With the rise of  so-called 'user generated content', a strange phrase that conjours up images of cinemagoers as drug users, and 'professional filmmakers' as dealers who would never use their own supply, it's inevitable that the film industry would have something to say on the matter. And as with buses and most films from those dealing with the massive (Armagedon, Deep Impact) to the micro (Antz, A Bugs Life), two come at once.

Interestingly, each come from cult directors - one French, one British - and both Michel Gondry (Be Kind Rewind) and Garth Jennings (Son of Rambow) had their roots in home-made animations and, later, music video. Likewise both skip the latest tech for basic VHS and focus on the oft' forgotten fact that making films is often much more fun than watching them.

What would Viacom's lawyers make of Rambow's Lee Carter, a film pirate of the highest order, who makes the short fan films, homages, mashups, recuts and so forth which Viacom have recently pulled from YouTube seem all the more harmless.Both are buddy movies, where the process of creation helps the characters to understand themselves and each other, while showing how filmmaking can bring a community - or family - together. And while Rambow is set in the 80s with child protagonists, Gondry, a self-declared eternal 12-year-old, paints a playful New Jersey suburb where time has stopped enough for it too to feel a work of nostalgia. Even the 'evil' property developer seems more outdated than the ultra modern Clamp in Gremlins 2.  Both feelgood movies slip, ultimately, into schmalz, but of distinctly British and American flavours. In Gondry's New York, little is resolved, but the community comes together and is, erm, United. In Jennings' Hertfordshire, the melodrama escalates, erupts with a tearful speech, and the family reconnects. Gondry's America has a far stronger community, tho Hollywood - in the guise of Signourey Weaver, perhaps looking for the gatekeeeper - is treated without sympathy. 

Curious then that the film was financed by Universal Studio's offshoot Focus Features, whose lawyers - no doubt - would have shut down the Be Kind Rewind store for copyright infringement in a heartbeat. It was, after all, Universal who tried to take Sony to court in the 80s for producing a video cassette, the Betamax, which could be used for making private copies (as well as home movies). Thankfully they lost.  

Likewise Paramount Vantage, who bought Son of Rambow at Sundance 07 for a stonking $8m, are part of the Viacom Group, who are currently taking YouTube to court in a similarly significant testcase for $1bn (a Dr Evil-shaped figure). What would Viacom's lawyers make of Rambow's Lee Carter, who in the opening scene is filming a new release in the cinema, which makes the short fan films, homages, mashups, recuts and so forth which Viacom have pulled from YouTube seem all the more harmless. The parrallels between the two films - especially when you read Tom Fogg's interview with Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith in 2000, where they idolise Gondry and talk of Rambow for the first time - is a little uncanncy.

But there are differences, namely in the filmmakers' sensibilites. Gondry paints his surreal vision on almost everything he sees, a kind of live action cartoon where realism is generally forsaken : in the film and the 'sweded films' cinema is a fantasy land where we are to fly away from reality and its problems. In Rambow, the surrealism is mostly in WIll's mind, projected onto the represive environment he's surrounded by, literally bursting out of the edges of his Bible. The humour is subtle and understated. And cinema becomes more a metaphor for personal struggle and the hero's journey. In fact the French star of the kids film is ultimately dismissed as a style-conscious fantasist (tho still largely adored).

Either way, these films are both timely and fun. And if one of them doesn't inspire you to put down the funding application and pick up a camera, and remember how perhaps before you got caught up in the 'film business' you too just loved making movies, the other one should.

When David Lynch calls a film "simultaneously horrific, erotic and funny," and master surrealist Luis Buñuel says that it is "exceptional," you know it's probably not an easy watch. Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, along with Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, helped to finance a new print of the film, that's how much they love it.

First released in December 1966, The Saragossa Manuscript   is a mind-bending adaptation of some of Jan Potocki's equally difficult eighteenth-century novel. The complex narrative weaves together a group of tales set in Spain, where more characters than you can keep track of stagger (or sometimes caper) through wildly clashing movie genres: the gothic, the historical, the satirical. There is very little warning when the film abruptly delivers you from one storyline to the other. Isn't it great when a film makes you think? 

Kotov is a medalled veteran of the1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the ensuing Russian Civil War, which ended in 1923. He has the number of Stalin’s private line, and is respected by everyone who lives near his dacha. It would seem that this hero’s comfortable life is unassailable. The cinematography captures the lush, summery colours of the scenery around the house, and the slightly faded, but still fine hues of the clothes that Kotov’s wife’s once-aristocratic extended family wear. It’s all dancing round the piano, sitting down to meals and playing with little Nadia. Also, despite the age gap, Kotov and his wife seem to truly be in love.

In Stalin’s Russia, not even the war hero of olden times is safe from the Great Purge

However, the threat to this carefree idyll comes in the form of Maroussia’s ex-lover, and Kotov’s ex-subordinate. Mitya, played by long-time Mikhalkov collaborator, Oleg Menshikov, turns up and charms his way back into the household. Despite his easy way with Nadia, there’s something up. He stares coldly at Kotov. He keeps reminding Maroussia of their past. In just one day, Mitya destorys everything that Kotov has built up. In Stalin’s Russia, it seems, not even the war hero of olden times is safe from the Great Purge.   Yet, Kotov is not entirely innocent either – his past actions cost Mitya years of his life. From this plot outline, you might think that there is no one to sympathise with in the film. You’d be wrong. Mikhalkov’s film presents us with rounded characters, flaws and all, with whom we can’t help but empathise. Gradually, those flaws appear larger and less forgivable, although the lack of choice involved is always apparent. Burnt by the Sun is slow-moving, which makes Kotov’s sudden realisation of his vulnerability at the end all the more shocking and disorientating. Mitya has been working for the Secret Police, and his mission at Kotov’s house was partly on orders from Stalin, and partly out of a need for revenge.   

The Sixth of May , directed by the late Dutch director Theo Van Gogh , is a thriller that re-enacts the murder of right wing Dutch politician, Pim Fortuyn, on 6th May 2002. The slick movie has a Hollywood feel to it, but might prove impenetrable without a little Wikipediaing of the facts (at least), unless you're clued up on your Dutch politics.

This documentary, made by renowned [some might say notorious] left-wing journalist John Pilger, is out on DVD on 4th February. The film uses the USA's treatment of Latin America over the second half of the 20th century as evidence that the US is fighting a war against democracy in the region known as "America's backyard." His film shows us the flipside of Bush's "War on Terror," where the US's efforts don't even pretend to be for the greater good. 

A reviewer of his 2006 book, Freedom Next Time , said of Australian-born, London-based Pilger:

John Pilger is a very unusual journalist. He writes about people on the receiving end of grisly western policies - whether bombs or economic "advice" - and then exposes the motivations of those who are responsible. One might think Pilger is just doing his job. In fact, it is an indictment of western journalism that this way of working is rather unusual and Pilger unique. He opens by writing: "This book is about empire..."

Cocaine Cowboys is a documentary looking at the rise of drug gangs in 1980s Florida. It was released in UK cinemas on 23rd November, so should be on near you.

For those unfamilar with the events of the period, the documentary tracks the transformation of Miami from sleepy retirement village to a place made rich through drugs and violent killings.

Read on for the trailer, which is fairly NSFW...  

Paul Taylor takes a tragic story and makes an up-lifting, life-affirming, non-preachy film.

We Are Together (Thina Simunye) has as its backdrop one of the most urgent (and shameful) issues of our time: the spread of HIV, Africa's 1.2 million AIDS orphans and the lack of access to life-saving anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs. That less than 17% of HIV sufferers have access to the drugs in a continent already overwhelmed with famine, poverty, war, corruption and hoards of western Celebrities (collective noun - 'a reception'?) is so hard to comprehend it's generally much easier to pretend it isn't happening.

But rather than focus on the issues we all too often chose to ignore, we are offered the African approach to dealing with suffering: celebration, communion and song. Humanity's 'incredible capacity for laughter and humor' in these situations was a driving force for Taylor in his tale of the child singers of the Agape orphanage in South Africa.

Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited will close the London Film Festival tonight, with a sold-out screening in the West End. 

The film follows three brothers - reunited for the first time in the year since their father's death - who take a train journey across northern India, in the hope of renewing their relationships, finding someone they lost and, in true gap-year style, finding themselves. Suchandrika Chakrabarti, who has been covering this year's festival, takes an advance look.

Sicko was shown at the London Film Festival last week. It is Michael Moore's latest effort, looking at the mess that is America's privatised healthcare system, relying as it does upon insurance claims to pay medical bills. 

As Moore's average, middle-class, insured subjects show us, though, having the insurance may still not be enough. The industry does all it can to avoid payouts, denying the needy of healthcare.

Netribution's London correspondent Suchandrika Chakrabarti provides an extensive, absorbing review of the latest film from the documentary world's most popular (creatively) and challenged (critically) director. 

Subtitled "The Oil Crash," this is, as co-director/producer Basil Gelpke puts it, "A film that promises to be a bit of a downer." He isn't  really joking: the documentary looks at the amount of oil likely to be left in the ground (not much) and what preparations have been made for a post-plentiful-oil society (not many). It's a wake-up call that comes without the hope of rock-steady solutions.

Taking Liberties, a documentary which explores the possible erosion of civil liberties under Tony Blair's government, supported by the UK Film Council P&A fund, is out to rent or buy on DVD on 15th October.  Director Chris Atkins has grand aims for the film: 

"If there's one thing I've learnt from making this film, it is the understanding that politics is not about self important windbags in Westminster, or thundering newspaper editorials - it's about people. And all people need to do is to engage and have a voice and they can change the world."

The Lives of Others, which won the Best Foreign Language Film at this year's Oscars, will be available to buy next Monday.

The critically-acclaimed film, which was nominated in an unprecedented 11 Deutsche Filmpreis categories (German equivalent of the Oscars), is set in East Germany in 1984. It follows a member of the Stasi, the secret police force of the German Democratic Republic, who is commissioned to monitor a playwright and his girlfriend.

Britain's latest and remotest filmfest in the Shetland Islands got off to a great start with a screening of BBC 4's drama Reichenbach Falls, a fast-moving drama made by a BBC Scotland team. The TV programme clearly proved that low budget does not exclude high production values - something known to indie filmmakers for a long time - but clearly the message is now getting through to TV drama bosses as well.

It seems to me that I always talk about the weather in the introduction to these columns. I’ve vowed that I was going to stop that. Unfortunately, Danny Boyle’s latest film has kind of scuppered that. So I have to mention that, considering the general rain, it’s good that Special Edition # 21 has a new film that can bring some brightness into all our lives. Laurence Boyce also has his usual rag bag of re-releases, TV shows and Doctor Who. Enjoy!

Producer: Generic Pool Productions

Wildlife films have long been family favourites on TV, but the smooth and easy presentation of the earth's fauna on the box belies the infinite patience and dedicated professionalism of the men and women who set out to capture it on film. This special interest video DVD gives us the inside story. And for those who feel they would enjoy the challenge of making wildlife films, as much as watching them, this DVD not only gets you in the field, but makes sure you are equipped and prepared for the job.

Producer: Generic Pool Productions

Wildlife films have long been family favourites on TV, but the smooth and easy presentation of the earth's fauna on the box belies the infinite patience and dedicated professionalism of the men and women who set out to capture it on film. This special interest video DVD gives us the inside story. And for those who feel they would enjoy the challenge of making wildlife films, as much as watching them, this DVD not only gets you in the field, but makes sure you are equipped and prepared for the job.

  That is how Barbara - the chillingly unreliable narrator of Notes on a Scandal, played by the pitch-perfect Judi Dench, describes her first in-depth conversation with Sheba, the new girl - sorry, teacher - at school.

Barbara quickly becomes her confidant, and records the minutiae of her and Sheba's life and conversations in a diary that will prove to be the undoing of both of their lives.