Louis de Funes stars in this celebrated comic treat as a racist, anti-Semitic businessman en route to his daughter’s wedding, who unwittingly stumbles upon a group of Arab terrorists.
Facets EDU presents titles from the Facets film library specially selected for the digital programming needs of schools, libraries, and other institutions, offering public performance rights and digital site licenses. Click here for more information, scroll down to see recently added titles, or use the buttons to the left to browse by topic.
Prince of Homburg
Marco Bellocchio (Henry IV) directs this haunting period piece based on the play by Heinrich von Kleist and starring Andrea Di Stefano (Before Night Falls) in the title role.
Krik? Krak! – Tales of a Nightmare
The story of Haiti’s misery under the despotic Duvaliers is revealed in Jac Avila and Vanyoska Gee’s innovative feature, which pushes the political documentary into the realm of fantasy and magical realism.
How to Live in the German Federal Republic
Harun Farocki’s amazing dissection of modern life in Germany – a country he calls “a training camp in which techniques for living are practiced by the professionally living.”
Germany, Pale Mother
A beautiful, painfully moving account of writer-director Helma Sanders-Brahms’ childhood, made to show her own daughter a vision of Germany beyond Hitler and the Holocaust.
Electra, My Love
In an awesome leap of imagination, Miklos Jancso, one of the world’s great filmmakers, relocates the classic myth of Electra to a desolate Hungarian plain.
Camila
A young Catholic socialite from Buenos Aires falls in love and runs away with a young Jesuit priest.
Anna Akmatova File
A moving portrait of the extraordinary Soviet poet, Anna Akhmatova. Although her work was banned and went unpublished for 17 years, her poem “Requiem” became the underground anthem for the millions who suffered under Stalin.
North Korea: A Day in the Life
For this rare look inside North Korea, director Pieter Fleury gained unprecedented access to a country generally cloaked in secrecy.
In Danger and Deep Distress, the Middle Way Spells Certain Death
Alexander Kluge, the father of New German Cinema, never ceased to provoke viewers by playing with film form and content. IN DANGER AND DEEP DISTRESS offers a challenging combination of documentary and fictional footage that is a snapshot of life in West Germany thirty years ago.
Fantastic Planet
Rene Laloux’s mesmerizing sci-fi classic, based on the book Om en Serie by Stefan Wul, is a landmark of European animation.
The Age of Czeslaw Milosz
This handsome documentary commemorates the 100th birthday of Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel Prize-winning Polish-Lithuanian poet who spanned his century.
Free Havana
Gay Rights is an issue heard around the world, including Cuba. Free Havana paints a vivid picture of what it has been like to be gay in Cuba through the candid stories of six gay and lesbian individuals.
King Lear
Hailed as one of the best adaptations of this Shakespearean tragedy, Grigori Kozintsev’s King Lear is a striking, epic interpretation based on a translation by novelist Boris Pasternak and driven by a stirring score by composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
Hamlet
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Considered by many the finest screen adaptation of Shakespeare’s greatest work. Stunning locations and music highlight Grigori Kozintsev’s spare, haunting adaptation of the Bard’s classic, based on a translation by novelist Boris Pasternak.
Hopper’s Silence
One of the most recognizable works of American art, Edward Hopper’s painting Nighthawks encapsulates the alienation and loneliness of the modern urban milieu. His haunting, enigmatic paintings are defined by a hard-edged realism and the presence of isolated figures alone in their thoughts.
Waiting For the Moon
Jill Godmilow directed this daring film about writer Gertrude Stein, her companion Alice B. Toklas, and their friends and colleagues in French Bohemian culture, including Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway, between the two World Wars.
Isa: The People’s Diva
Isa Kremer lived life to the fullest as the premiere singer of authentic Yiddish songs. The first woman to perform Yiddish songs on the concert stage, she legitimized the language as a valid and vital part of Jewish culture.
3=1: The Films of Jan Sharp
Jan Sharp’s circle of friends includes some of the most interesting, creative, and unique people on earth. Her raw, intimate, even intrusive documentaries on these friends engross the viewer with observations on their lives.
Fireworks Wednesday
“Few Iranian films have tried to realistically depict both the urban middle and lower classes, and fewer still with the complexity of story telling and depth of characterization in Asghar Farhadi’s impressive third feature, Fireworks Wednesday” (Deborah Young, Variety).
My Name Was Sabina Spielrein
In 1977, a surprising find in Switzerland led to the re-discovery of one of the most important female figures in the early history of psychoanalysis. The found diaries and letters revealed an extensive relationship between the unknown Russian-Jewish psychiatrist Sabina Spielrein and two founding fathers of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.
Maxwell Street Blues
Chicago’s legendary Maxwell Street was home to an open-air market that thrived for decades. It was there that the Chicago blues was born as African-American street musicians, who had fled the rural South for the city, played regularly on the dirty corners, empty lots, and broken sidewalks. Together, they hammered out a hard-driving, electrified sound that influenced the world. Continue reading
Yesterday Girl
As the flagship film of the “young German cinema” movement, Alexander Kluge’s first feature, Yesterday Girl, paved the way for the New German Cinema of the 1970s.
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Delta
Lushly photographed in the Danube Delta, this powerful story of forbidden love follows young Mihail (Felix Lajko) as he returns to the countryside after years of absence to discover he has a grown half-sister, Fauna (Orsi Toth). Together they build a house on stilts in the river and become lovers until their idyllic life is broken by violence.
Menschenfrauen
Valie Export’s daring film about relationships, Menschenfrauen (loosely translated, “humanwomen”), focuses on Franz S., a journalist, and his relationship with four women: the kindergarten nurse Petra, the teacher Gertrude, barmaid Elisabeth and his wife Anna.
The Outskirts
In this extraordinary epic – a political thriller in the tradition of Z and Weekend, mixed with acid-sharp humor – Peter Lutsik creates an astounding chronicle of a country in violent transformation.
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Private Century
This remarkable eight-part series tells the stories of ordinary Czech citizens caught in the wheels of history. Composed entirely of home movies, still photographs, letters, and diaries dating from the 1920s to 1960s, Private Century explores the impact of sweeping historical events–war, economic depression, and government interference–on the private lives of regular people.
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The Bill Douglas Trilogy
The origins of a homegrown Scottish cinema can be traced back to filmmaker Bill Douglas, who directed this trio of brilliant semi-autobiographical films about his brutal childhood in an impoverished mining town in the Highlands.
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The Popovich Brothers of South Chicago
In a small community of steel workers, truck drivers, and teachers on the South Side of Chicago, a musical group called the Popovich Brothers maintained the traditional music and rich culture of their Serbian homeland by performing in local venues.