Documentary

  • Laura Israel – Don’t Blink – Robert Frank (2015)

    USA2011-2020CultDocumentaryLaura Israel

    One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, Don’t Blink is a documentary about Robert Frank, the legendary photographer and filmmaker behind the seminal book The Americans and landmark films like Pull My Daisy (with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg) and C***sucker Blues (with the Rolling Stones). Directed by his longtime editor Laura Israel, the film is an exuberant and fascinating journey into the images and words of an iconoclastic artist, a Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90. The soundtrack features Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, White Stripes, Yo La Tengo, Tom Waits, and more.Read More »

  • Rob Harper – Journeys to the Edge of Consciousness (2019)

    2011-2020AnimationDocumentaryRob HarperUnited Kingdom

    Take an animated journey into the depths of the human mind, exploring three psychedelic trips that changed Western culture forever. Sixty years later we sit down with twelve leading current thinkers to ask: “What can expanded states of mind teach us about ourselves, the world and our place in it?”Read More »

  • Selma Dell’Olio – Fellini degli spiriti (2020)

    2011-2020DocumentaryItalySelma Dell'Olio

    Quote:
    For the centenary of the great filmmaker,a documentary using clips and interviews which focuses on his search for the spiritual, the mysterious, and the esoteric.Read More »

  • Felix Moeller – Im Schatten von Jud Süss aka Harlan – In the Shadow of Jew Süss (2008)

    2001-2010DocumentaryFelix MoellerGermanyThird Reich Cinema

    Perhaps just as integral to Nazi film history as Leni Riefenstahl was largely forgotten “Jew Suss” director Veit Harlan. This documentary explores the life and career of Harlan, the expert film artisan responsible for the controversial 1940 feature still regarded as the most anti-Semitic production ever made. Includes home movies, archival footage, and interviews with family members who grapple with Harlan’s dark legacy.Read More »

  • Stefan Jarl – Ett anständigt liv AKA A Respectable Life (1979)

    1971-1980CultDocumentaryStefan JarlSweden

    Quote:
    This is the second part of Stefans Jarl’s Mods trilogy. The films depict the story of Kenta and Stoffe, but at the same time tells the story of Swedish society between the years 1968 and 1993. In A Respectable Life, we return to Kenta and Stoffe eleven years later. Both have created a family. Kenta has done his best and now has a more stable life. Stoffe, however dies during recording, after an overdose of heroin.Read More »

  • Jason Loftus – Eternal Spring (2022)

    2021-2030AnimationCanadaDocumentaryJason Loftus

    In March 2002, a state TV signal in China gets hacked by members of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong. Their goal is to counter the government narrative about their practice. In the aftermath, police raids sweep Changchun City, and comic book illustrator Daxiong (Justice League, Star Wars), a Falun Gong practitioner, is forced to flee. He arrives in North America, blaming the hijacking for worsening an already violent repression. But his views are challenged when he meets the lone surviving participant to have escaped China, now living in Seoul, South Korea.Read More »

  • Noam Chomsky – Masterclass – Noam Chomsky Teaches Independent Thinking and the Media’s Invisible Powers (2023)

    2021-2030DocumentaryNoam ChomskyPoliticsUSA

    Renowned scholar, linguist, and political activist Noam Chomsky explores the dark side of media. Learn to cut through propaganda, defend against manipulation, and control what you consume.

    Dive into the invisible powers of media with Noam Chomsky. One of the most influential thinkers of our time, he’s challenged the mainstream narratives of media, corporations, and governments—for generations. Now he’s connecting his long-standing theories to the issues we care most about today. Get his cutting insights into the powers and perils of social media, AI, and disinformation in a society set up to manipulate.Read More »

  • Marcel Hanoun – Octobre à Madrid AKA October in Madrid (1967)

    1961-1970DocumentaryExploitationFranceMarcel Hanoun

    Initially a made-to-order documentary on Spain, the film becomes an open-ended work-in-the-making about the creative process. “Settling in the Spanish capital to make a documentary, Hanoun sketches out for us the different steps involved in making a film. The author turns his hesitations, his doubts and difficult working conditions into the constituents of his work”.Read More »

  • Kaori Oda – Aragane (2015)

    2011-2020Bosnia HerzegovinaDocumentaryExperimentalJapanese Female DirectorsKaori Oda

    Made while director Kaori Oda was studying at Béla Tarr’s Film.Factory in Sarajevo, Aragane is, on the surface, a documentary about a Bosnian coalmine. As Oda takes us underground, the surroundings are illuminated solely by the available light of the miners’ headlamps, creating a state of sensual semi-blindness that both attunes us to the dangers of the mine and — with the beams cutting arcs of light through the blackness and casting shadows on the cavern walls — becomes an organic metaphor for the roots of cinema itself. It is not surprising that commentators have drawn similarities between Oda’s work and that of Harvard’s renowned Sensory Ethnography Lab: as in such films as Leviathan and Manakamana, in Aragane Oda attempts to understand her subjects through an embodied presence that moves beyond distanced knowledge and towards intimate entanglement.Read More »

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