Documentary

One day in 1966, the Maysles brothers filmed Marlon Brando as he did what we would now call a junket, where the idea is to let scores of television reporters meet the star in order to sell his latest movie, Morituri. Brando however, had other plans: declaring that he hates being ‘a hawker’ he turns the situation upside down, interviewing the interviewers, mocking the vacuousness of the set-up and flat-out refusing to promote Morituri. “Don’t you have ANYTHING to say about the film?” asks an exasperated journalist, to which Brando replies: “Bernie Wicky smokes the worst cigars I’ve ever known!”. With a lesser personality, this might be perceived as the arrogant posturing of a spoiled movie-star, but the mischievous twinkle in Brando’s eyes, combined with the fierce intelligence and wit of his answers, make it a joy to behold. The documentary does not get us any closer to Brando the actor, but in its half hour it does offer an insightful glimpse into the mind of a man who was too smart to go with the flow, too independent to compromise and who, throughout his life, refused to play by the rules.Read More »

Culture.pl wrote:
Marcel Łoziński’s Jak to się robi / How It’s Done is a provocative vision of the Polish model of democracy as well as being an ironic and at the same time terrifying portrait of Poland’s political stage, based on a three-year observation of an experiment conducted by the Polish political marketing guru Piotr Tymochowicz whose objective was to prove that anyone could be elevated to the summits of power. At a time when the make-up of Polish political elites leaves a lot to be desired, Łoziński’s bitter-sweet documentary shows that the ‘rule of souls’ is just a couple of neat socio-technical tricks, cynicism and political effectiveness weigh more than ideas and party colours are just a more or less colourful addition to the colour of the tie bought under the image expert’s tutelage. The product of Łoziński’s cool observation is as comic as its is horrifying.Read More »

The film was made by the Japanese visual artist Satoshi Uemine, and DVD released in 2005. This silent, personal movie bears and reflects the traces of the re-encounter between the director and his girlfriend, who had been hospitalized because of her deteriorating mental condition. Almost all scenes were shot in Hokkaido, the north island of Japan. Although nothing dramatic happens here, Sizuka no Umi builds a series of beautiful images that are raw, honest, and passionate.Read More »

Synopsis
Welcome to Riotsville, a fictional town built by the US military. Using all archival footage, the film explores the militarization of the police and creates a counter-narrative to the nation’s reaction to the uprisings of the late ’60s.Read More »

From Amos Vogel’s Film as a Subversive Art:
This is one of the first documentary films about the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It coldly records the lingering effects of the bomb on the victims decades later. In a succession of realistic, shocking sequences, their lives, difficulties, and camaraderie are examined. The very objectivity of incidents, scenes, and faces makes the film the more terrifying.Read More »

On October 9th, 1972 an exhibition of John Lennon/Yoko Ono’s art, designed by the Master of the Fluxus movement, George Maciunas, opened at the Syracuse Museum of Art, in New York. On the same day an unusual group of John’s and Yoko’s friends, including Ringo, Allen Ginsberg, Paul Krasner, and many others, gathered to celebrate John’s birthday. This film is a visual and audio record of that event.Read More »

If Leonora Carrington was England’s “lost surrealist” the Czech title must surely go to Marie Cermínová, AKA Toyen or “the baroness” to her friends – a name that characterised her remote and somewhat aloof bearing. Like Leonora Carrington, Toyen’s life contained much hardship and loss and the art of both women reflected their intense inner suffering. Toyen knew hunger and poverty and watched those she loved dying around her, one by one.Read More »

In this immersive work, which debuted at the 2015 German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, Steyerl probes the pleasures and perils of image circulation in a moment defined by the unprecedented global flow of data. Ricocheting between genres—news reportage, documentary film, video games, and internet dance videos—Factory of the Sun uses the motifs of light and acceleration to explore what possibilities are still available for collective resistance when surveillance has become a mundane part of an increasingly virtual world. Factory of the Sun tells the surreal story of workers whose forced moves in a motion capture studio are turned into artificial sunshine.Read More »

A documentary about Lt. Gen. Lewis “Chesty” Puller, USMC. Interviews, combat footage, parade at Virginia Military Institute. Made for TV, but never sold or released.Read More »