Documentary

A series of interviews with living filmmakers about German film history.`Night of the filmmakers’ (1994, 52 mins., English commentary) directed by Edgar Reitz, was produced for BFI TV by Edgar Reitz Filmproduktions in association with ZDF, Arte and Premiere. Brings together an imaginary assembly of German filmmakers to explore German cinema of all periods. Contributors include Volker Schlöndorff, Helma Sanders-Brahms, Margarethe von Trotta, Frank Beyer, Wolfgang Kohlhasse, Peter Schamoni, Leni Reifenstahl, Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog.

p.s. part of the serie The Century Of Cinema for the BFIRead More »

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How Little We Know of Our Neighbours is an experimental documentary about Britain’s Mass Observation Movement and its relationship to contemporary issues regarding surveillance, public self-disclosure, and privacy. At its center is a look at the multiple roles cameras have played in public space, starting in the 1880’s, when the introduction of the hand-held camera brought photography out of the studio and into the street. For the first time one could be photographed casually in public without knowledge or consent. Mass Observation used surreptitious photography to record and scrutinize people’s behavior in public places. Mass Observation was an eccentric social science enterprise founded in the late 1930’s in England that combined surrealism with anthropology. Read More »

Looks like an awesome Bitomsky film, deals with images on film shot between 1910-1920.Read More »

In this documentary, striking political science students concerned with the democratization of their university occupy the offices of the Political Science Department at McGill University. The issue: greater student control over the hiring of faculty. The film crew lives with the students and follows their action through confusion, argument, dissent, and negotiations with faculty. The result is an intimate view of a student political action.
Another from the NFB’s Challenge for Change program.Read More »

A look within the walls of the New York Public Library.

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The director’s latest magisterial study of a public institution is a tribute to the power of education and the importance of community, characteristically ambitious yet surprisingly brisk.

Patience is a virtue; it is also a lion. One hundred and sixteen years old, the white marble beast has guarded the steps outside the main branch of the New York Public Library (NYPL) with her identical counterpart, Fortitude. The principles they embody have sustained Frederick Wiseman across the half-century of his unique career, which arguably culminates in this, his 42nd documentary film. A quietly magisterial enterprise, over the course of 197 minutes it visits the myriad buildings and activities which serve the city under the NYPL’s banner and lion-head logo.Read More »

Karol, Junior, Ronaldo and Caio are in their last month of school at a public institution in Rio de Janeiro. Immersed in the tangled wires covering the slum’s sky and the sudden blackouts, these four youngsters are affected by the city crisis and reinvent themselves in the face of adversity.Read More »

In this documentary by a veteran Italian journalist Silvestro Montanaro some of the conspirators behind Sankara’s death are interviewed. The rise and fall of The Burkinabé Revolution is placed in the international context.

Highly recommendable viewing, especially in light of the latest events.

“A true journalist enters the palace of power only if he has to and always head up. He knows he represents the people’s desire for knowledge. He never obeys any orders nor does he accept the given truth. The only master a true journalist has is the genuine and critical story that he has to tell and the only editor he listens to is his audience.”

Silvestro Montanaro (1954 – 2020)Read More »

— Jonas Mekas wrote:
“The film consists of three parts. The first part is made up of footage I shot with my first Bolex, during my first years in America, mostly from 1950-1953. It shows me and my brother Adolfas, how we looked in those days; miscellaneous footage of immigrants in Brooklyn, picnicking, dancing, singing; the streets of Williamsburg.

— Jonas Mekas wrote:
“The second part was shot in August 1971, in Lithuania. Almost all of the footage comes from Semeniškiai, the village I was born in. You see the old house, my mother (born 1887), all the brothers, goofing, celebrating our homecoming. You don’t really see how Lithuania is today: you see it only through the memories of a Displaced Person back home for the first time in twenty-five years.Read More »

Documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman goes behind the scenes at the National Gallery in a journey to the heart of a museum inhabited by masterpieces of Western art from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.
This three-hour epic has no voiceover, no score and no added sound effects. The nearest thing to music is the drone of the polishing machines at dawn. In a richly detailed, beautifully nuanced portrait of the gallery’s working life, we are guided gently from board meeting to retouching workshop, from gallery floor, to seminar room, from the difficult financial decisions facing the charity’s executives to visitors’ awed appreciation of the exhibitions.
Combining a vivid sense of how vast the gallery’s many activities are with an eye for droll observational detail, the film reveals how the gallery works and its relations with its staff, public and paintings.Read More »