Regained

Guy Maddin creates artificial worlds reminiscent of films from a distant past. Full of dream logic, spirits and perversions - but always humour. In this documentary with beautiful clips, he talks about his work and sources of inspiration, including actress Isabella Rossellini and director Fritz Lang.

Caligari's staggering narrative debut is a landmark in Italian cinema of the 1980s. Toxic Love vividly depicts the life of junkies on the Roman seaside, in a documentary-like portrayal of marginal lives that is compassionate, ironic, and almost romantic, just as in Pasolini's masterworks. Regained Special: Claudio Caligari. With Critics' Talk Special in LantarenVenster Foyer on Thu 4 Feb, 16:00 after the screening of Non essere cattivo.

During World War II, it was mainly women who, as human computers, made calculations for ballistic tests and early computers.

Classic precursor to Iranian New-Wave films from the1960s and 1970s, in which a taxi driver gets a baby dumped on him after the mother disappears without trace in the night. A sharp indictment against moral corruption in the Iran of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

After a deceptively quiet prelude, Tscherkassky tears the integrity of naked bodies to pieces and aims our voyeuristic gaze completely at the medium itself.

Threading together anecdotes about Florence Balcombe (the wife of Bram Stoker), Oscar Wilde and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, Koldo also tarries for an intriguingly long time with unsuspecting tourists on a contemporary cruiseship. After all, Nosferatu arrived as a stowaway too.

Short documentary unravels what happened to Portuguese writer José Régio's intention 90 years ago to borrow a camera and make a film and in that way start Portuguese cinema. Screens before Visita ou memórias e confissões/Memories and Confessions.

Three best friends live by the sea and spend time outside, observing the world, talking about the meaning of life and just enjoying their youth that would soon be interrupted by the war. A banned masterpiece of Soviet 'nouvelle vague'.

Two of the most underrated professions in film are researcher and storyboard-artist. The Birds, The Graduate, Scarface: without the talents of Harold and Lilian Michelson, they would not have become such iconic films. A very special couple that meanwhile had an intense romance, as shown in this bio.

Captain Maurice Seddon was a British eccentric who preferred to heat his body than his house, and so he invented electric clothing. This curious portrait is also a striking piece of media history, as it partly comprises Seddon’s countless TV appearances, for instance in the David Letterman Show.

"That's life, it can’t be helped", says Kees Hin, one of Holland’s most idiosyncratic filmmakers, who regards the world as a stage. Starting with shoes from the war and countless reels of film, he discusses his motivations with Barbara den Uyl. For him, film is primarily an attempt to get to know people.

In Hollywood, a hobby filmmaker can also sometimes get a film star in front of his lens. Comedian and actor Ken Murray collected an impressive cast.

A rhythmic montage of photographs made by the Cassini satellite in orbit around Saturn, including the ‘imperfect’ images that never made it into the press.

Film essayist Andersen rescues the Afro-American actor, director and scriptwriter Spencer Williams from obscurity with a striking, plotless montage film.

Women with a perfect Caucasian skin are filmed beside a colour chart to set the colour balance: exoticism or racism? They are 'Lilis' or ‘China Girls’, women with porcelain-white skin. A Kodak director describes his encounter with the 'real' Lili.

Attractive collage combining the soundtrack of a 1975 Bruce Lee vehicle with French fashion photography and amateur films from the American middle classes.

A contemporary variation on Hiroshima, mon amour, but with a strong emphasis on the use of colour and with the voice of nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Who does the camera love most? In a series of vintage screen tests, we see anonymous young girls posing uncomfortably, hoping for a role in a film.

For one whole winter, South Korean film critic Jung Sung-il followed his hero, Chinese documentary maker Wang Bing. Bing is known for his long films, which last between nine and fifteen hours. Bing explains why in Night and Fog in Zona, a portrait that unerringly imitates Bing's style - including the length!

Caligari's swan song, premiered in Venice after his death, revisits and updates his Pasolinian penchant for marginal characters. Rough, violent and loud, Don't Be Bad is a buddy movie of sorts that flirts with desperation, only to save a touching brim of hope for the very end.Regained Special: Claudio Caligari. With Critics' Talk Special in Lantaren Venster Foyer on Thu 4 Feb, 16:00.

In 1965, famous playwright Samuel Beckett shot his only film with an old and enigmatic Buster Keaton in the leading role. The making-of shows that Keaton actually had no idea what he was doing on the set and that Beckett also regarded his film as a failure. Yet it remains an intriguing masterpiece.

What possessed the cameraman who shot so many French classics to give up? And why does he now prefer to work on his parquet floor than look at the lens for this portrait? A look back at a very active career in which the actress Isabelle Adjani played an important role both professionally and privately.

Caligari's plunge into the violent nocturnal escapades of a Roman armed robber in the late 70s, early 80s is a faithful tribute to Italian genre cinema of those days, as well as a sublime investigation of the psychological climate of an era that forged contemporary Italy.Regained Special: Claudio Caligari. With Critics' Talk in Lantaren Venster Foyer on Thu 4 Feb, 16:00 after screening of Non essere cattivo.

Every morning the projectionist at Alfred Talkies blesses the cinema and its staff. The old building in Mumbai Central has been showing Hindi films for 80 years, films as colourful as the billboards that S. Rehman makes every week. Melancholy portrait of a disappearing cinema culture.

Cinematographic collages show post-war reconstruction of the Netherlands. Shots of buildings are intercut at high speed, making the nation look like one big city. Rotterdam is prominently represented: hear the new heart of Rotterdam beat here. The programme offers a new look at the city and its place in the Netherlands.

A dive into the collective memory of the City of Chicago. In a very associative way, Silva samples 35 films to compile a mini city symphony.

Two circles, twice the same image: a restless pool of simmering tar. The soundtrack also evokes hellish associations: an eyewitness report of atom bombs on Japan.

Four poignant stories about love and relationships. The film subtly blends fiction and documentary, poetry and sociology, as well as questioning notions of love and marriage, solitude and alienation. Another masterpiece by Mikhail Kalik (see Goodbye, Boys!) that was censored in the USSR.

With her abstract, graphic drawing, the Rotterdam artist refers to the era of art deco, while its changing light patterns refer to cinema.

Sergej Eisenstein and Bertolt Brecht both separately tried their luck in Hollywood, in vain. Beloff reincarnated them as two lanky youths.

When he was 73, the Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira shot a beautifully personal film "by me, and about me" in his own home in Porto. When he was finished, he ordered that it should only be put out after he died. He had no idea that it would be another 33 years before that happened.