Documentary

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Compilation of lighting and costume tests from various films, most notably Sternberg’s The Devil Is a Woman (1935).Read More »

When Eartha Kitt takes the stage in this midcareer portrait, she doesn’t sing a song so much as live it. Emanating from every underlying muscle, from her brow to her pointed toes, Kitt’s unrelenting physicality and undulating voice animate each performance, as she seamlessly weaves personal musings into her campy renditions. Revealing Kitt to be as comfortable schmoozing at galas in sequins and fur as she is makeup-free and sporting a disarmingly cute bullfrog T-shirt in her sunlit kitchen, this documentary follows Kitt to every corner of her professional and private life. From enduring a traumatic deep-South upbringing to being blacklisted and investigated by the FBI for fearlessly criticizing America’s presence in Vietnam at a 1968 White House luncheon, Kitt exemplified her own aphorism: “If you don’t want the challenge, you have no business being here.” Read More »

A thirty day music marathon by Swiss musicians Koch-Schütz-Studer turns into a cinematic piece of chamber music.Read More »

Synopsis:
This poetic documentary shows people and situations from both East and West Berlin. As if invisible, the camera crosses over the wall several times, fusing the experiences into something that didn’t exist in the mid-eighties-outside of the cinema. 25 years after the Berlin Wall was built, perhaps the most horrifying aspect was that the Berliners took it for granted and had learned to ignore it. The wall was mirrored in everyone’s head. This film questions that ingrown attitude.—FilmportalRead More »

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Signer’s “action sculptures” involve setting up, carrying out, and recording “experiments” or events that bear aesthetic results. Following carefully planned and strictly executed and documented procedures, the artist enacts and records such acts as explosions, collisions, and the projection of objects through space. Video works like Stiefel mit Rakete (Boot with Rocket) are integral to Signer’s performances, capturing the original setup of materials that self-destruct in the process of creating an emotionally and visually compelling event. Signer gives a humorous twist to the concept of cause and effect and to the traditional scientific method of experimentation and discovery, taking on the self-evidence of scientific logic as an artistic challenge.Read More »

Trace the incredible story of defiant visionary Igor Savitsky, an artist and museum curator who cunningly acquired more than 40,000 banned Soviet Union paintings and hid the illegal collection from the KGB in Uzbekistan’s Nukus Museum. In addition to rare archival footage and interviews with the artists’ children, this absorbing documentary also features letters and diary entries read by Ben Kingsley, Sally Field and Edward AsnerRead More »

Cult musician Swamp Dogg and housemates Moogstar and Guitar Shorty have turned their suburban LA home into an artistic haven. They journey through the turbulent music business, forming a special friendship transcending eras.Read More »

First her father ends up in one of Stalin’s prison camps, then young Svetlana herself experiences the German invasion. In order to survive she learns German at home in Kiev. She is good and gets work as a translator before ending up in a German camp in 1943. Now, 65 years later, she is a renowned translator who in her twilight years has translated the great works of Dostoevsky. For the first time in all these years, she returns to Kiev together with her granddaughter.
—Göteborg International Film FestivalRead More »

Day Is Done becomes, among other things, a poetic but also wryly humorous study of the
selfish artist trying to play the indifferent God, but ending up revealing himself as all too
human. (…) Day Is Done contains images of ravishing though unconventional urban beauty.
(Screen Daily, 14.02.11)Read More »