Centenary Film Society

Love is abundant in Paris, or so this cinematic collage implies. The film is a set of twenty short pieces and segues created by twenty different directors. Each five-minute film glimpses a unique love tale in one of the Paris’ eighteen most distinctive neighborhoods. The overall piece gains cohesion through the magic found in the City of Lights, and the spell it weaves on all it touches. The result is less a series of vignettes, but instead a romantic and humanistic mosaic of a city-whole.

“…a kaleidoscopic view of the many moods the city inspires — and they are sundry — "Paris Je T'Aime" also works as a handy guide to the many things a short film can be.”
— Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times

Through the life of this monumental man greater questions of spirituality in the wake of oppression are faced. Director Rick Ray has combined his observations of the Far East based on extensive travel with the wisdom of the Dali Lama to create a documentary vastly deeper than a mere biopic. Instead, the film offers a rare glimpse at the humorous, scientifically curious, and endlessly kind man behind the figurehead. It is an interesting portrait of the warm reality of His Holiness juxtaposed against some stirring contemporary philosophical questions.

“There have been several documentaries about the Dalai Lama, but few have done a better job of packaging the Tibetan religious leader's circumstances, both historical and current, along with his philosophies, than Rick Ray's "10 Questions for the Dalai Lama".”
— Walter Addiego, San Francisco Chronicle

"Talk To Me" takes place in the turbulent mid 60’s as the Civil Rights Movement and Soul music permeated the Washington D.C. area with social awareness. Ex-Convict Ralph Waldo "Petey" Greene Jr. pushes himself into an on air-radio event, where he becomes friends with WOL-AM’s program manager Dewy Hughes. Immediately the greater D.C. area is impressed by fearless Petey’s ability to “Tell it like it is.” The film is an illuminating exposition of the way a medium can empower both a person and a nation to become a better version of themselves.

“A traditionally handsome biopic bursting with 1960s period detail and firecracker performances…”
— Paul Arendt, BBC

A musical child prodigy, with demanding oddball parents, decides one day he no longer wishes to pursue their desires for him. The expert pianist must find a way to cope with his talent and conflicting desires simultaneously. After a mild accident he mischievously decides to feign a more serious injury. The problems that arise shape him as a person, and teach him about the importance of being happy in life.

“A gentle fable about how the young boy from Zurich struggles to fit in rather than stand out, "Vitus" is both a cautionary tale for pushy parents and an endearing, if eccentric, empowerment fantasy for precocious children.”
— Carrie Ricky, Philadelphia Inquirer

Hal Hefner is a loser with a speech impediment. His father has left, his brother continually harasses him, and he is doomed to wonder the halls of his high school almost friendless. Everything changes one day when the beautiful captain of the debate team takes him on as her new partner. She claims to see some great untapped hidden potential, but it is possible her motives are less than genuine. This is Spellbound documentarian Jeffery Blitz’s first attempt at narrative.

“A dry, vicious and deeply moving little comedy that sort of takes the structure of a teen sports movie, then undermines that structure at every turn.”
— M.E. Russell, Portland Oregonian

French attorney Jaques Verges has an achieved global renown/uproar for defending terrorists. This documentary examines the unsavory character and his stance towards abetting the vilest of human beings. It is an exploration of the darkest psychology of evil and narcissism. School friends with Pol Pot and married to the heroine of the Algerian War, Verges is sure to spawn controversy.

“It is one of the most engaging, morally unsettling political thrillers in quite some time, with the extra advantage of being true.”
— A.O. Scott, The New York Times

Rafael is a star salesman at the biggest department store in Madrid. All his colleagues are in awe of his prowess and ambition. He aspires to a managerial position, but he must defeat Don Antonio, the best salesperson in his region. With the help of the ugliest woman working for the store, he murders the competition. However this woman’s help comes with a price, and he is left meditating on his next crime, a perfect murder. A comic thriller worthy of Hitchcock.

“"El Crimen Perfecto" is a joyride that leaves you feeling drunk and dizzy and swearing that you haven't touched a drop.”
— Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

"Fur" is a fictionalized biography of one of the twentieth century’s greatest photographers, Diane Arbus. In 1958 Arbus was living an unfulfilled life as a stylist and assistant to her husband’s family portrait business. A profoundly hairy, retired circus freak — Lionel Sweeney — moves in near by. Arbus is intrigued and wants to photograph him. A romance forms, and Arbus is flung into a new world of liberation through the fringes of society.

“Much of the film is as strange and oddly beautiful as one of Arbus' own photographs, bold in its attempt to find new ways of cracking the biopic chestnut and sensitive in its portrayal of a 1950s woman who, like so many of her contemporaries, finds herself imprisoned in a "Good Housekeeping" nightmare.”
— Scott Foundas, LA Weekly

The story of a Shanghai woman during WWII who realizes her knack for acting and joins a drama club run by an attractive young man. He turns out to be a student radical who convenes a select few members of the troupe to plan and carry out an assassination of a leading Japanese official. The young woman must lure the official into an affair. Just as she accomplishes this, disaster occurs, and she is forced to flee the country. "Lust, Caution" is an intense and erotic espionage thriller, which explores notions of identity and patriotism.

“Lee is a true master, and his potently erotic and suspenseful "Lust, Caution" casts a spell you won't want to break.”
— Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

In the early twentieth a poor Italian family attempts to immigrate to the United States. The film is the story of their relationship with a British woman who desires marriage into the family, so she can immigrate as well and the enormous trials they face through the duration of their quarantine period. Here we are presented with a romantic fable, which gets to the roots of what it means to be American.

“It's so hypnotically breathtaking, you don't realize you're not breathing. By the final shot, you don't realize you're crying either, but there go the tears.”
— Wesley Morris, Boston Globe