Mirror
106 mins, VCD
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
An autobiographical film that considers the interdependence of private and collective memories. Several textual layers -- historical (with the use of newsreel), cultural and oneiric -- are interwoven  

Solaris
165 mins, VCD
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Scientists at a space observation laboratory above the planet Solaris discover that the ocean contains a power that forces them to materialise their obsessions in solid form. A new arrival calls up the physical simulation of his wife who committed suicide 

Do Bhiga Zamin
124 mins, VCD
Director: Bimal Roy
The story of a family that finally begins to prosper on their farm when the landowner demands back the land. In order to save the farm they must raise enough money to cover their debt with him. They leave for Kolkata to try and make some money, but things don't quite go to plan…

Trainspotting
93 mins, CD
Director: Danny Boyle
An intimate look inside the sub-culture of heroin abuse, this acclaimed adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel follows the misadventures of Renton, a brash twenty-something Edinburgh junkie and his nihilistic chums Tommy, Spud, Sick Boy and Begbie. Alternately comic and off-putting, the film ultimately comes down to Renton's choice between self-destruction and life

Requiem for a Dream
101 mins, CD
Director: Daren Aranovsky
Based on Hubert Selby's 1968 novel Requiem for a Dream , a dark spiral into the abyss of barren fantasies doomed to extinction. Aronovsky's frenetic, visionary, unique and disturbing style offers the perfect setting for this story of four people whose intertwined lives are filled with eternally hopeful despair. With its unflinching dissection of addiction, the film is a psychologically disturbing, visually captivating depiction of lost hope. The last half hour of the film is among the most harrowing of any film ever made

Persona
81 mins, CD
Director: Ingmar Bergman
A young nurse treats an actress suffering from a nervous breakdown, at a remote island cottage. The demands of her mute patient create an insidious personality blur, threatening the realities of both women

Taxi Driver I & II
114 mins, CD
Director: Martin Scorsese
This brutal vision of urban decay and malaise has justifiably become one of Martin Scorsese's most celebrated films. Robert De Niro plays Travis Bickle, a cab driver and Vietnam War vet whose mind slips further into insanity after being rejected by an attractive campaign worker (Cybill Shepherd). As he plots the assassination of her party's candidate, he finds himself trying to rescue a 13-year-old prostitute (Jodie Foster) from her vicious pimp (Harvey Keitel). Scorsese and De Niro team upto bring Paul Schrader's powerful script to life with this classic psychological thriller.

MacKenna's Gold I & II
122 mins, CD
Director: J Lee Thompson
A US Marshall and a Mexican bandit are involved in an explosive saga leading a gang of renegades and outlaws in a deadly search for a lost canyon of gold. Conflicts, double-crosses and mysterious clues bring out tempers and complications

The Doors
140 mins, CD
Director: Oliver Stone
Val Kilmer stars as Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone's profile of the Doors, which takes the group from its inception in mid-1960s Los Angeles to its demise with the death of the Lizard King in a Paris hotel room in 1971. Capable of an eerily correct vocal imitation of Morrison, Kilmer manifests the talent and charisma as well as the confusion and despair of the complex man who was the focal point of the group

Citizen Kane I & II
119 mins, CD
Director: Orson Welles
In 1941, the most controversial one-man show in film history was staged by 25-year-old writer-director-star Orson Welles when he dramatised the life of William Randolph Hearst, who had quite a reputation for his own one-man show, ie the Spanish-American War. Kane, the figure Welles creates, is the American as imperialist -– a Faust who sells out to the devil in himself. Citizen Kane was the only American movie of the sound period to be among the top selection at Brussels in 1958. The 1962 international poll of critics voted it first among the greatest films of all time as have similar polls every decade since

M*A*S*H
111 mins, CD
Director: Robert Altman
With the release of Robert Altman's M*A*S*H, in 1970, a new form of comedy was brought to the big screen that would forever change the face of cinema. Based on the novel by Richard Hooker, M*A*S*H follows a group of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital officers as they perform surgery and pass the time just miles from the front lines in the Korean Conflict. Politics aside, M*A*S*H remains a brutal and hysterically-toned motion picture that skyrocketed Altman to the upper ranks of Hollywood directors, after decades of working with documentaries and television

Battleship Potemkin
74 mins, CD
Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Battleship Potemkin was conceived as part of a cycle of myth-making films intended to tell the story of the Russian Revolution. The film commemorates the failed 1905 uprising, though technical constraints meant that only one aspect of the revolt – the Potemkin mutiny – was dealt with

Dr Strangelove
94 mins, CD
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick's Cold War masterpiece, based on the novel Red Alert by Peter George, is set at the height of the tensions between Russia and the United States, when all it took to destroy the world was one push of a button. And General Jack D Ripper (Sterling Hayden) is just the man to do it

2001-A Space Odyssey
136 mins, CD
Director: Stanley Kubrick
A landmark science fiction classic, the film was released, coincidentally, at the height of the space race between the USSR and the US. The film displays more spectacular imagery and special effects than it has verbal dialogue, as viewers are left to experience the mystical vastness of the film and to reach into their own subconscious and into the film's pure imagery to speculate about its meaning

West Beirut
105 mins, CD
Director: Ziad Doueiri
Tarek (Rami Doueiri), Omar (Mohamad Chamas) and May (Rola Al Amin) roam the streets of the city, exploring, making Super 8 films, listening to American pop music and searching for their next adventure. Their parents worry that they're becoming wild, but the kids don't care. They are teenagers having fun and anything seems possible.
A common situation in any country at any time -- only this is Beirut, Lebanon in 1975, a city split by the first stirrings of war. School has shut and the city they love has been torn in two

Russian Ark
99 mins, CD
Director: Alexander Sokurov
Invisible to everyone around him, a contemporary filmmaker magically finds himself at the Hermitage in St Petersburg, back in the early 1700s! He meets a cynical French diplomat from the 19th century and the men become accomplices in an extraordinary time-travelling journey through Russia's turbulent past

21 Grams I & II
124 mins, CD
Director: Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu
21 Grams is Academy Award-nominated director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's new film. It's a story of hope and humanity, of resilience and of survival. Whether you fear death or not, it comes, and at that moment your body becomes 21 grams lighter. Is it a person's soul that constitutes those 21 grams? Is that the weight carried by those who survive us? 21 Grams, written by Guillermo Arriaga, explores the emotionally and physically charged existences of three people over a period of several months

The Idiots
109 mins, CD
Director: Dogme 95
Lars von Trier's first contribution to Denmark's Dogme 95 collective revolves around a group of adults who decide to get in touch with their ‘inner idiot'. Shot with handheld digital cameras in natural light and natural settings, the film has an urgency that makes it feel like a documentary. It raises questions about cultism, modern ethics and the idea of individuality within the absurdity of the characters' world

Bhumika
142 mins, DVD
Director: Shyam Benegal
Bhumika is the story of Usha (Smita Patil). Keshav, a family friend, takes Usha to Mumbai where she is selected in an audition. Usha rises fast in the film world. Co-starring with her in several roles is Rajan who is in love with her. Sensing a threat to himself, Keshav marries Usha. But Usha finds no peace with her husband who is both jealous and resentful of having to depend on her earnings. When Usha becomes pregnant her husband accuses her of adultery and forces her to have an abortion. Usha takes off with another man. When she returns she realises how far she has come without finding any meaning or fulfilment in her life

Maqbool
134 mins, DVD
Director: Vishal Bharadwaj
Of all William Shakespeare's plays Macbeth seems especially relevant in our times. A tale about primal instincts and emotions, Macbeth deals with ambition, love, violence and death. Though there have been countless film adaptations of the play by filmmakers across the world, little or nothing has been done to adapt it for an Indian environment. This film is an attempt in this direction

Mandi
163 mins, DVD
Director: Shyam Benegal
Mandi shows the economic and political calculations that displace the women of a Hyderabad brothel when the madame loses favour with the moneyed politically ambitious local bigwigs. The only rebellious girl in the brothel, who ran away, returns to rejoin the brothel bandwagon when she realises that it is the only life for her