Spotlight
Wondering which films to watch? Spotlight presents thematically grouped, must see films, hand-picked by Fandor's curators.

The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra


The Mirror

Un chien Andalou

Straight to Hell Returns

Club of the Discarded

At Land

Night Across the Street

Darkness Light Darkness

This is Not a Movie

The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend

I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse
Spotlight on Surrealism
The original Surrealists of the 1920s loved film. They loved its populism, vulgarity and potential for anarchic expression. As an experimental cinema developed, surrealism remained a dominant spice on its menu, from the abstract psychodramas of Maya Deren to the animated nightmares of Jan Svankmajer and beyond. Never what you may expect, but you’ll know it when you see it.
Selected Films
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Night Across the Street
On the verge of a forced retirement, Don Celso, an elderly office worker, begins to relive both real and imagined memories from his life: a trip to the movies as a young boy with Ludwig van Beethoven, listening to tall tales from Long John Silver, a brief stay in a haunted...Watch Movie -
Embrace of the Irrational
EMBRACE OF THE IRRATIONAL begins as what appears to be an hour long educational video written and directed by the fictitious Martin Thebes. It centers around a meditation on the Romantics' ideal of emotional confusion as a way to find truth. Then the film slowly unravels as...Watch Movie -
At Land
AT LAND begins at sea. In the film's stunning opening sequence, a woman (played by filmmaker Maya Deren) emerges on shore, climbs up a pile of driftwood... and finds herself in the middle of a formal banquet. She then moves from lush, verdant jungles to seaweed-strewn beaches, stealing chess...Watch Movie -
The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer
This early film by renowned animators Stephen and Timothy Quay is structured as a series of little lessons in perception, taught by a puppet simulacrum of Jan Svankmajer (whose head is an opened book) to a doll (whose head the master empties of dross and refills with a similar...Watch Movie