
02 Apr 1994

Taurobolium
Have you ever been to the bullfights in Tijuana? Larry Wessel's TAUROBOLIUM is not only cinema verite at it's best, Larry Wessel's TAUROBOLIUM is the best documentary on bullfighting ever made!
They reflect on mankind’s relationship with animals and nature, but most importantly on our relationship with death and the meaning of the ultimate journey: life itself.
After his retirement, french philosopher and bullfighting enthusiast Francis Wolff decides to embark on a journey to France, Spain and Mexico joined by two mexican filmmakers who hardly know anything about bullfighting, a culture whose days seem to be numbered. During their road trip, they encounter numerous personalities with whom they reflect on mankind’s relationship with animals and nature, but most importantly on our relationship with death and the meaning of the ultimate journey: life itself.
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02 Apr 1994
Have you ever been to the bullfights in Tijuana? Larry Wessel's TAUROBOLIUM is not only cinema verite at it's best, Larry Wessel's TAUROBOLIUM is the best documentary on bullfighting ever made!
29 Apr 2016
SINOPSIS / SYNOPSIS Every year in Spain, some 16,000 Fiestas are organized, during which animals are used. Honoring the Holy Virgin and the Patron Saints, and with the blessing of religious and political authorities, entire towns -including children- are involved in celebrations of unbelievable cruelty. 60,000 animals are hence abused each year during these “Fiestas of Blood”.
01 Sep 1984
In their spare time, after their studies or their work, children and adolescents between the ages of eight and sixteen meet at the School of Bullfighting in Madrid to learn the Art of Cúchares: Torear. In their stomachs there is no hunger as in the past, their dreams do not lie in having a farmhouse and being famous. Their only dreams are to be in front of a bull, animal with which death goes, fact of which they are fully aware, as their teachers continually remind them. These, retired bullfighters, some by age, others by force and all with their bodies full of scars produced by the horns of a bull. The nude bullfighting scene is fascinating without being exploitive, and it serves as an analogy for the vulnerability these young bullfighters have when in the ring with the bulls.
09 Oct 2020
Based on the negatives of the 33 'La Tauromaquia' engravings made by Goya in 1816, the director invites us to witness the transformation of bodies at the approach of death.
01 Jun 1966
Orson Welles pitches to potential investors his vision of a largely improvised bullfighter movie about an existential, James Dean type troubadour who sets himself apart from other matadors. In front of an audience of wealthy arts patrons, Welles pontificates on the state of cinema, the filmmaking process, and the art of bullfighting.
16 Nov 1993
Documentary on bullfighting by Spanish director Sonia Herman Dolz.
15 Nov 2024
In the heart of the Camargue region, in the south of France, Jawad and Belka find freedom in their love of Camargue races. For these young Maghrebi men, the event is more than a simple tradition. Facing off with a bull is an opportunity to establish their place in the arena—and in French society. But at what cost?
01 Jan 1995
This grisly documentary presents horrifying journalistic footage of suicides, assassinations, bombings, mob hits, decapitations, and more in bloody detail. Not for the faint of heart.
24 Jan 1965
The misadventures of a group of young people who seek a better life by becoming bullfighters, the only way to leave their poor existence in the slums of Barcelona.
01 Jan 1962
This short film "Torerillos 61" is one of the first works of the master Patino, which tries to portray the Spanish society of the time outside the state convention and dodging the hand of censorship. Social commitment is the brand director throughout his long career, starting with short films such as this one, made in the early sixties, in the wake of the statements in Talks Salamanca. The sadness off the characters portrayed is bleak, "Maletillas" (aspiring bullfighters) in search of luck to pull them out of poverty.
23 Aug 1972
Eight years in the making, Boetticher’s portrait of his longtime friend, the famous bullfighter Carlos Arruza, was a labor of love that the renowned director of westerns pursued despite contending with illnesses, bankruptcy, jail time, and lucrative offers from Hollywood. The result is an astonishing work of poetry, immediacy, and violence that fearlessly wrestles with the filmmaker’s own ambivalence about the titular matador’s triumphs prior to his death by automobile accident at the age of 46.
29 Dec 1935
Home movie from Man Ray with a view of his home/gallery
24 Dec 2014
No overview found
01 Jan 2006
La Cosa Nuestra is a journey to the most hidden and surreal face of the bovid-bullfighting universe. Fun and tremendous, operating in iconographic cannibalism. It is a work that shows another reading of the national holiday, demystifying it. Confronts the Spanish bullfighting culture with the visions and uses of the bull in other civilizations. This video creation immerses itself in the aesthetic, ritual and cultural universe of the world of bullfighting, rebuilding it critically, but at the same time with healthy irony.
23 Apr 1963
[Here] Pollet made a work that is the very definition of what French critics like to call an ovni or ufo (as in ‘unidentified filmic object’). [It] has been described as being ‘like a comet in the sky of French cinema,’ an ‘unknown masterpiece,’ and an ‘unprecedented’ work that refuses interpretation even as it has provoked reams of critical writing. Its rhythmic collage of images – a girl on a gurney, a fisherman, Greek ruins, a Sicilian garden, a Spanish corrida – is accompanied by an abstract commentary written by Sollers, and only the somber lyricism of Antoine Duhamel’s score holds the film’s elements together. At first viewing, you fear that [it] might fly apart into incoherent fragments. Instead, over the course of its 45 minutes it invents its own rules, and you realize you’re watching something like the filmic channeling of an ancient ritual. – Chris Darke, FILM COMMENT
10 Apr 1990
Duende, the title of this documentary, is a richly complex and untranslatably idiomatic Spanish word which evokes the mysterious, ineffable quality that the art of bullfighting has for its devotees. This film explores the process by which an apprentice bullfighter, Carmelo, became a matador, a term which is reserved only for those who are recognized as being fully qualified to serve as a central player in this ritualistic drama, la corrida, which is sometimes incorrectly described as being a "sport." Various senior and retired bullfighters and their relatives recount their observations and experiences, and Carmelo re-enacts his coming-of-age as a bullfighter for the cameras. Those who are already convinced that la corrida is a celebration of the mystery of life and death may particularly appreciate this respectful documentary.
29 Apr 2015
Colombian teenagers study the traditional art of bullfighting in the sleepy town of Choachi. They live and train in an oasis of teen aged camaraderie and dreams for the future. But when bullfighting becomes banned in Bogota, the boys' sanctuary slowly becomes susceptible to society's larger struggles of class and conflict. Inspired by the watchful eye of retired bullfighter Nicolas, the bullfighting students strive to succeed first as Matadors, then as role models themselves. Interpreting bullfighting as a living metaphor for personal, social and historical struggles, the film focuses on the individual experiences of these boys and their mentor as they try to break free of the bleak future being dictated to them by Colombian society.
01 Jan 1900
With a crowded arena in the background, a stationary camera records a bull charging a picador astride his horse. An attendant on foot throws stones at the rump of the horse to get it to move. Various toreadors run past the bull to try to get him to charge or at least run about.
10 Jul 1951
The film evokes all the aspects of bullfighting - its history, the bulls, the toreros, the arena, the audience - and involves numerous matadors from the era.
15 Apr 2008
The story of one American overcoming the demons of his past by entering the secretive world of Spanish bullfighting.