Wang Shin-hong is suffering from insomnia. A fortune teller advises the Mandalay businessman, whose car and bulging wallet suggest that business is going pretty well, to spend 14 days in a monastery, living life as a monk and eating an apple a day.Read More »
Quote:
Underground is a 1976 documentary film about the Weathermen, the militant faction of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) who fought to overthrow the U.S. government during the 1960’s and 1970’s. The film consists of interviews with members of the group after they went underground and footage of the anti-war and civil rights protests during this time period. It was directed by Emile de Antonio, Haskell Wexler and Mary Lampson, who were subpoenaed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in an attempt to confiscate the film footage in order to gain information that would help them arrest the Weathermen.Read More »
Quote:
Information film that was an important part of the rural electrification campaign, set up as part of the New Deal policies of president F.D. Roosevelt. Privatised electricity companies of the U.S. cities saw no profit in bringing electricity all the way to the sparsely populated countryside, so the ministry of Agriculture tried to convince farmers to set up co-operations which in turn could buy power from the government.
Ivens selected a model farm and family, the Parkinsons, and shows the daily life on the farm before and after the installation of electricity. The films was seen by over 6 million people until 1961 and houses besides the two main components of American culture (untamed pastoral nature versus industrial progress) many autobiographical aspects. The whole film is staged with the farmer’s family acting as themselves. Today we’d call this a docudrama. The Parkinson’s farm had already been electrified several months before the shooting.Read More »
Quote:
The Zuiderzee Works episode of We Are Building was elaborated to the much longer film Zuiderzee by Joris Ivens in 1930. In 1934 Ivens used the same material, and additional footage, to make another version: New Earth. This time the film got a political message, and the editing became more compact and stronger, sustained by the stirring Music of Hanns Eisler. After the part on the reclamation and the closing of the dyke the film continues with images of the economic crisis and the poverty among labourers. Ivens opposes this with the speculation on the market: those who helped with the reclamation of new land for agriculture are now unemployed and starving, while grain is dumped at see to keep the prices up. The closing of the dyke is still one of the strongest editing sequences in the films of Joris Ivens.Read More »
Quote:
Representing the passing of time has always been – and continues to be – a major concern for many artists. Argentinian filmmaker María Alvarez makes her contribution by exploring this theme through the lens of cinematic arts. Armed with her camera, she recorded the daily lives of film-lovers in three countries: Argentina, Uruguay and Spain. The outcome, Las Cinéphilas, is a documentary anthology that draws up a portrait of women who do not know each other but share a common passion.Read More »
A seminal documentary on the life and work of one of the most influential photographers of the last thirty years. An honest dig on her and her friends marginal way of life, especially in the 80’s, marked by the drugs, violence, sex, and AIDS.
With the participation of David Armstrong, Greer Lankton and Cookie Mueller, among others.Read More »
The history of nuclear weapons between 1945 until 1963.
“Trinity and Beyond” is an unsettling yet visually fascinating documentary presenting the history of nuclear weapons development and testing between 1945-1963. Narrated by William Shatner and featuring an original score performed by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, this award-winning documentary reveals previously unreleased and classified government footage from several countries.Read More »
“Est-ce une chose douce et tendre, une chose énigmatique, une chose humaine, une chose à nulle autre pareille, une chose fragile ? C’est une chose tissée de mille choses, douces, fragiles, énigmatiques et humaines. Le Journal de septembre est un voyage intérieur qui se déploie jour après jour d’une forme à une autre, glissant peu à peu d’images du quotidien du cinéaste à des séquences plus intimes et plus surréelles.” — Centre de l’Audiovisuel à BruxellesRead More »
The first film Joris Ivens made when he returned from Eastern Europe is a film poem about Paris and Parisian life on the borders of the Seine river. The film follows the flow of the river through the city of Paris, making a portet of this city and its people living, strolling, sun-bathing, fishing, working, swimming, loving and laughing beside the Seine. The poem written by Jacques Prévert gives the film an extra dimension, and the music, with the recurring theme of a children song, gives it a melancholic touch.Read More »