Directed by Kidlat Tahimik • 1981 • Philippines
Starring Homer Abiad, Iñigo Vito, Maria Pehipol

Mixing documentary-like observation with playful irony, Kidlat Tahimik’s cautionary fable depicts the corrosive effect...

Directed by Kazuki Omori • 1989 • Japan
Starring Kunihiko Mitamura, Yoshiko Tanaka, Masanobu Takashima

Diving into delirious realms of imagination, this second film of the Godzilla fran...

Directed by Bob Odenkirk • 2003 • United States
Starring Michael Blieden, Stephanie Courtney, Matt Price

Perhaps the finest conversation movie this side of MY DINNER WITH ANDRÉ, Bob Odenkirk’s directorial debut invites you along for a stimulating evening of hilarious, engrossing, and disarmingly...

Directed by John Greyson • 1996 • Canada
Starring Brent Carver, Marcel Sabourin, Aubert Pallascio

A visually intoxicating queer rhapsody of desire and repression, revenge and redemption unfolds as a deliriously stylized play-within-a-film in this sumptuous cinematic pageant adapted from the stag...

Directed by Isaac Julien • 1991 • United Kingdom
Starring Valentine Nonyela, Mo Sesay, Sophie Okonedo

From the moment Parliament’s “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)” erupts over the opening of Isaac Julien’s breakthrough feature, we know we’re in for a wild ride. The changes keep coming as a murd...

Directed by Timothy Carey • 1962 • United States
Starring Timothy Carey, Gil Barreto, Betty Rowland

Timothy Carey—the unforgettable character actor whose weird, wiggy energy brought a manic edge to classics like THE KILLING and PATHS OF GLORY—wrote, produced, directed, and starred in this outrag...

Directed by Michael Roemer • 1984 • United States
Starring Brooke Adams, Jon DeVries, Ari Meyers

Like director Michael Roemer’s prior features—the powerful civil-rights-era landmark NOTHING BUT A MAN and the offbeat mob comedy THE PLOT AGAINST HARRY—this continuously surprising, cuttingly incisi...

Directed by Lionel Rogosin • 1959 • United States
Starring Miriam Makeba, Vinah Makeba, Zachria Makeba

One of the bravest and most powerful political films ever made, Lionel Rogosin’s urgent indictment of racial injustice—filmed in secret in 1950s Johannesburg, South Africa—follows a young Zulu ...

Directed by Lizzie Borden • 1976 • United States
Starring Kathryn Bigelow, Ariel Bock, Marion Cajori

While Lizzie Borden’s features BORN IN FLAMES and WORKING GIRLS have taken their place as landmarks of feminist cinema, her debut—the fascinating experimental documentary REGROUPING—has gone larg...

Directed by Yuen Woo-ping • 1981 • Hong Kong
Starring Yuen Biao, Bryan Leung Kar-yan, Kwan Tak-hing

Everything that made 1980s Hong Kong action cinema such a blast—the furious fights, bursts of wild comedy, and larger-than-life performances—is cranked up to eleven in this audacious cult classic...

Directed by Maureen Blackwood and Isaac Julien • 1986 • United Kingdom
Starring Anni Domingo, Joseph Charles, Carlton Chance

One of the major works of the revolutionary Sankofa Film and Video Collective, this radically innovative film explores issues of Black British culture, gender, and sexuali...

Directed by Chen Kaige • 1993 • China
Starring Leslie Cheung, Zhang Fengyi, Gong Li

A breathtakingly intimate romance unfolds against a sweeping backdrop of social upheaval in renowned director Chen Kaige’s sumptuous saga of passion, fate, and the transcendent possibilities of art. Spanning fift...

Directed by Tod Browning • 1927 • United States
Starring Lon Chaney, Norman Kerry, Joan Crawford

The most celebrated and exquisitely perverse of the many collaborations between Tod Browning and his legendary leading man Lon Chaney, THE UNKNOWN features a wrenchingly physical performance from “th...

Directed by Jindřich Polák • 1963 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Zdeněk Štěpánek, František Smolík, Dana Medřická

A visionary work of Eastern Bloc science fiction, this mesmerizing Czechoslovak adaptation of a novel by Stanisław Lem melds Cold War ideology and utopian futurism into a tour de force of...

Directed by Vojtěch Jasný • 1963 • Czechoslovakia
Starring Jan Werich, Emília Vášáryová, Vlastimil Brodský

In this modern-day fairy tale and rediscovered Czech New Wave cult classic, an ordinary Bohemian village is visited by a magician (Jan Werich), his beautiful assistant (Emília Vásáryová), a...

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 Lam Nai-choi • 1991 • Hong Kong
Starring Fan Siu-Wong, Gloria Yip, Yukari Oshima

The ultimate Hong Kong black-comic gorefest, this live-action adaptation of the cult manga is a blood feast of entrail-wreathed splatter and literally eye-popping ultraviolence. After he’s sentenced to a...

Directed by Claire Denis • 2001 • France
Starring Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey, Béatrice Dalle

Claire Denis’s poetic take on the body-horror genre is an atmospheric reverie of blood and lust that lays bare the filmmaker’s core artistic concerns around power, desire, and delirium. Newlyweds Shane...

Directed by Barbara Connell and Bill Jersey • 1966 • United States

With extraordinary access and unflinching frankness, this remarkable, underseen documentary offers an X-ray of the soul of a divided America working through the social shockwaves of the civil rights movement. The film chronicles ...

Directed by Ricky Lau • 1985 • Hong Kong
Starring Lam Ching-Ying, Ricky Hui, Chin Siu-Ho

The film that, along with producer Sammo Hung’s SPOOKY ENCOUNTERS, launched an entire hopping-vampire horror-comedy subgenre is Hong Kong cinema at its most gleefully inventive and gloriously unrestrained. T...

Directed by Ira Sachs • 1996 • United States
Starring Shayne Gray, Thang Chan, Rachel Zan Huss

A treasure of the 1990s’ New Queer Cinema, Ira Sachs’s incisive debut feature moodily evokes the wide space between dreams, desires, and fulfillment in post–Vietnam War America via the romance between ...