Documentary

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In 2003, the ambitious renovation of one of the world’s greatest museums began. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, home to a glorious collection including masterpieces by Rembrandt and Vermeer, was supposed to reopen its doors in 2008 after five years of construction. But from the start, the project was opposed by unyielding bureaucrats and public resistance. The museum directors battled politicians, designers, curators and even the Dutch Cyclists Union as they struggled to complete the renovation and put its massive collection back on public display. Five years late, with costs exceeding half a billion dollars, the museum finally reopened.Read More »

Two months before his death, the central figure of “The Guildford Four” Gerry Conlon meets Lorenzo Moscia to recount his remarkable life, from falsely imprisoned to world-famous human rights activist.Read More »

A complex portrait of a city and its inhabitants, THE HOTTEST AUGUST gives us a window into the collective consciousness of the present. The film’s point of departure is one city over one month: New York City, including its outer boroughs, during August 2017. It’s a month heavy with the tension of a new President, growing anxiety over everything from rising rents to marching white nationalists, and unrelenting news of either wildfires or hurricanes on every coast. The film pivots on the question of futurity: what does the future look like from where we are standing? And what if we are not all standing in the same place? THE HOTTEST AUGUST offers a mirror onto a society on the verge of catastrophe, registering the anxieties, distractions, and survival strategies that preoccupy ordinary lives.Read More »

This is a brilliant short documentary made by the infamous Peter Greenaway for Thames Television program “Take 6” in 1980. For this project, Greenaway tackles the task of interviewing British subjects that have been struck by lightning…and survived to talk about it. The documentary displays Greenaways signature touches, such as the element of Dark Comedy (Greenaways editing, the Monty Pythonesque narrator, the witty writing, that transitory music, and the nature of their stories in general) and, of course, his trademark attention to detail regarding mise-en-scene and framing. First Greenaway gets his subjects to reflect upon their experiences. He also interviews friends, family, doctors and other witnesses whom fill in the blanks where the strikee may have been unable to remember or recollect.Read More »

Colombian filmmaker Theo Montoya opens his latest doc, Anhell69, with an extreme juxtaposition. There is grainy video footage of politicians signing the landmark peace agreement in 2016, which meant years of civil violence would be put to an end. But we also see an image taken in a car, something so dark it’s unclear to understand precisely what it is. After a few moments it becomes clear it is an open casket, and we see the face of a corpse.Read More »

“Man or monster? That’s one of the most frequent questions film-makers dealing with the rise of Hitler have had to ask themselves. Humanise him and you risk serving up a trite explanation for the horrors he committed against the world. Treating him like the Devil risks transforming him into a symbol that undermines mankind’s sickening capacity for evil. When the documentary Swastika was first screened at the Cannes film festival in 1973 it caused such outrage that the screening had to be stopped. The reason? It was made up of archive footage of Hitler engaging in banal, normal, everyday activities such as playing with children on a holiday retreat – footage that showed a human side difficult to reconcile with his unspeakable crimes.”Read More »

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A documentary showing aspects of long-disappeared rural life in Northumberland in 1953.Read More »

To Die in Madrid (French: Mourir à Madrid) is a 1963 French documentary film about the Spanish Civil War, directed by Frédéric Rossif. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.Read More »

Synopsis
Perhaps the boldest of the early sex documentaries, The History of Pornography is a comprehensive view of graphic depictions of sex in art and literature from ancient times onward.

That most of the film’s running time is dedicated to hardcore film loops provides our first clue that The History Of Pornography was not intended for collegiate-level classes in art appreciation.

Eastern erotic art soon gives way to 1960s Danish porn magazines, leading up to the history of hardcore sex in cinema. Tantalizing excerpts from the rare Argentinean stag reel El Satario (The Satyr, ca. 1907-1912) and the infamous fifties’ loop The Nun’s Story logically spill into split beaver loops (easy Bucky!) and explicit threesomes with horny, tattooed revelers.Read More »