Documentary

‘In NOTRE DAME DE LA CROISETTE’ Schmid turns his abundant eye on that loved and despised Mecca of European film life, the Cannes International Film Festival. Bulle Ogier stars as a woman who goes to Cannes and, lost in its chaos and unable to obtain tickets, ends up watching it on television from her hotel room. But the spectacle-in-the-box brings her much more of the world than she bargained for, and she finds refuge in her dreams of Cannes as it was thirty years ago, when living myths walked the earth: Picasso, Henri Langlois, Maria Callas, Cary Grant, Elizabeth Taylor, Arletty, and Jean Cocteau.

Le Festival International du Film de Cannes, 1981. Une jeune femme, de passage, peine à voir un seul des films du festival. De guerre lasse, repliée dans sa chambre d’hôtel, elle le regarde à la télévision.Read More »

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Made by the Polish Telegraphic Agency, this reportage shows the construction and operation of the modern cargo port in Gdynia and its facilities. It is a typical example of a propaganda film of the second half of the 1930s, showing the rapid development of the young country and its growing economic power. The film has been digitised based on a copy imported from the Soviet Union in 1980.Read More »

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After a twenty year period of multiple illnesses and injuries, the filmmaker turns the camera on herself as a way to analyze her chances for a happier, healthier life. In the process, she captures the frustration, tedium and petty annoyances of a revolving-door relationship with the medical establishment, while portraying the complicated web of emotions that accompany any medical problem. With humor and honesty, The Odds of Recovery uses the filmmaker’s medical history as a means to address a perennial human problem: the desire to avoid conflict and deny the need for radical change.Read More »

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Working outside the mainstream, the wildly prolific, visionary Stan Brakhage made more than 350 films over a half century. Challenging all taboos in his exploration of “birth, sex, death, and the search for God,” he turned his camera on explicit lovemaking, childbirth, even autopsy. Many of his most famous works pursue the nature of vision itself and transcend the act of filming. Some, including the legendary Mothlight, were created without using a camera at all, as he pioneered the art of making images directly on film, by drawing, painting, and scratching. With these two volumes, we present the definitive Brakhage collection – fifty-six of his works, from across his career, in high-definition digital transfers.Read More »

blurb sez: In Sept./Oct. 1992 a mini festival took place in the Temple Bar Area of Dublin. Called ‘The Here To Go Show’, it celebrated William Burroughs and Brion Gysin and was located at The Gallery of Photography, The Project Arts Centre, and a number of Private locations. Organised by English writer Terry Wilson, Irish rock singer Frank Rynne, and writer Joe Ambrose. The show was documented in guerilla fashion by the organisers the results of which have been distilled into ‘Destroy all Rational Thought’.Read More »

In August, 1982, a small group of radio visionaries at WLIR Long Island knew they couldn’t compete with the mega radio stations in New York City. With one brave decision, they changed the sound of radio forever. Program Director Denis McNamara, the crew at the station and the biggest artists of the era tell the story of how they battled the FCC, the record labels, mega-radio and all the conventional rules to create a musical movement that brought the New Wave to America – including bands like U2, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode and Blondie.Read More »

Intrepid scientists and lovers Katia and Maurice Krafft died in a volcanic explosion doing the very thing that brought them together: unraveling the mysteries of volcanoes by capturing the most explosive imagery ever recorded.Read More »

A world is made of different things: people, houses, dogs, shops, nightlife, trees. Like those of those photographers from the beginning of the 20th century, this trip to Colón, Entre Ríos, documents their present and builds a unique and unrepeatable portrait.Read More »

According to Harun Farocki, today’s photographers working in advertising are, in a way, continuing the tradition of 17th century Flemish painters in that they depict objects from everyday life – the “still life”. The filmmaker illustrates this intriguing hypothesis with three documentary sequences which show the photographers at work creating a contemporary “still life”: a cheese-board, beer glasses and an expensive watch.Read More »