In one of those wonderful coincidences of history, lumière, the French word for “light,” was also the last name of brothers Auguste and Louis, whose brilliant invention, the cinematograph, helped to inaugurate the most beloved art form of the last 130 years. Institute Lumière director Thierry Frémaux uses Lumière, Le Cinema! to guide the viewer through over a hundred shorts—some famous, some forgotten, some never before seen—directed by Lumière and company. In the process, Frémaux illuminates how the brothers employed the camera as a creative instrument as they (and their operators) mastered framing, staging, and subject selection for quotidian and exotic microdocumentaries as well as the first ever fictional motion pictures. The result is not only a glorious re(telling) of the genesis of cinema but a profound meditation on the beautiful world captured—and the mysterious world imagined—by the Lumières.

Some spaces draw attention, as if they evoke something that’s about to happen. These are the places where we escape when we dream or die. The only thing that exists is time; we wait for the moment to arrive.

Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era's progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time.

Twenty-four images of a camera running in the woods, a moonlight and a cemetery through improvised gestures, mechanical abstraction and saturated colors

A film about peace, love and war. Dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the end of the Civil War in Russia. The film takes place at the end of the summer of 1917, when Russia and the whole world were at a crossroads between two eras. None of the people could even imagine how much his life would change in the very near future. In a strange way, the atmosphere of the film echoes our current reality and what is happening in Russia today. According to the form of visualization, the film belongs to experimental mockumentary cinema. To give greater authenticity to what is happening on the screen, the shooting was carried out on black-and-white negatives of 16 and 35 mm, hand-operated cameras were used and the material was developed in manual spiral tanks. The documentary chronicle of the Kolchak army of 1919 and the White army in the Far East of 1922 is embedded in the finale of the film.

In 1999, 11-year-old Nisha Platzer lost her older brother, Josh, to suicide. Twenty years later, her search for a specialized medical treatment leads her to the door of someone who was once exceptionally close to Josh. And so it is that she finally has the chance to truly know her brother through his chosen family. Captured over five years in which synchronicities continually manifested, Platzer’s documentation of these encounters gently asserts that both grieving and healing are meant to be communal experiences.

The decision to move to Holland doesn't sound like a wise idea. Why move to a country that could be flooded at any moment? For the last 25 years, the political climate has shifted. The public debate on migration has become harsher, more heated, and polarized. What would have been considered right-wing xenophobia back then, is now considered mainstream. Populists simplify complex realities into good and evil, victims and perpetrators: ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Their rhetoric often consists of dehumanizing words and metaphors. One of these is ‘water’. In reality, water is not an immediate threat to the average Dutch person; but it is a huge threat to the thousands trying to reach the Netherlands. People trying to survive the Mediterranean Sea in rubber boats. Trying to survive winter on the Aegean coast in primitive tents. To them, water really is deadly.

What are they? What do they seek? When all the lights go out, they will wander. And you will never see them.

After discovering a stranger’s livestream, a month unfolds under his balcony, through watching and being watched.

Twenty images of a camera running next to a chemical platform and capturing abstract light throught improvised gestures and asymmetrical motion

Filmmaking icon Agnès Varda, the award-winning director regarded by many as the grandmother of the French new wave, turns the camera on herself with this unique autobiographical documentary. Composed of film excerpts and elaborate dramatic re-creations, Varda's self-portrait recounts the highs and lows of her professional career, the many friendships that affected her life and her longtime marriage to cinematic giant Jacques Demy.

A train moves through winter as a superimposed image of the same route in spring gradually emerges. Both moments coexist within a single frame, revealing two seasons happening at once.