyer

Though married to the good-natured, beautiful Thérèse (Claire Drouot), young husband and father François (Jean-Claude Drouot) finds himself falling unquestioningly into an affair with an attrac...

Directed by Jim Jarmusch • 1980 • United States
Starring Chris Parker, Sara Driver, John Lurie

Jim Jarmusch’s first feature displays the first hints of the deadpan, minimalist-cool style that he would refine in his breakthrough STRANGER THAN PARADISE. Young, alienated hipster Aloysius Christophe...

Directed by Kathleen Collins • 1982 • United States
Starring Seret Scott, Bill Gunn, Duane Jones

One of the first feature films directed by an African American woman, Kathleen Collins’s LOSING GROUND tells the story of a marriage between two remarkable people, both at a crossroads in their lives...