Therapy for a Vampire at Real Art Ways

Vienna, 1930. Count von Kozsnom has lost his thirst for life, and his marriage cooled centuries ago.

Fortunately, Sigmund Freud is accepting new patients the good doctor suggests the Count appease his vain wife by commissioning a portrait of her by his assistant, Viktor.

But it’s Viktor’s headstrong girlfriend Lucy who most intrigues the Count, convinced she’s the reincarnation of his one true love.

Soon, the whole crowd is a hilarious mess of mistaken identities and misplaced affections in this send-up of the vampire genre, proving that 500 years of marriage is enough.

Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, the new film from acclaimed director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet) is a gripping, human tale of survival.

On the losing side of a civil war in Sri Lanka, a Tamil soldier (Antonythasan Jesuthasan) poses as the husband and father of two other refugees in order to escape their ravaged homeland. Arriving in France, the makeshift “family” sets about establishing a new life—only to find themselves once again embroiled in violence on the mean streets of Paris.

A heartrending saga of three strangers united by circumstance and struggle, Dheepan is both a tour-de-force thriller and a powerful depiction of the immigrant experience.

HELD OVER!

Toni trains as a boxer with her brother at a community center in Cincinnati’s West End, but becomes fascinated by the dance team that also practices there. Enamored by their strength and confidence, Toni eventually joins the group, eagerly absorbing routines, mastering drills, and even piercing her own ears to fit in.

As she discovers the joys of dance and of female camaraderie, she grapples with her individual identity amid her newly defined social sphere.

Shortly after Toni joins the team, the captain faints during practice. By the end of the week, most of the girls on the team suffer from episodes of fainting, swooning, moaning, and shaking in a seemingly uncontrollable catharsis. Soon, however, the girls on the team embrace these mysterious spasms, transforming them into a rite of passage.

Toni fears “the fits” but is equally afraid of losing her place just as she’s found her footing. Caught between her need for control and her desire for acceptance, Toni must decide how far she will go to embody her new ideals.

HELD OVER!

The latest film from the creators of the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Feet from Stardom and the critically-hailed Best of Enemies, follows members of the Ensemble as they gather in locations across the world, exploring the ways art can both preserve traditions and shape cultural evolution.

Blending performance footage, personal interviews, and archival film, director Morgan Neville and producer Caitrin Rogers focus on the personal journeys of a small group of Silk Road Ensemble mainstays – Kinan Azmeh (Syria), Kayhan Kalhor (Iran), Yo-Yo Ma (France/United States), Wu Man (China), and Cristina Pato (Spain) – to chronicle passion, talent, and sacrifice.

Through these moving individual stories, the filmmakers paint a vivid portrait of a bold musical experiment and a global search for the ties that bind.

In the middle of the Aegean Sea, on a luxury yacht, six men on a fishing trip decide to play a game.

During this game, things will be compared, measured and blood will be tested.

Friends will become rivals, but at the end of the voyage, when the game is over, the winner will wear the victorious signet ring: the “Chevalier.”

This Israeli film tells the story of Hagit, a young woman with mild mental deficiency, works in a toilet-paper factory. She lives with her mother Sarah, a divorcee who gave up her life for her daughter.

Hagit strives for independence and Sarah is torn between her desire to protect her, and her own will to live.

When a relationship develops between her and the son of the factory owner, Hagit hides it from her mother. The announcement of the closing of the factory shakes Hagit and Sarah’s life and jeopardizes Hagit’s love story.

Sunset Song is Terence Davies’ intimate epic of hope, tragedy and love at the dawning of the Great War.A young woman’s endurance against the hardships of rural Scottish life, based on the novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, told with gritty poetic realism by Britain’s greatest living auteur.

The film takes place during the early years of the twentieth century, with the conflicts and choices a young woman experiences reflecting the struggle between tradition and change; a struggle that continues to resonate today. Set in a rural community, Sunset Song is driven by the young heroine Chris and her intense passion for life, for the unsettling Ewan and for the unforgiving land.

The First World War reaches out from afar, bringing the modern world to bear on the community in the harshest possible way, yet in a final moment of grace, Chris endures, now a woman of remarkable strength who is able to draw from the ancient land in looking to the future.

Sunset Song is at once epic in emotional scale and deeply romantic at its core, given power by Terence Davies’ unflinching poetic realism.

Men & Chicken is a darkly hilarious slapstick comedy starring Mads Mikkelsen (“Hannibal,” ingeniously cast against type) about a pair of socially-challenged siblings who discover they are adopted half-brothers in their late father’s videotaped will.

Their journey in search of their true father takes them to the small, insular Danish island of Ork, where they stumble upon  three additional half-brothers – each also sporting hereditary harelips and lunatic tendencies – living in a dilapidated mansion overrun by barn animals.

Initially unwelcome by their newfound kin, the two visitors stubbornly wear them down until they’re reluctantly invited to stay. As the misfit bunch get to know each other, they unwittingly uncover a deep family secret that ultimately binds them together.

This inventively bizarre and outlandish comedy is directed by acclaimed, Oscar-winning director Anders Thomas Jensen and also stars David Dencik (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.)

Forty years after her death, Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), one of the 20th century’s most brilliant and influential philosophers, remains a figure of fierce controversy.

A German Jew who fled Europe for New York in 1941, she was the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), Men in Dark Times (1968) and other studies of history, violence, anti-Semitism, revolution, and power. But none were more provocative than Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) in which she coined the phrase, “the banality of evil,” to describe how a man as seemingly insignificant as Eichmann could be responsible for mass murder.

Arendt was pilloried for her criticism of some Jewish leaders (especially Chaim Rumkowski) and criticized for a love affair with her professor, Martin Heidegger, a Nazi supporter.

In this no-holds-barred documentary, Director Ada Ushpiz lets Arendt’s critics have their say, but she also features the woman herself, most dramatically, in a 1964 interview for German television in which she shares fascinating insights into Eichmann: “His inability to speak was connected to his inability to think.”

Rarely has an intellectual, even one as public in her pronouncements as Arendt, incited so much anger, praise, devotion, and scorn.

Jesus is a hairdresser for a troupe of drag performers in Havana, but dreams of being a performer.

When he finally gets his chance to be on stage, a stranger emerges from the crowd and punches him in the face. The stranger is his father Angel, a former boxer, who has been absent from his life for 15 years.

As father and son clash over their opposing expectations of each other, Viva becomes a love story as the men struggle to understand one another and become a family again.

Our Last Tango tells the life and love story of Argentina’s most famous tango dancers Maria Nieves Rego (80) and Juan Carlos Copes (83), who met as teenagers and danced together for nearly fifty years until a painful separation tore them apart.

Relaying their story to a group of young tango dancers and choreographers from Buenos Aires, their story of love, hatred and passion is transformed into unforgettable tango-choreographies.

*Before the 7:30 PM screening on Tuesday, May 31, immerse yourself in Argentine dance and music with The Hartford Argentine Tango Society!

HOCKNEY is the definitive exploration of one of the most important artists of his generation. For the first time, David Hockney has given unprecedented access to his personal archive of photographs and films, resulting in a frank and unparalleled visual diary of his long life.

Acclaimed filmmaker Randall Wright offers a unique view of this unconventional artist who is now reaching new peaks of popularity worldwide. As charismatic as ever, at 77 years old he is still working in the studio seven days a week.

“It’s been said that there was something of the holiday about David Hockney, that, despite personal loss, he sees the world with holiday eyes, as if for the first time. I wanted to capture this attitude without taking away the mystery and magic of a great artist.” Randall Wright

Once upon a time there were three neighboring kingdoms each with a magnificent castle, from which ruled kings and queens, princes and princesses. John C. Reilly and Salma Hayek lead the cast in this baroque fantasy that invites Game of Thrones comparisons.

One king was a fornicating libertine, another captivated by a strange animal, while one of the queens was obsessed by her wish for a child.

Sorcerers and fairies, fearsome monsters, ogres and old washerwomen, acrobats and courtesans are the protagonists of this loose interpretation of the celebrated tales of Giambattista Basile.