Documentary

Guy Debord’s landmark cinematic analysis of consumer society is based on his influential sociological book “La société du spectacle” (1967). Debord was a leading member of the avant-garde art movement ‘Situationist International’. This cinematic essay uses their method of ‘détournement’ to decontextualize and rearrange preexisting audiovisual materials and texts to critizise them and create new meaning. The result is a subversive collage of ideological (moving) images from socialist and capitalist societies that are presented here as artefacts of a global media ‘spectacle’: Social relations between people are mediated by artificial images and false representations that transform humans into mere passive consumers and ‘spectators’ of their alienated existence. Guy Debord’s motivation was to create a radical social critique and a disruptive, anti-illusionist cinema as an antidote and revolutionary tool against the dominant cultural and sociopolitical forces of his time.Read More »

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Just like the Russian poet of the film 1983 ‘Nosthalgia’, who, accompanied by his Italian guide and translator, traveled through Italy researching the life of an 18th century Russian composer, Andrey Tarkovskiy, accompanied by his Italian scriptwriter, Tonino Guerra, travels through Italy in order to find the locations for their common filmed effort. During this journey, Guerra constantly induces Tarkovskyi to reflect on his work and on his past as a filmmaker and a poet. The result will be ‘Nostalghia’, a masterpieceRead More »

España 68 (El hoy es malo pero el mañana es mío) aka Spain 68
A documentary about the 1968 student demonstrations and university occupations in Spain.

Spagna ’68, entirely financed by Pier Paolo Pasolini;
the first film in history to be made under and in opposition to a totalitarian regime.Read More »

In this second of a four part series, media artist Harun Farocki explores the interplay between modern warfare and electronic media using computer simulation and documentary footage. Originally presented as a simultaneous four-screen gallery video installation, the separate films are available exclusively on realeyz.tv. Director’s notes to Part II “In Twentynine Palms, we filmed an exercise with around 300 extras playing both Afghan and Iraqi civilian populations. A few dozen Marines stood guard and went on patrol. The maneuver town lay on a piece of land that rose slightly above the desert; its buildings were assembled out of containers. The scene looked like something modeled on the reality of a computer simulation.”Read More »

This chapter considers the fact that the pictures with which preparations were made for war are so very similar to the pictures with which war was evaluated afterward. But there is a difference: The program for commemorating traumatic experiences is somewhat cheaper. Nothing and no-one casts a shadow here.Read More »

For Immersion, Harun Farocki went to visit a research centre near Seattle specialized in the development of virtual realities and computer simulations. One of their projects consists in using virtual reality (environments created to simulate this world) for therapeutic reasons for soldiers suffering traumas after the Iraq war. The double projection creates a parallel between animations and testimonies by soldiers reliving their mission, the explosions, gunshots and ambushes, their fears and their guilt. The chosen direct rendering and simplicity of the edit places us like the voyeur of a personal and difficult experience. Read More »

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This Proustian documentary, made when Oliveira was 93 years old, explores the great Portuguese film-maker’s relationship with his home town, Oporto, the place which inspired his first film Douro, Faina Fluvial way back in 1931. Using old photographs and newsreels with dramatic reconstructions, he offers a vivid portrait of a city caught between the old and the new. When he was a child, Oporto didn’t even have proper cinemas, film shows were improvised in sheds, Oliveira (born 1908) recalls. Most of the landmarks familiar from his youth have vanished. The brothels and cafés where he and his artist friends used to while away their days are long since closed. Even the house where he grew up is in ruins. The city I remember only remains alive in my sad memory, he sadly reflects. Poignant and playful, this is one of the old master’s most accessible late films.Read More »

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“Legendary avant-garde filmmaker and visual artist James Benning returns to the Festival with L. COHEN, one of the year’s most awe-inspiring and transcendent experiences. Benning has described the landscape as ‘a function of time’ and this film elegantly invites us to savour the relationship. Shot in a barren Oregon field, the film’s fixed camera presents us with the deceptively simple: canary-coloured jerry can, twin tires, some rusty barrels, abandoned agricultural machinery, a plain of green grass and overgrown hay, and faint, portentous details in the distance.Read More »

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A worthy documentary on the first 60 years of jazz with an emphasis on Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and swing.

Episodes
1. Gumbo – Beginnings to 1917
2. The Gift 1917-1924
3. Our Language 1924-1928
4. The True Welcome 1929-1935
5. Swing – Pure Pleasure 1935-1937
6. Swing – The Velocity of Celebration 1937-1939
7. Dedicated to Chaos 1940-1945
8. Risk 1945-1956
9. The Adventure 1956-1961
10. A Masterpiece by Midnight 1961-2001Read More »