Produced in Berlin in 1919, Ernst Lubitsch's the Doll (Die Puppe) is a charming romantic fantasy that shows the director already in full command of the now-legendary "Lubitsch touch."

Five early fantasy and trick films--including a previously-unseen trick film by Georges Méliès, hand-colored films from Segundo de Chomon and Gaston Velle, and astonishing stop-motion animation from 1911.

Somewhere between a modern-day nightmare and a techno-fetishist's ultimate fantasy, this extraordinary film from Shinya Tsukamoto (Vital, A Snake of June) caused a cult sensation when first released. A strange man known only as the "metal fetishist", who seems to have an insane compulsion to stick scrap metal into his body, is hit and possibly killed by a Japanese "salaryman", out for a drive with his girlfriend. The salaryman then notices that he is being slowly overtaken by some kind of disease that is turning his body into scrap metal, and that his nemesis is not in fact dead but is somehow masterminding and guiding his rage and frustration-fueled transformation.

Excerpts from journals, letters, poetry and prose enrich this narrative biography of Anne, Charlotte and Emily Bronte. The program introduces the sisters' major works and illuminates their basic, recurrent themes. Samples of their own art-work, on-location photography of northern England, as well as prints, paintings and sketches portray the land and the period.

Madame Tutli-Putli boards the night train, weighed down by all her earthly possessions and the ghosts of her past. She travels alone, facing both the kindness and menace of strangers. As day descends into dark, she finds herself caught up in a desperate metaphysical adventure. Adrift between real and imagined worlds, Madame Tutli-Putli confronts her demons and is drawn into an undertow of mystery and suspense. The National Film Board of Canada presents a stunning, stop-motion animated film that takes the viewer on an exhilarating existential journey. The film introduces groundbreaking visual techniques and is supported by a haunting and original score. Painstaking care and craftsmanship in form and detail bring to life a fully imagined, tactile world unlike any you have seen. Jungian thriller? Hitchcockian suspense? Artistic tour de force? The night train awaits you. Film without words.

This film is one of the most magical to come out of Africa--hardly surprising since Madagascar is unlike anywhere else on earth. Raymond Rajaonarivelo follows his epic first film on the Malagasy liberation struggle, Taba Taba, with a very different, poetic film exploring the relationship between traditional and modern concepts of human freedom. He writes: "In French magie and image are made from the same letters... In this film, there will be Magic as long as man is dependent on mysterious forces that overwhelm him, and Image when man has acquired enough power over space, time, and himself to no longer be afraid of his life." As the title suggests, Rajaonarivelo frames his film around three visual symbols or leit motifs, sky, sea and, by implication, the land marooned between them or life between birth and death. Set among the island's high mesas, all the major characters dream of escaping this parched interior to return to the oceanic mother, Rano Masina or "sacred water" in Malagasy. Rajaonarivelo characterizes life in the arid highlands, whether in the superstitious village or the corrupt city, as unremittingly predatory. A recurrent dream of a gently breaking surf turning into pounding cattle hooves symbolizes the human tension between infinite and earthbound. Destiny, or vintana, plays a key role in the belief system of the Merina people of these high plateaus. The day and month of a child's birth are believed to determine its fate; a child born during a solar eclipse, a liminal time when sun and moon are at war, is believed to possess especially destructive powers. Tradition demands that its father must place it in a cattle pen where it will be trampled to death. The hero of this film is such a child; his mother died in childbirth but he is rescued from his fate by a young, childless woman and named Kapila, "the lame one," because of an injury he suffered in the corral. He grows into a kind but frightened young man, in effect, a stowaway in life, who supposedly can only bring evil on those around him. His adoptive mother weaves the shrouds in which the Malagasy bury, exhume and then rebury their ancestors and Kapila wears one until his ultimate liberation. Parallel to his protective adopted mother, Kapila encounters at key moments a wrathful, blind old woman, who taunts him that he cannot avoid his destructive destiny and gives him a staff of vengeance. She may be a bilo, a dead spirit possessing Kapila's body, or the ghost of one of his ancestors (perhaps his dead mother) or just a mpaamosavy or sorceress. No doubt, she also represents a repressed part of Kapila's psyche, a shadow self, enraged that society has stigmatized him as the source of calamity. As in any quest narrative, Kapila must embark on a journey to discover his true identity and purpose in life. Rajaonarivelo's crippled hero has resonances with other myths, most obviously Sundjata and Oedipus. Kapila leaves his mother and flies on the wings of a hawk over a vast wasteland to his natal village. There he confronts his father, The Poet, a madman who believes he can fly away from human cruelty and his own guilt. He tells his son: "Nature is as beautiful as a woman yet she has something against us; she inhabits us and forces us to do things we find revolting. Your powers too are only an instrument of her will." The villagers, led by a hypocritical Christian priest and a traditional diviner, hunt Kapila like an animal. He survives again through the love of another young woman, Fara, a beautiful, fair-skinned métisse, an outsider marked by difference like himself. Disgusted with the cycle of hate, Kapila climbs the mountain of the ancestors, of tradition, and throws away the sorceress' cane, the source of his magical powers. This unintentionally unleashes a purifying deluge which destroys the village. In thus repudiating his destiny Kapila has ironically fulfilled it. His and Fara's love and commitment to living literally and symbolically annihilate the old cycle of destiny; the villagers by clinging to their belief in destiny insure that it comes true. In the closing sequence reprising the opening, Kapila's father again tries to kill his son by stampeding the cattle, but when they see Kapila embracing Fara they turn upon his father trampling him to death. As he wished, he is cremated in the same corral where Kapila was wounded, freed at last to rejoin the wind and the stars. In the film's final shot, Kapila and a visibly pregnant Fara at last stand on the shore, the threshold between land and water and between destiny and desire, the place where the stars and the sea meet. Kapila has paradoxically discovered his own identity only by rejecting his connections with his past - his adoptive mother, his father, even his ancestral homeland. His destiny has, in a sense, been to break free of destiny. He and Fara, outsiders joined by love not custom, have given birth to a new world governed not by magic and fate but by love and imagination. "This trim, accesible yet visionary film fascinates in its unflinching realism and its spiritual dimension questioning the role of chance in human life." - Variety "Kapila is a brooding Malagasy Oedipus, who makes his way across the island's landscape exploring the complex themes of exile and identity, love and hate." - Lesley Sharpe, Barnard College. "A beautiful poetic expression of an unexplored cinema, revealing that diverse mythologies have astonishing messages." - Le Nouvel Observateur.

Based on the original script by Kir Bulychyov and Richard Viktorov "Daughter of Space" and "Space Angels" Part 1 - "Niya, an Artificial Human" Part 2 - "Space Angels" An exciting fantasy film set in the 23rd centruy. Niya, an artificially createdgirl, gets on the Earth from the distant planet of Dessa. On her home planet, the civilization is being destroyed by industrial pollution and the totalitarian regime of the dwarf Turanchoks. The earthlings save their brothers by intellect. AwardsSpecial Jury Prize "Silver Asteroid" - IFF of Sci-Fi Films in Trieste (Italy) 1981 All-Union Film Festival in Vilnius - Vilnius University Award for the Best Film on the Science Theme, 1982 USSR State Prize for Works for the Children, 1982 The most popular film of the 1980s. Girls in the USSR got Niya-like haircuts and Alexei Rybnikov's music was played on all open-reel tape recorders. 

A fantasy tale about a young Zulu who leaves his village to go to the city, falls in love with the new music he hears there, and returns home to form a Zulu jazz band. The South African production and distribution company African Films followed up the success of Zonk! with Song of Africa. This is a fantasy tale about a young Zulu who leaves his village to go to the city, falls in love with the new music he hears there, and returns home to form a Zulu jazz band which then goes to the city to compete with other bands, and comes out on top. As in the earlier films, the impact of American jazz and popular music is enormous. Like African Jim and Zonk!, Song of Africa draws on the best talent from the townships. Director Emil Nofal and director of photography Dave Millin ensure high production values, making it an above-average B-movie. Directed by Emil Nofal.

Caroline Leaf's animated work springs from her expert storytelling and pioneering animation techniques. One significant contribution to filmmaking is her technique of manipulating sand on a light-box, which she began as a student at Harvard. She later worked as an animator and director at the National Film Board of Canada. Her film The Street garnered an Academy Award nomination in 1976. On this episode, she screens the remarkable The Owl Who Married a Goose: An Eskimo Legend and parts of The Street and The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa which were works-in-progress at the time. Visit her personal website at www.carolineleaf.com. Mary Beams' hand-drawn films carry themes of memory, erotic fantasy and feminism. She taught animation at Harvard from 1972 to 1977, and by 1988, she was a partner in Media Ink, Inc., with a weekly animated political spot on NBC's Sunday Today Show. She has also taught at the University of South Florida and Northern Illinois University. Here, she screens The Tub, Solo Film, Going Home Sketch-book, Piano Rub, and her work-in-progress, Quilt Film. About the Screening Room series In the early 1970s a group of idealistic artists, lawyers, doctors and teachers saw an opportunity to change commercial television in Boston and the surrounding area. It would require years of litigation up to and including the Supreme Court, but the case was won and the Channel 5 license was given to WCVB-TV. Screening Room was one of several programs offered in an effort to provide alternative television viewing. The idea behind Screening Room was to give independent filmmakers an opportunity to discuss their work and show it to a large urban audience. Nearly 100 ninety-minute programs were produced and aired between 1973 and 1980. Screening Room was developed and hosted by filmmaker Robert Gardner, who at the time, was Director of Harvard's Visual Arts Center and Chairman of its Visual and Environmental Studies Department. His own films include Dead Birds (1964), and Forest of Bliss (1986).

Flicker Alley is proud to present this edition of The late Mathias Pascal. It is remarkably cast with some of the great actors of that era: Ivan Mosjoukine, (as Mathias Pascal), Michel Simon, Lois Moran, Pierre Batcheff and Marcelle Pradot. The film also boasts famous stylized sets designed by Alberto Cavalcanti and Lazare Meerson, seen here to best advantage in a stunning tinted and toned print restored by the Cinèmatheque Française, and accompanied by a beautiful large-orchestra score composed and conducted by Timothy Brock. Mathias, an eccentric dreamer, is trapped in the undertakings of daily life as he suffers his days in a loveless marriage, a dead end job and tyrannized by his ungrateful mother-in-law. Grief-stricken by the death of his mother and infant daughter, Mathias flees to Monte Carlo, where a run of luck at roulette wins him a fortune. After his death is falsely reported, Mathias leaps at the chance of a second and adventurous life in Rome. Both tragedy and comedy, The late Mathias Pascal explores the struggles and possibilities of a man in search of happiness in L'Herbier's most celebrated film. Critic David Melville wrote The white Russian exile Ivan Mosjoukine was arguably the greatest male star of the silent screen. Imagine an actor who combined the matinée idol looks of John Barrymore with the smoldering sexual magnetism of Valentino, the deft physical comedy of Chaplin with the dark Gothic creepiness of Lon Chaney. It sounds impossible, of course - unless you've seen Mosjoukine in action. This is a co-production of L'Herbier's Cinegraphic company, and Alexandre Kamenka's Films Albatros, the Parisian home of the émigré Russian screen colony and maker of many of the most prestigious films of the decade. L'Herbier at this time was among cinema's leading avant-garde directors, the equal of Fritz Lang, Abel Gance and Erich von Stroheim, and The Late Mathias Pascal is considered one of his best films, full of picturesque tricks, spiritual angles, and dream sequences as it passes from rural chamber-film to burlesque fantasy, with an incursion into expressionist comedy of manners. The Late Mathias Pascal is a film of great distinction and virtuoso style, adapted and directed by Marcel l'Herbier from a novel by Luigi Pirandello. The biggest French fantasy film of the 1920s, this co-production of Cinegraphic and Films Albatros, is considered one of L'Herbier's best films, full of picturesque tricks, spiritual angles, and dream sequences as it passes from rural chamber-film to burlesque fantasy, with an incursion into expressionist comedy of manners.