Documentary

Mannesmann was a German industrial conglomerate. It was originally established as a manufacturer of steel pipes in 1890 under the name “Deutsch-Österreichische Mannesmannröhren-Werke AG”. (Loosely translated: “German-Austrian Mannesmann pipe mills AG”). In the twentieth century, Mannesmann’s product range grew and the company expanded into numerous sectors – starting from various steel products and trading to mechanical and electrical engineering, automotive and telecommunications. From 1955, the conglomerate’s management holding with headquarters in Düsseldorf was named Mannesmann AG. – more (on wikipedia)Read More »

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The 1962 documentary Lonely Boy, directed by Wolf Koenig and Roman Kroitor, is a film about the manufacture of a pop idol. Paul Anka, the subject of the documentary, is a popular performer at the peak of his career, but the directors use a variety of strategies to express their view of him as an isolated figure who is seen by his handlers as a piece of merchandise and whose success is questionable. They do this through interviews which focus on the process of Anka’s rise, frequent references to the merchandising operation he is at the center of, editing that highlights the freakishness and hysteria of his fans, and frequent shots that emphasize his isolation. Several other films made in the 1960s dealt with the phenomenon of celebrity in the same cinema vérité style, and examining how the editing choices made by Koenig and Kroitor differ from films such as Primary (Robert Drew, 1960), What’s Happening! The Beatles In the U.S.A. (Albert and David Maysles, 1964) and Don’t Look Back (D.A. Pennebaker, 1967) is useful in illustrating the directors’ skeptical view of the celebrity machine and the idea that despite Anka’s success, Lonely Boy can be seen as yet another Canadian film about failure.Read More »

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Children return from boarding school to a taiga village for spring break. The film reveals the lives of the northern Mansi people through their eyes.Read More »

After the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, a boy grew up obsessed with all the movies he couldn’t see. He met a mysterious film collector who saved thousands of films from destruction by the new regime. Despite arrest and torture, the collector refused to give up his secret hoard. Together they forged a friendship based on passion for cinema and resistance against tyranny. The boy escaped to exile in London to become a filmmaker, and tells their shared story of obsession and celluloid dreams.Read More »

An intimate look at the life of astronauts aboard the International Space Station and the future of space exploration.Read More »

SYNOPSIS :
This film starts from a meeting, quite fortuitous, between a man who acted in a film, thirty years ago, and another, a filmmaker, who likes this film very much. The film in question is Mes petites amoureuses, by Jean Eustache, and their meeting takes place in Narbonne, the town where the film was shot. The younger of the two men, the filmmaker, then embarked on the making of a documentary on the shooting of Mes petites amoureuses. Hilaire, who had played in this film, returns for him on the traces of this shooting, and tries to reconstitute the band that he formed with his friends and that Jean Eustache had decided to film.Read More »

Synopsis
An ironic look at what it is like to be beautiful for a woman (and handsome for a few men) in the Paris of the late twenties…Read More »

In 1975, I was invited to “make any film I wanted as long as it was shot in Minneapolis.” David Hancock, a filmmaker friend in Vermont, who coincidentally grew up in Minneapolis, had just asked me to film him. He had been recently diagnosed with terminal cancer in his early thirties and wanted me to document the craziness of his dying days, as he was buffeted from chemotherapy to New Age cures recommended by friends. I didn’t have the stomach to follow much of David’s last days. Meanwhile, Steve Ascher and I teamed up to go to Minneapolis. We wanted to ask strangers what in their lives they would like to have filmed. For me, it was almost like an act of expiation. -Ed PincusRead More »

“This film, actually several feature films combined into one, consists entirely of interviews with American POWs in North Vietnam. The Americans talk at great length about their lives, values, and Vietnam experiences, in consistently fascinating exchanges with the invisible interviewers. In the process, more is revealed than intended, on both sides. The American testimonies should be published in the West for light they throw on the new impersonal, ‘remote-control’ killers of our day: ‘honourable men’, all of them. But the East German revelation is equally fascinating; for the obscene but quite serious premise of this film, in their eyes, is that these were freely conducted interviews among equals.Read More »