Raúl Ruiz

The house of the director has a door out to the sidewalk. This gate separates the inside from the outside. The interior contains the filmmaker's personal story and his world of objects, thoughts and imaginations. Outer space contains the city of Santiago de Chile. The stories of the world inside the house are interrupted when the doorbell rings unknown and thus come into the film.

A fire started by Harry Thompson destroys the Liguria, a legendary ship of the 19th century, and its treasure of gold and diamonds sinks in the sea. Thompson manages to escape unaware that Albizetti sleeps in the same lifeboat he uses. They manage to arrive at a deserted island, which has also been reached on the opposite shore– by the other survivors of the shipwreck: three children, a woman and three men.

Michele is an MP for the Italian Communist Party who loses his memory in a car crash, though hardly anyone around him seems to notice. During a crucial water polo match on the eve of election day, he gradually begins to remember his past life, revealing a man whose personal and political identity crisis mirrors that of Italian communism itself.

Racial, social and cultural aspects of La Paz (called Chuquiago by the Aymaras) seen through four stories.

In one of his very last projects, Raul Ruiz celebrates the films of his historical predecessor Jean Painlevé, a documentary innovator whose work always blended science with surrealism. Ruiz and friends further perfect the art of mystification. Why it is so difficult to count fish in an aquarium? Ruiz, his loyal actor Melvil Poupaud and his producer François Margolin come up with a wide range of hypotheses. With their bone-dry wit, they keep up the tradition of the French pataphysics: the science of imaginary solutions. (IFFR)

Documentary in four parts on Latin American cinema. Third episode: from the 1960s, France and Europe showed a real enthusiasm for Latin American cinema, but the latter remained hampered by numerous economic and political obstacles.

Reel 23 of Gérard Courant’s on-going Cinematon series.

Documentary in four parts on Latin American cinema. First episode: the influences of Cahiers du cinéma, the New Wave, Italian neorealism. In Brazil, Cinema Novo draws inspiration from these models while drawing on the historical and cultural singularity of the country. The documentary was awarded the Prix Makhila d’or at the Festival de Biarritz, France.

A coin and a cup of coffee on a table top. Raúl Ruiz gets the most from this minimal set-up, both visually and through the laconic soundtrack.

Shortly after murdering his professor, a young man encounters a sailor who offers him a position on his ship in exchange for 3 Danish crowns and his attention as he recounts his life story.

Serge Toubiana spent a year in the company of Isabelle Huppert. Where she went, he followed. Huppert is an around-the-clock actress so she doesn't need the cinema to exist – she embodies the cinema. When she's not performing, she doesn't exist. From film to film, on stage as on screen, Huppert invites us to survey those inner landscapes of hers that we don't yet know.

Portrait of "cinéaste" Ruiz, seemingly at his typewriter, in Courant's ongoing "Cinématon" series.

Raul Ruiz relates how he got out of Chile after Pinochet’s coup d’état and how he began making movies in Europe.

"At that time (late 1992), I made a film for British television, Channel 4, called Las Soledades, the name of a long poem by Góngora. It was made in Chile, using many poetic elements of the country. Chile is seen through the eyes of a Chinese painter—a painter who uses the traditional 18th-century concepts of Shih-Tao. Once again, I am doing something that, apparently, is not meant to go hand in hand. The landscape of my country, southern Chile, where I was born, initially provokes in me a feeling of fear. The landscape is madness. In these crazy landscapes, you can find very reasonable people, which makes the landscape seem even crazier."

Joaquim Pinto has been living with HIV and VHC for almost twenty years. “What now? Remind Me” is the notebook of a year of clinical studies with toxic, mind altering drugs as yet unapproved. An open and eclectic reflection on time and memory, on epidemics and globalization, on survival beyond all expectations, on dissent and absolute love. In a to-and-fro between present and past memories, the film is also a tribute to friends departed and those who remain.

A thriller in which the characters are Latin-American exiles living in Paris. It is also a comedy about artists who play at revolution rather than actually participate in one

An experimental four-part 2002 Franco-Chilean digital video series written and directed by Raúl Ruiz. The first part won a FIPRESCI Award at the Montreal World Film Festival in 2002 "for the director's personal exploration into his homeland, using DV in a rigorous yet playful manner".

A charming tale of murder, perversity and narrative echoes told through shots of barking dogs and a La jetée-like series of stills.

On Raúl Ruiz's missing Taiwanese film "La comédie des ombres" and the projection of Clark's "Double Ghost" at the Chin Pao Shan cemetery on 19 august 2018 (anniversary of Ruiz's death and Clark's birthday).

A documentary recorded during the filming of "The Wandering Soap Opera" by Raúl Ruiz. Made in 1990 and completed 27 years later, in 2017. The film brings closer the approach in Ruiz's directing style and his personal vision of Cinema.

In the fall of 2010, Bozon and co-conspirator Pascale Bodet commandeered the first floor of Paris’s famed Centre Pompidou for 10 days of screenings, lectures and performances that amounted to a counter-canonical history of French cinema. During the ensuing merriment (entitled Beaubourg, la dernière Major !) audience members were invited to observe the daily making of this film, directed by Bozon and written by Axelle Ropert, about an inexperienced young journalist (Laure Marsac) sent to the Pompidou to interview a maverick artistic impresario (Thomas Chabrol). The result is an unexpected love story that is also a record of this landmark exhibition, featuring cameos by Raul Ruiz, Paul Vecchiali, Luc Moullet and more !

The young Marcela leaves her small Chilean village and travels to Santiago in order to find work as a secretary.

This eccentric short directed by Keith Griffiths, outlines Ruiz’s work, biography and preoccupations and includes a rare interview with the director.

Short film showing cinematographer Henri Alekan, director Raúl Ruiz and actress Olimpia Carlisi at work creating sublime visual effects of the sort seen in City of Pirates.

A wild short made as part of a filmmaking workshop that Raúl Ruiz ran in Bogotá in October 1993.

A wild short made as part of a filmmaking workshop that Raúl Ruiz ran in Bogotá in October 1993.

Commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival, "To Each His Own Cinema" brought together 33 of the world's pre-eminent filmmakers to produce short pieces exploring the multifarious facets of cinema and their perspective on the state of their chosen artform in the early 21st century.

Absurdist short about a man with a suitcase and a man inside that suitcase.

Absurdist short about a man with a suitcase and a man inside that suitcase.

The film captures the activities of the inhabitants in the countryside, in southern Chile, and the CORA (Corporation for Agrarian Reform). Although the action was filmed in four days and four nights in 1971, the movie was only finished in France in 1973, after the military coup.

The film captures the activities of the inhabitants in the countryside, in southern Chile, and the CORA (Corporation for Agrarian Reform). Although the action was filmed in four days and four nights in 1971, the movie was only finished in France in 1973, after the military coup.

The film captures the activities of the inhabitants in the countryside, in southern Chile, and the CORA (Corporation for Agrarian Reform). Although the action was filmed in four days and four nights in 1971, the movie was only finished in France in 1973, after the military coup.

In Wind Water, Ruiz stages a three-way dialogue between three great cultures: Spain, China and Arabia. He imagines what might occur if Shih-T’ao’s six poetic procedures for attaining the primal respiration or cosmic breath in painting were applied to one of the flagships of European art, Velazquez’s Las Meninas. Ruiz wants the three cultures to interact and test each other like the paper, stone and scissors of the children’s game. The result is an insoluble dispute, a différend. No reconciliation or compromise is possible between these cultural outlooks.

In Wind Water, Ruiz stages a three-way dialogue between three great cultures: Spain, China and Arabia. He imagines what might occur if Shih-T’ao’s six poetic procedures for attaining the primal respiration or cosmic breath in painting were applied to one of the flagships of European art, Velazquez’s Las Meninas. Ruiz wants the three cultures to interact and test each other like the paper, stone and scissors of the children’s game. The result is an insoluble dispute, a différend. No reconciliation or compromise is possible between these cultural outlooks.

At a wake one night in 1945, a group of aged women recall the life of one of their number. Sixty years before, Thérèse was barely 20 years old when she eloped with her boyfriend, Firmin, a blacksmith, to Châtillon, a town in Provence. Here, she makes the acquaintance of the wealthy Madame Numance, who is known for her good deeds. Realising that Thérèse is pregnant and unemployed, Madame Numance insists that she moves into a house on her estate. Whilst Firmin resents the arrangement, Thérèse soon finds that she can exploit the situation, using her benefactor's naivety and generosity for her own gain..

Now Titus' father has died, the new emperor will be free to marry his beloved Bérénice. Also In love with Bérénice, Titus' friend Antiochus plans to flee Rome rather than face the marriage. However, public opinion about the pairing causes Titus to choose his duty to Rome over his love for Bérénice, and he sends his love rival to tell Bérénice the news...

Now Titus' father has died, the new emperor will be free to marry his beloved Bérénice. Also In love with Bérénice, Titus' friend Antiochus plans to flee Rome rather than face the marriage. However, public opinion about the pairing causes Titus to choose his duty to Rome over his love for Bérénice, and he sends his love rival to tell Bérénice the news...

A portrait of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt whose lavish, sexual paintings came to symbolize the art nouveau style of the late 19th and early 20th century.

A portrait of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt whose lavish, sexual paintings came to symbolize the art nouveau style of the late 19th and early 20th century.

If any single piece can act as a key to Ruiz, it may be the 1997 short Le Film à Venir (The Film to Come). The titular film is a holy fragment of celluloid that can only be seen by a secret society known as the Philokinetes. They watch it on a loop, somnambulating through a life that is unreal by comparison. It is the belief of the Philokinetes that film has an existence “independent from humans. Cinema, they said, is the primeval soup of a new life form. There from were to emerge pure screening creatures. Which is to say, non-topical beings.” - n+1

If any single piece can act as a key to Ruiz, it may be the 1997 short Le Film à Venir (The Film to Come). The titular film is a holy fragment of celluloid that can only be seen by a secret society known as the Philokinetes. They watch it on a loop, somnambulating through a life that is unreal by comparison. It is the belief of the Philokinetes that film has an existence “independent from humans. Cinema, they said, is the primeval soup of a new life form. There from were to emerge pure screening creatures. Which is to say, non-topical beings.” - n+1

Mordant, self-aware, freighted with sensitivity toward Chile’s problem, wary of caricature, disposed toward consciousness of human fallibility, it is a deft blend of fiction and documentary set in the tumultuous days leading up to the election of Salvador Allende in 1970.

Collaborative experimental project on which three director made different films about the Swedish icebreaker "Frej".

Collaborative experimental project on which three director made different films about the Swedish icebreaker "Frej".

Régime sans pain, influenced by (Ruiz's) friend Jean Baudrillard (and calling) to mind grade-Z SF, grew out of a commission to direct a music video (featuring French cult rock duo of Angèle/Maimone). Ruiz offered a counterproposal that he direct several music videos rather than one; once this deal was made, he shot enough material to interconnect the various videos until he arrived at a feature.

Régime sans pain, influenced by (Ruiz's) friend Jean Baudrillard (and calling) to mind grade-Z SF, grew out of a commission to direct a music video (featuring French cult rock duo of Angèle/Maimone). Ruiz offered a counterproposal that he direct several music videos rather than one; once this deal was made, he shot enough material to interconnect the various videos until he arrived at a feature.

In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in Paris’ eleventh arrondissement. But, contrary to the producers’ expectation, the Left lost. Ruiz seized on this anti-climax to make a documentary about nothing except itself – a film whose central subject is forever lost in digression and ‘dispersal’, harking back to his Chilean experiments of the ‘60s. Its political content is deliberately left negligible: it’s hard to tell at the end who did actually win the election, let alone why.

In 1978, Ruiz was commissioned to make a television documentary about the French elections from the viewpoint of a Chilean exile in Paris’ eleventh arrondissement. But, contrary to the producers’ expectation, the Left lost. Ruiz seized on this anti-climax to make a documentary about nothing except itself – a film whose central subject is forever lost in digression and ‘dispersal’, harking back to his Chilean experiments of the ‘60s. Its political content is deliberately left negligible: it’s hard to tell at the end who did actually win the election, let alone why.