Documentary

A sociological essay on a Bavarian region where the economic miracle is left out. The documentary emphasises the declining populations due to migration and notes how such places come with “a lot of past [but] not much present or future”.Read More »

Quote:
Presentation of a commited State Party (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) secretary at the Chemicals Combine in Buna. A former miner and small farmer rises to a leading political position – symbol of a typical Party career.Read More »

This cinematic essay posits science fiction (with tropes such as alien abduction, estrangement, and genetic engineering) as a metaphor for the Pan-African experience of forced displacement, cultural alienation, and otherness.

Included are interviews with black cultural figures, from musicians DJ Spooky, Goldie, and Derek May, who discuss the importance of George Clinton to their own music, to George Clinton himself. Astronaut Dr. Bernard A. Harris Jr. describes his experiences as one of the first African-Americans in space, while Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols tells of her campaign for a greater role for African-Americans in NASA. Novelist Ismael Reed and cultural critics Greg Tate and Kodwo Eshun tease out the parallels between black life and science fiction, while Delaney and Butler discuss the motivations behind their choice of the genre to express ideas about the black experience.Read More »

Gordon Parks (1912-2006) was a Renaissance man talented in many mediums, from photography and film to writing, music, and painting. He may be best known for directing the movie Shaft (1971) and creating moving works of documentary photojournalism with social justice themes. In many ways, Parks was an artist ahead of his times. His first film, The Learning Tree (1969, based on his autobiographical novel), was the first major motion picture with a Black director. In the 1980s, he made a film for PBS called Solomon Northup’s Odyssey based on the 1853 slave narrative that later inspired the movie 12 Years a Slave (2013). Parks also co-founded Essence magazine, published more than a dozen books, composed music for a ballet about Martin Luther King Jr., and received the Library of Congress’ “Living Legend” award.Read More »

In the heart of Paso Robles Wine Country there is a concentrated village-a wine region within a wine region-populated by rebellious, creative winemakers, brew and cider masters and distillers working at the razor’s edge of their craft.Read More »

Blood Ties: The Life and Work of Sally Mann is a 1994 short documentary film directed by Steven Cantor and Peter Spirer. It was premiered at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.

The documentary looks at some of the controversy surrounding Sally Mann’s book Immediate Family, which contains non-sexual photographs of her pre-adolescent children in various states of dress. Some religious groups had accused her of making child pornography, and the film focuses on Mann’s defense of her art. Filmmaker Cantor followed up this short with a full-length documentary about Mann in 2005: What Remains: The Life and Work of Sally Mann.Read More »

From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
This secret Nazi film – unforgettable documentary of a vanquished world – was photographed just before the Ghetto’s total destruction and either never completed or not intended for public release. For once, the Nazis – albeit unintentionally – revealed the truth about an event, though it was a truth distorted by their presence; the only Jews who did not know that they were being photographed were the dead; the others, depending on degree of desperation, indifference, or nearness of death, attempted to smile or otherwise co-operate with the photographer/director (representative of unlimited power over life or death), an obscene spectacle difficult to bear. Read More »

Quote:
What is this piece of SOV madness? A not entirely convincing special effects how-to video? A fake documentary on a zombie/mutant sleazefest set in the year 2002? Who knows!Read More »

Quote:
One of the few examples of Polish film production of the operation of entering Warsaw by the Soviet troops (with the Polish Army units)

Quote:
This short film depicting Bolesław Bierut and Michał Rol-Żymierski visiting the troops of the 1st Polish Army was produced by the Polish Army Film StudioRead More »