Keyword Acrobats

A couple of thirtysomething best friends unwittingly become entangled in an international conspiracy when one’s ex-boyfriend shows up at their apartment with a team of deadly assassins on his trail.

An extraordinary young girl discovers her superpower and summons the remarkable courage, against all odds, to help others change their stories, whilst also taking charge of her own destiny. Standing up for what's right, she's met with miraculous results.

A sister and brother, the last heirs of a family of acrobats, are called upon by a Buddhist monk sect to retrieve an artifact that their ancestors have protected throughout the ages.

Shortly before Christmas, a family moves into an apartment where Rupert the squirrel lives in the attic rafters. Just as it seems that the holiday will come and go without so much as a Christmas tree, Rupert acts as the family's guardian angel - not only saving Christmas, but changing their lives forever.

Sketches of a Spanish circus made by Richard Williams in 1953 come to life. Williams began the project at the age of 20 and finished it when he was 77. It premiered at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in 2010.

While working at a circus, a man hypnotizes a trapezist to kill her partner.

A haunted theatre, filled with the vengeful spirits of a tragically-trapped performance troupe murdered in a fire 13 years ago, waits for the once-grand palatial playhouse to re-open with a new show - and bring in new victims.

The fascinating city of Tokyo is the mesmerizing setting where three people live. A man has been fired from his job, but shame is too heavy a burden for him. He repeats the same ceremony every morning. He gets up, gets dressed and walks out to his non-existent job. He wanders around carrying his lie with him. Eiko works at a twenty-four hour convenience store. Hours and days go by with no emotions beyond the opening and closing of the teller. A man appears into her life. They will start a relationship that will fill in part the emptiness in their lives. A rock band is falling apart. After the last rehearsal, the guitar player announces his decision to quit to his friend, the singer and front man of the band, but he is not willing to accept it. Three everyday stories – three lives are told.

Tenacious and optimistic, Mini (Angelica Lee) is an acrobat at a Shanghai circus troupe. Having lost both her parents at a young age, Mini has never had a real family, and her greatest dream is to find a love that she can rely on, a love that will make her fly. Kang (Liu Ye) works at a music store called Go With the Flow, which just about sums up his aimless lifestyle. Raised in an overly strict family, Kang grew up into a rebellious young man who likes to challenge social norms. These two very different young people meet by chance in the bustle of modern Shanghai, and spark a story of pure love and vertigo as their confused worlds collide.

It starts in one room: a young man in pajamas lies down and sleeps. He agitates, turns, returns. He is recovering, sits on his bed and a cloud of smoke is coming from his skull, he loses an arm, a leg. He enters a fantasy world where all objects come to life. The swallowed pillow passes his door, a reflection of the mirror emancipates, the portrait of the table rebels and sings his dismay. Dishes and utensils are transformed into a fabulous bestiary where dragon and rhinos are fighting. Gags in cascade, anachronistic nose-feet in acrobatics, juggling on the trapeze, dancing lyric songs, James Thiérrée puts the reality upside down and takes us into a surreal and dreamlike symphony played by interpreters to staggering energy.

The Chinese consider the lion a symbol of good luck, so it's a half-dragon, half-lion – a dralion – that is the symbol of the East-meets-West fusion of this performance in which 36 Chinese acrobats join the renowned Canadian troupe. Celebrating the four elements as represented in four colours – blue (air), green (water), red (fire) and ochre (earth) – Dralion combines ancient Chinese circus traditions with Cirque du Soleil's usual stunning elements: the techno-oriented single ring; the multicoloured lights and costumes; the music that mixes rock, New Age and various world influences (though not Chinese); and the madcap clowns that pull a victim out of the audience.

Step into the curio cabinet of an ambitious inventor who defies the laws of time, space and dimension in order to reinvent everything around him. Suddenly, the visible becomes invisible, perspectives are transformed, and the world is literally turned upside down. Immerse yourself in a spectacular cinematic experience through never-before-seen angles. Movie-going just got jaw-dropping!

Drawing upon a vast and richly visual archive and featuring a host of performers, historians and aficionados, this four-hour mini-series follows the rise and fall of the gigantic, traveling tented railroad circus and brings to life an era when Circus Day would shut down a town and its stars were among the most famous people in the country.

Luis Martinetti, a contortionist suspended from acrobatic flying rings, contorts himself for about thirty seconds. This is one of the first films made for Edison's kinetoscopes.

This Pete Smith Specialty showcases the Cristiani Family, a circus act. They mount and dismount moving horses and perform acrobatic feats while riding them.

One out of three silent adaptations of the novella "Les quatre diables" written by Danish author Herman Bang. The most famous one, although unfortunately lost, is without any doubt F.W. Murnau's "4 Devils". This German version, by Danish director A.W. Sandberg, was done eight years prior to Murnau's American one, and was a big success at the time.

Hadji Cheriff, a performer known for a variety of unusual abilities, demonstrates part of his act in the Thomas Edison studio. He has a large knife in his hand at the opening of the act. He then hurls the knife away and begins a rapid series of dance-like motions, executing numerous cartwheels and whirling movements.

A man and a woman, who have never met, are forced by pecuniary circumstances to share the same basement apartment in shifts.

The narrative centres on a nomadic opera troupe who travel to various towns as part of their nationwide tour and astound the locals with their skills. When visiting a coastal town, one of the young performers becomes involved in a market brawl after two local bullies begin to push their weight around. The righteous young performer is saved from a vicious beating at the hands of the thugs by a mysterious fighter who uses his sublime abilities to save the day. He gradually reveals to his new friends that he is a former Shaolin student and a staunch patriot - readily opposing the Manchu rulers. In a finale filled with glorious fight action, the time for revenge is realised and the battle between good and evil once again takes place.

Eliseé survived the Rwandan genocide as a child. Today he leads an orphan acrobat group in a country, which heavily relies on foreign aid. He cares for the orphaned children and wants them to be happy, to have some sense in their lives. Rosta Novák built a worldwide-acclaimed circus group in Prague, where he successfully rules with a firm, paternal hand, but has permanently dark under-eye circles from the workload. The majority of Rwandese think that all people in Europe are fairy rich. On the other hand, many Europeans think that it is necessary to help Africa with everything. What happens, if we merge these two worlds in a film, during the preparation of a joint circus performance? What are the true motivations of our protagonists and what does it tell us about the Africa-Europe relationship? And who actually helps whom, in the end?