Documentary

  • Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack – Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925)

    1921-1930DocumentaryEpicErnest B. SchoedsackMerian C. CooperUSA

    Quote:
    A classic adventure by the makers of “King Kong.” In 1924, neophyte filmmakers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack hooked up with journalist and sometime spy Marguerite Harrison and set off to film an adventure. They found excitement, danger and unparalleled drama in the migration of the Bakhtiari tribe of Persia (now Iran). Twice a year, more than 50,000 people and half a million animals surmounted seemingly impossible obstacles to take their herds to pasture.Read More »

  • Carola Fuentes & Rafael Valdeavellano – Chicago Boys (2015)

    2011-2020Carola FuentesChileDocumentaryPoliticsRafael Valdeavellano

    The economists behind the implementation of the most extreme capitalist system in the world observe with surprise the discontent of its countrymen. For the first time, they tell the story of how they became Milton Friedman´s students in Chicago in the 1950’s and what were they willing to do to pursue their extreme economic ideas, aided by Pinochet’s dictatorship in the 70’s. Unseen images and testimonies that allow us to understand the historic process that transformed the Chilean people and Chile in the country that it is today, an image of success and discontent.Read More »

  • Hartmut Bitomsky – Bombardement und Bunker aka Kino Flächen Bunker (1991)

    Documentary1991-2000ExperimentalGermanyHartmut Bitomsky

    KINO FLÄCHEN BUNKER (Das Kino und die Schauplätze) [Cinema, Surface, Bunker (The Cinema and its Settings)] which is also known as »Bombardement und Bunker« [Barrage and Bunker] is an essay film about the (narrative) space imagined by fiction films. Reflections and associations about movement in space as the basis for every kind of story-telling. The film is sometimes referred to as part of Bitomsky’s Cinema Trilogy. Sequences from over 20 movies are quoted and commented on by a team of three »researchers« (Bitomsky, Petzold, Tanner) in a sort of laboratory. TV-monitors, production stills or screenshots are used as well as quotations from books. A long night’s work.Read More »

  • Mehrdad Oskouei – Royahaye dame sobh AKA Starless Dreams (2016)

    2011-2020DocumentaryIranMehrdad Oskouei

    “Sir, when people wonder if God is a man or woman,
    no one thinks God could be a woman!”

    An unforgettable portrayal of innocence lost and found, STARLESS DREAMS plunges us into the lives of young teenage girls sharing temporary quarters at a juvenile detention center on the outskirts of Tehran. Director Mehrdad Oskouei, one of Iran’s most prominent filmmakers, spent seven years securing access to this all-female facility. As the New Year approaches, the girls bond, and reveal—with playfully disarming honesty—the circumstances and acts that resulted in their incarceration. They have killed their father, robbed a bank, or were arrested for carrying 651 grams of cocaine. Outside the prison walls, danger is everywhere, even within their own families.Read More »

  • Aleksandr Sokurov – Elegiya dorogi AKA Elegy of a Voyage [+Extras] (2002)

    2001-2010Aleksandr SokurovArthouseDocumentaryRussia

    From Kinoglaz.fr
    In this film, the artistic transformation of the objects of reality reaches the pinnacle of the author’s alteration of this reality. The author’s thoughts and words anticipate the appearance of visual images crystallised from flickering impressions of reality, composed in a manner that is eloquent yet austere, fantastic yet truthful.
    In this voyage the names of people and places are alienated: this unfettered dream, a dream about the infinitude of space and time, needs no frontiers or passports.Read More »

  • Pawel Pawlikowski – Serbian Epics (1992)

    1991-2000DocumentaryPawel PawlikowskiPoliticsUnited Kingdom

    A film made about the Serbs as they fought in Yugoslavia in the early 90s to regain the land and the glory of their medieval empire.

    In this documentary, set in Bosnia during the war, Pawlikowski steers clear of the usual cliches of war reporting. He takes on a more anthropological perspective relying not on commentary but on the power of images: a mass baptism before the final battle, the bizarre antics of the remaining members of the Karadjordje dynasty and the tribal chants of Serbian peasant/soldiers at the front line. The result is more universal enquiry into the nature of the nation state and the ethnocentric view of the world.Read More »

  • Catarina Vasconcelos – A Metamorfose dos Pássaros AKA The Metamorphosis of Birds (2020)

    2011-2020Catarina VasconcelosDocumentaryDramaPortugal

    Synopsis
    The passing away of their mothers makes Catarina and her own father meet in an emotional place that is different from the one most fathers and daughters know.Read More »

  • Sharon Lockhart – Lunch Break (2008)

    2001-2010DocumentaryExperimentalSharon LockhartUSA

    Quote:
    Lunch Break features 42 workers as they take their midday break in a corridor stretching nearly the entire shipyard. Contrary to her previous films, the camera is untethered and, as it slowly moves down the corridor, we experience what was a brief interval in the workday schedule expanded into a sustained gaze. Lined with lockers, the hallway seems not only an industrial nexus but also a social one, its surfaces containing a history of self-expression and customization.Read More »

  • Sharon Lockhart – Rudzienko (2017)

    2011-2020DocumentaryExperimentalSharon LockhartUSA

    Quote:
    Sharon Lockhart’s film Rudzienko was shot over two years in collaboration with the residents of the Youth Center for Sociotherapy in Rudzienko, Poland. Building on the relationship she established in 2009 with Milena, who later moved to the center, Lockhart conceived of a series of workshops to empower the young women. The group worked together to develop dialog and movements to be enacted on camera based on their collective activities. The resulting film features a range of conversations, from the philosophical to everyday teenage concerns, and depicts actions both theatrical and mundane that voice the girls’ rich humanity. The Polish-language film proposes an innovative approach to the relationship between image and language by offsetting the spoken conversations with their written translations. (lockhartstudio.com)Read More »

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