Videoteca

location_onLos Angeles, CaliforniapublicUS

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control 1997 star_border 6.8
Errol Morris’s Fast, Cheap & Out of Control interweaves the stories of four men, each driven to create eccentric worlds from their unique obsessions, all of which involve animals. There’s a lion tamer who shares his theories on the mental processes of wild animals; a topiary gardener who has devoted a lifetime to shaping bears and giraffes out of hedges and trees; a man fascinated with hairless mole rats; and an MIT scientist who has designed complex, autonomous robots that can crawl like bugs.

Passion 1996 star_border 7.2
Giorgio, a young soldier, is in love with the married Clara and becomes her lover. But they are separated when Giorgio is posted far away, where he meets the unhappy, unhealthy, and unattractive Fosca, who develops a passionate love for Giorgio and tries to make him love her. This rendition of Stephen Sondheim's Tony Award-winning musical was recorded on the stage with it's original all-star Broadway cast. Originally broadcast as part of "American Playhouse" on PBS (season thirteen, episode six).

Reckless 1995 star_border 6.4
On Christmas Eve, a relentlessly cheerful woman escapes from the killers hired by her husband, and embarks on a series of strange encounters.

Safe 1995 star_border 7
Carol White, a Los Angeles housewife in the late 1980s, comes down with a debilitating illness with no clear diagnosis.

...And the Earth Did Not Swallow Him 1995 star_border 5.3
Twelve-year-old Mexican-American Marcos (Jose Alcala) recalls the hardships of the previous year, reflecting on the arduous trek his migrant-worker family made from Texas to the Midwest during harvest season. Along the way, Marcos learns plenty about the harsh realities of bigotry and the power of family in America of the 1950s. The coming-of-age Chicano drama is based on Tomas Rivera's semiautobiographical 1971 novella.

My Family 1995 star_border 7.6
Traces over three generations an immigrant family's trials, tribulations, tragedies, and triumphs. Maria and Jose, the first generation, come to Los Angeles, meet, marry, face deportation all in the 1930s. They establish their family in East L.A., and their children Chucho, Paco, Memo, Irene, Toni, and Jimmy deal with youth culture and the L.A. police in the '50s. As the second generation become adults in the '60s, the focus shifts to Jimmy, his marriage to Isabel (a Salvadorian refugee), their son, and Jimmy's journey to becoming a responsible parent.

Amateur 1994 star_border 6.3
A man wakes up in an alley, bleeding and with no memory of who he is. He stumbles into a coffee shop and is befriended by a charitable ex-nun who is failing in her attempts to write marketable pornography.

Golden Gate 1994 star_border 4
A brash 22-year-old FBI agent trumps up charges of Communist spying against a Chinese laundryman. Ten years later, he wants to make amends to the man and his teenage daughter.

Shimmer 1993 star_border 7.5
The solo actor in Shimmer tells the story by becoming each character in turn. The play takes place in 1956, in a harsh Midwestern juvenile detention center, where two boys befriend each other.

Much Ado About Nothing 1993 star_border 7
In this Shakespearean farce, Hero and her groom-to-be, Claudio, team up with Claudio's commanding officer, Don Pedro, the week before their wedding to hatch a matchmaking scheme. Their targets are sharp-witted duo Benedick and Beatrice -- a tough task indeed, considering their corresponding distaste for love and each other. Meanwhile, meddling Don John plots to ruin the wedding.

Fires in the Mirror 1993
Anna Deveare Smith plays over 30 characters in a re-creation of the racial conflict that erupted in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Ethan Frome 1993 star_border 5.6
Married couple, Ethan and Zeena, are in need an extra hand around the house due to Zeena's debilitated body and constant illness. The young woman who joins them is a beautiful, spirited person. She and Ethan fall in love much to the dismay of Zeena.

Roosters 1993 star_border 4
Gallo Morales is the proud patriach returning home after a seven-year stint for manslaughter. Seeking to re-establish his legendary status as a champion breeder, he comes back for the rooster bred by his father. But it is Hector, his son who inherits the prize-winning bird and neither are about to give in. The fall-out from their conflict has consequences for the whole family, especially for Angela, the sensitive 14-year-old daughter unable to cope with the brutal world that surrounds her and her own emerging womanhood, despite the best efforts of Juana, her strong but long-suffering mother.

Tales from Hollywood 1992 star_border 1
A slightly ironical description of the colony of German artists in Los Angeles, who had to leave their country during the Nazi-regime. A young playwriter (von Horvath) joins them and finds out, that there are gaps between the artistical attitudes and the real live behavior of authors like Thomas or Heinrich Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger or Bertold Brecht.

Simple Men 1992 star_border 6.7
Dennis is a handsome and bookish college student. His brother, Bill, is a roughhewn ladies' man and thief. Together they search for their dad, confront their expectations of each other, themselves, and their attitudes towards women.

All the Vermeers in New York 1992 star_border 5.7
A parable of the missteps of life enacted in the hothouse world of late 1980’s New York, in which the art market and the stock market each boomed, and in process spawned a smorgasbord of “yuppie” delusions which still persist. Anna, a French actress studying in New York, crosses paths with a successful stock-broker, Mark, standing before a Vermeer portrait at the Metropolitan, thence ensues a peculiar romance of missed meanings and connections, with tangential asides to the steaming arts world and stock market, loft-mate conflicts, and, perhaps, love. Wrapped up in their blindered worlds, Anna and Mark deflect away from their chances, leaving at the conclusion the wistful face of Vermeer’s portrait enigmatically asking questions. All the Vermeers in New York is a comedy of manners which, as gently as a Vermeer, looks beneath the skin of this time and place, and of these characters.

Fool's Fire 1992 star_border 4.7
A crippled dwarf is forced to become jester to a tyrannical king, but when the king abuses a beautiful dwarf with whom the jester is in love the jester plots a terrible revenge.

Thank You and Good Night 1992
Director Jan Oxenberg's docu-fantasy narrative about aging and death, and how it affects her family.

Surviving Desire 1992 star_border 7
Jude, a college professor, is obsessed with Sophie, his student. She, in turn, is intrigued by his scholarly charm. Flirtation turns to lust and the two become lovers.

Cabeza de Vaca 1991 star_border 6.8
An international award winning saga of old Mexico. In 1528, a Spanish expedition flounders off the coast of Florida with 600 lives lost. One survivor, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, roams across the American continent searching for his Spanish comrades. Instead, he discovers the Iguase, an ancient Indian tribe. Over the next eight years, Cabeza de Vaca learns their mystical and mysterious culture, becoming a healer and a leader. But soon this New World collides with the Old World as Spanish conquistadors seek to enslave the Indians, and Cabeza de Vaca must confront his own people and his past.

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Three Sovereigns for Sarah 1985
This is a true story based on transcripts of the Salem Witch Trials.