Documentary

Synopsis:The Oscar for Glass was really the result of a film commission. I was given a commission to make an half hour film, in black and white about the glass making process. (“Over glas gesproken”, a simple, tradtitional but beautiful documentary.We came across a machine,and it was really clever, like the one with little grips that picked up a bottle and set it gently down elsewhere. Back again, another one, and that went wrong. That was funny to see, all of a sudden it was a stupid machine but for the sake of the factory I couldn’t show stupid machines. It couldn’t stay in. So I decided to make a film in colour for myself. I didn’t want any commentary in it and only jazz music played by Pim Jacobs. And that’s how it ended up.Read More »

AMG REVIEW :
This profound and disturbing Italian documentary is entirely comprised of archival film footage from London, Milan, Moscow, Vienna and Budapest of life in WWI prison camps. Some of the clips are from propaganda films from Germany and Czarist Russia. The compilers removed all original onscreen text and replaced it with title cards describing the location and the subject. The documentary is also unnarrated but for a vocal score and presents the subjects objectively. Scenes include the arrest of the prisoners, their entry into the prison camps, live within their confines and the grim fate suffered by many of the interredRead More »

The liberation, exploitation, and oppression of Iran’s women, based on clips from films from the silent-film era up until the Revolution in 1979.Read More »

Explores Leni Riefenstahl’s artistic legacy and her complex ties to the Nazi regime, juxtaposing her self-portrayal with evidence suggesting awareness of the regime’s atrocities.Read More »

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Summer 1939. The explorer and photographer Ella Maillart and the writer Annemarie Schwarzenbach set off from Geneva by car with Kafiristan as their destination. Ella Maillart – Double Journey is the story of a special friendship, an escape from Europe, from the Geneva of 1939, already showing the early signs of what was to become the Nazi nightmare. The two intellectual and rebellious women throw themselves into an adventure. A search for the exotic, the unspoiled, the faraway, everything that can put up a wall between the East and a Europe that will be difficult to go back to ‒ so strong is the impending specter of evil.Read More »

Revolution! In 1915 the Russian artist Malevich declared a Black Square on a White Background an icon of his times and thus founded a new form of art, liberated from objects – Suprematism. Supported by the Bolsheviks at first, his ‘formalistic’ art was soon considered counterrevolutionary. 50 years later, in 1989, the first comprehensive Malevich retrospective outside Russia was held in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. It is here that Barrie Gavin outlines the artist’s creative phases and his life story. In doing so, he discovers the most diverse ‘isms’ of the 20th century and one of the most significant pioneers of abstract art.Read More »

In the last store in a defunct shopping mall, 91-year-old Sonia Warshawski – great-grandmother, businesswoman, and Holocaust survivor – runs the tailor shop she’s owned for more than thirty years. But when she’s served an eviction notice, the specter of retirement prompts Sonia to revisit her harrowing past as a refugee and witness to genocide. A poignant story of generational trauma and healing, BIG SONIA also offers a laugh-out-loud-funny portrait of the power of love to triumph over bigotry, and the power of truth-telling to heal us all.Read More »

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The land between the Vistula, Volga, Baltic Sea, and Black Sea was known in ancient times as Sarmatia. German documentary filmmaker Volker Koepp travels through the region that is now Moldova, Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine. He follows the course of the great rivers to the Curonian Lagoon on the Baltic coast and paints a detailed picture of a region that has almost disappeared from our consciousness today. In the process, he meets protagonists from earlier films – and follows the poems of a man who explored and experienced the landscape himself: the German poet Johannes Bobrowski, who was born in Sarmatia and knows the country very well. Bobrowski explored the area on many journeys and with open eyes; he incorporated his impressions into his literary work.
Translated from filmstarts.deRead More »

A farmer’s bond with a white stork intertwines with North Macedonian folklore.Read More »