Country:Japan, Poland

Director:Mamorou Oshi

Program:Parralel Pathways

Summary:

Mamorou Oshi made a name for himself as the creator of the groundbreaking anime Ghost in the Shell where his interest in reflexive narrative and parallel reality was pronounced. In this experiment with live action he takes his concerns a step futher with a nod to the work of Tarkovsky. The result takes cinema to its next open ended life: In a gloomy future world, young people are addicted to an illegal and deadly battle simulation game called Avalon.

Country:United States of America

Director:Wachowski Bros

Program:Parralel Pathways

Summary:

Our hero is a man living two lives. By day he is an average computer programmer and by night a malevolent hacker known as Neo. Neo has always questioned his reality but the truth is beyond his imagination. Neo finds himself targeted by police when he is contacted by Morpheus, a computer hacker branded a terrorist by the government. Morpheus awakens Neo to the real world, a ravaged wasteland where most of humanity are controlled by machines which imprison their minds within an artificial reality known as the Matrix.

Country:United States of America

Director:Raul Ruiz

Program:Parralel Pathways

Summary:

No selection of films concerning Parallel Universes would be complete without a contribution from Chilean master Raul Ruiz whose oeuvre is largely devoted to infinitely multiplying narratives. This potentially simple film, often forgotten, was Ruiz’ attempt at a popular Hollywood product, illustrating how impossible it is for him to turn in a reasonable facsimile. Confusing realities quickly surface for a fragile young woman recovering from rape and an attempted suicide. In one reality, she is a vicious destroyer of men.

Country:United States of America

Director:Jonathan Demme

Program:Parralel Pathways

Summary:

Jonathan Demme set himself a difficult challenge to adapt the brillant yet inordinately complex novel by Toni Morrison which has gained the status of a true contemporary classic. Some years after the Civil War, former slave Sethe lives with her grown daughter, Denver. Paul D, a former slave who knew Sethe, happens on them and joins the family, but not before the house rattles and pitches, as if spirits reject Paul D's coming.

Country:United Kingdom

Director:Tim Webb

Program:Parralel Pathways

Summary:

This film provides an extremely powerful introduction to another creative universe that is mostly closed to us. Tim Webb’s experience as an animator led him to realise that there was a quality in some of the drawings of autistic children that would lend itself to animation. Webb actually researched the project for a year before embarking on what proved to be an animated documentary, based upon collaborations and contributions by autistic people that gave them a voice of their own.

Country:United States of America

Director:Cheryl Dunye

Program:Parralel Pathways

Summary:

Cheryl is young, Black, and lesbian, and working in Philadelphia with her best friend Tamara while consumed by a film project: to make a video about her search for a Black actress from Philly who appeared in films in the 30s and was known as the Watermelon Woman. Following various leads, Cheryl discovers the Watermelon Woman's stage name and real name and surmises that the actress had a long affair with Martha Page, a White woman and one of Hollywood's few female directors. The story doubles when Cheryl becomes involved with Diana, who's also White.

Country:France, Georgia

Director:Otar Ioselliani

Program:Parralel Pathways

Summary:

Otar Ioselliani offers up a feast of parallel activity to dice up his trenchant political satire. The movie takes place, like Griffith’s Intolerance, during four periods of time in Ioselliani’s native country of Georgia: in the Middle Ages, in the early 1900s, during the Soviet Stalinist period and in the chaos of the early 90’s Soviet dissolution. The same actors play different characters at different periods of time. The actor playing a medieval king returns as a Stalinist henchman and again as a contemporary smuggler.

Country:United States of America

Director:Paul Verhoeven

Program:Parralel Pathways

Summary:

Paul Verhoeven takes on the narrative world of Philip K. Dick, the master of slippery realities, with the help of terminator Arnold Schwartzenegger. What is reality when you can't trust your memory?

Country:Iran

Director:Abbas Kiarostami

Program:Parralel Pathways

Summary:

Abbas Kiarostami took the real people involved in a headline incident and restaged the circumstances with them up to the point where the film collides with actual documentary reality. This startling trope of intermingled fiction and documentary elements is a groundbreaking provocation that initiated the meta-reality cinema that increasingly came into vogue in Iran. Pretending to be famous director Mohsen Makhmalbaf making his next movie, Ali Sabzian enters a well-to-do family in Teheran with the understanding that he will make a film with them.

Country:France, Poland

Director:Krysystof Kieslowski

Program:Parralel Pathways

Summary:

Since his early passing, Kieslowski’s name has become distinctly associated with parallel narratives and thematically linking stories. This enigmatic and unusually romantic film occupies a special place in his work at a time when he began to work outside of his native Poland. Here he boldly creates images ostensibly straddling two cultures and two lives.  Veronika lives in Poland. Veronique lives in Paris. They don't know each other. Veronika gets a place in a music school, works hard, but collapses and dies on her first performance.