Observations of three varied corners of China’s garment industry: workers in a large-scale production line factory; a designer who rallies against the mass-machine-production of clothes and has created the eponymous hand-made collection called ‘Useless’ (Wuyong) for Paris Fashion Week; and finally the simple life of increasingly out-of-work tailors in small town Fengdang.Read More »
A documentary chronicling the life of Richard Davis, the man who invented the concealable bulletproof vest – shooting himself 196 times in the course of his career to prove the effectiveness of his vests.Read More »
“Conversation with Fritz Lang“ is a 50-minute conversation between directors Lang and William Friedkin shot on February 21 & 24, 1975, a year before Lang died.
He takes us on a historical journey, outlining his early days in the Germany of the Weimar Republic through to his “dramatic“ departure after meeting Joseph Goebbels (we now know the story isn’t true as Lang went back to Germany several times after his “flight,” and he may not have met Goebbels at all) to become a reluctant Hollywood studio director.
Don’t get your hopes too high though. This isn’t a filmmaking masterclass nor a debate between the self proclaimed “master of the unusual“ and “Hurricane Billy“ as you won’t see much of Friedkin, except for his neck. It still is extremely interesting as Lang knows how to tell a good story and to grip the viewer’s attention with vivid and colorful details that might be totally true or not.Read More »
In Dalton, Georgia, the “Carpet Capital of the World,” we meet the unsung creators behind the psychedelic carpets lining casinos, offices, and hotel hallways. Chief among these textile honchos is Roderick James, a Scottish expat with a self-styled outlaw-country manner—and countless schemes to grab himself a larger share of the American dream. Brimming with stranger-than-fiction characters, Carpet Cowboys delivers rich documentary portraiture and bursts of outrageous humor in the tradition of American Movie, Hands on a Hardbody, and Winnebago Man. Executive produced by John Wilson (HBO’s How To with John Wilson) and produced by MEMORY, the team behind Rat Film, Crestone, and All Light, Everywhere.Read More »
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In October 1888 Louis Le Prince produced the world’s first films in Leeds, England. These were shot on cameras patented in both America and the UK. Once he had perfected his projection machine Le Prince arranged to demonstrate his discovery to the American public and thus the world.
On 16th September 1890, just days before he was due to sail to New York Louis Augustine Aime Le Prince stepped onto the Dijon to Paris train and was never seen again. No body was ever found so legally no one could fight the Le Prince claim that he invented a camera that recorded the very first moving image. As a result, several years later, Thomas Edison and the Lumiere Brothers were to claim to the glory and the prize of being acknowledged as the first people to pioneer film. Louis Le Prince was never added to history books. But for one lone voice, who worked with him, Le Prince’s name and his pioneering work was forgotten.Read More »
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After returning to Los Angeles from France in 1979, Agnès Varda created this kaleidoscopic documentary about the striking murals that decorate the city. Bursting with color and vitality, Mur Murs is as much an invigorating study of community and diversity as it is an essential catalog of unusual public art.Read More »
The young French from Mantes-la-Jolie call their everyday tours “Galera”, alluding to a strenuous life with obstacles. Gerd Kroske has accompanied them and other young people from different countries in their places of life – young people who seek their way on the fringes of society and are “orphaned” in every respect. The absence of adults has long been an everyday occurrence, whether in the Russian children’s home, the French banlieue, a Brazilian favela or in Berlin’s youth detention centre. The film questions the current media images of “Generation X”. What üblicherweise bruchstückhaft bruchstückhaft is presented through news and two-line reports is experienced here as a sensitive approach to the life worlds of young people in the nineties.Read More »
(T)ERROR is the first documentary to place filmmakers on the ground during an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation. Through the perspective of “Shariff”, a 63-year-old Black revolutionary turned informant, viewers get an unfettered glimpse of the government’s counterterrorism tactics and the murky justifications behind them. Taut, stark and controversial, (T)ERROR illuminates the fragile relationships between individual and surveillance state in modern America, and asks who is watching the watchers.Read More »
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“Norwood (1983) continued the ‘story’ of Stonebridge Park and the technique, in another London suburb. Short films of increasing technical sophistication climaxed in 1989 with The Clouds, a further topographical exploration combining another anxious fictional commentary with imagery derived from a journey across the north of England from Jodrell Bank to Whitby.” Geoff Brown and Bryony Dixon, www.screenonline.org.uk
“Imbued with loss on the edge of despair, Norwood’s cultural pessimism is fitting for these fag-end times.” – Michael O’Pray.
“… wry, funny and surreal. A wonderful film.: – Jo, Comino, City Limits.Read More »