Documentary

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Documentary of the Rustavi Metal Works, in the country of Georgia.Read More »

PLOT:
Vertov and his Kino group produced this lyrical documentary on the lives of Coal miners in the Donbas who are struggling to meet their production quotas under the five year plan. Enthusiasm is most noteworthy for it’s creative use of the new sound medium. Vertov liberated the recording equipment from the studio and shot sound on location. He also used common everyday sounds and wove them into what can only be described as a symphony. In fact, after seeing the film Charlie Chaplin wrote: “Never had I known that these mechanical sounds could be arranged to sound so beautiful. I regard it as one of the most exhilarating symphonies I have heard. Mr. Dziga Vertov is a musician.”Read More »

Wim Wenders talks with Japanese fashion designer Yohji Yamamoto about the creative process and ponders the relationship between cities, identity and the cinema in the digital age.Read More »

After the national success of Sexual Freedom in Denmark, producer John Lamb leapt back into the fray, releasing Sexual Liberty Now! in the fall of 1971. Sexual Liberty takes a defensive posture, specifically focusing on the efforts of certain members of the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography to stamp out the menace of sexual expression in the United States. “Pornography perhaps is a nuisance,” the film’s narrator intones toward the film’s end, “but it’s certainly not a menace.”Read More »

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu starts with the familiar, grainy and juddering shoulder-held images of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena just before their execution. What follows is beautiful archival footage of state visits, party congresses, visits to crowded stores. In the course of the film – the subdued and radical masterpiece lasts more than three hours – the manifestations show increasing signs of megalomania; people sing and clap for Ceausescu, his name is chanted during endless parades. There are beautiful colour shots of Ceausescu joining in a volleyball match. He stands by the net and with one hand he keeps pulling it down a little to try and get the ball over with his other hand. No one dares to say a word.Read More »

Sex Freaks is a catalog of all things kinky voyeurism, nymphomania, necrophilia, sadomasochism with a few unusual novelties thrown in along the way (sex in a carwash, at a bullfight, underwater, in the snow) this unusual example of a Sex-Shockumentary posits that the Devil is responsible for our deviant ways!Read More »

The documentary rebuilds the life of the brazilian architect João Batista Vilanova Artigas. His relatives, friends, students and six of his major works tell the history of this iconic latinamerican modernist.Read More »

In a Balinese village, families go to great trouble and expense for their extravagant cremation ceremony. They provide special foods to mourners and prepare a bounty of offerings for the deceased, from gifts of money to symbolic baskets. The atmosphere is almost festive as a shadow puppet show is performed for the entertainment of the deceased, inheritances are distributed, and musical processions of mourners walk the streets. Dead family members seem almost present as their bones are uncovered, washed, and arranged for cremation with accompanying prayer rites. During the cremation, the village is filled with smoke from enormous burning pyres shaped like bulls, as the souls of the dead are cleansed of impurity and then sent out to sea so that they may continue their journey to heaven. Shot in 16mm, the film documents and explains the intricacies of these funeral rites and Balinese-Hindu beliefs about death.Read More »

Synopsis:
THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 mobilizes a treasure trove of 16mm material shot by Swedish filmmakers, after languishing in a basement of a TV station for 30 years, into an irresistible mosaic of images, music, and narration chronicling the evolution one of our nation’s most indelible turning points, the Black Power movement. Featuring candid interviews with the movement’s most explosive revolutionary minds, including Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, and Kathleen Cleaver, the film explores the community, people and radical ideas of the movement. Music by Questlove and Om’Mas Keith, and commentary from and modern voices including Erykah Badu, Harry Belafonte, Talib Kweli, and Melvin Van Peebles give the historical footage a fresh sound and make THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-75 an exhilarating, unprecedented account of an American revolution.Read More »