Using archive images, Sergei Loznitsa revisits the gala evenings organized at the Palais Garnier in the fifties and sixties. Between prestige and protocol, these evenings gathered both celebrities and ordinary people who came by the thousands from the Place de l’Opéra to watch this spectacle, of which the director amusingly brings out the irony…Read More »
Synopsis
The Casino del Duca is an ancient palazzo, a cross between a palace and a manor farm, located in San Basilio, near Taranto. For two thousand years it was the beating heart of an entire region, as well as the focal point of the most important estate in Apulia. And today it’s nothing: marred, destroyed, and forgotten. But above all, this film looks at time, at its legacies and ruins. The story of the Swiss traveler from the 18TH century evinces the contrast between its past splendor and current decay, deriving from a distracted modernity dominated by ugliness. History as a vestige and as death.Read More »
“This fascinating film follows the physically grueling and mentally exhausting training regimen of several young wanna-be GAEA GIRLS, a group of Japanese women wrestlers. The idea of them may seem like a total oxymoron in a country where women are usually regarded as docile and subservient. However, in training and in the arena, the female wrestlers depicted in this film are just as violent as any member of the World Wrestling Federation, and the blood that’s drawn is very real indeed. One recruit, Takeuchi, endures ritual humiliation not seen on screen since the boot camp sequences of FULL METAL JACKET. In DIVORCE IRANIAN STYLE, Kim Longinotto cinematically explored the previously unexplored world of the Tehran divorce courts. Working with co-director Jano Williams, Longinotto has been given access to shoot an insider’s verité account of this closely guarded universe.” – Chicago Film FestivalRead More »
A film about love and gender. This documentary is set in the New Marilyn night club in Tokyo, Japan – where the hosts are women who have chosen to live as men. They can only make their living as hosts in a nightclub with other ‘wannabes’ like them. The young women who come there often have relationships with them but the underlying fear is whether such a relationship can withstand the pressures on a girl to get married and have children. All three boys deal with this in different ways. These three hosts, the Shinjuku Boys, take us into their lives.Read More »
DAS KINO UND DER WIND UND DIE PHOTOGRAPHIE
Sieben Kapitel uber dokumentarische Filme
The Cinema and the Wind and Photography
Seven Chapters about Documentary Films
“That’s how we’ll begin: the street of the first film. This street is located in a suburb of Lyon. That’s where the factory of the Lumiere brothers was. They made the first films for cinema. These were documentary films.”Read More »
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This informative documentary focuses on the Dani people of New Guinea, and in particular tribal members Weyak and Pua. Weyak, an adult, protects the land his tribe lives on from other tribes and outsiders. Their territory was then one of the few places not colonized by Europeans. Pua is a young boy who cares for the village’s pigs. Battles take place frequently between the various Dani tribes. When someone is killed, the death must be avenged, and the fighting continues in a deadly cycleRead More »
Based on Arata Osada’s book Children of the A-bomb: The Testament of the Boys and Girls of Hiroshima (1959) the film retells the horrors of the Hiroshima bombing through the eyes of children. It mainly consists of illustrations drawn by the children.Read More »
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Innocents Abroad is a delightful, lighthearted film about forty American tourists visiting ten European countries in a whirlwind two weeks. Globus Gateway Tours allowed Les Blank and his film crew complete and uncensored access to “European Horizons” tour #KH1009A. The tour closely follows the nineteenth century traditional “Grand Tour”, starting in London and visiting Amsterdam, Heidelberg, The Black Forest, Lucerne, Innsbruck, Venince, Rome, Pisa, Nice, Avignon, and Paris. The film chronicles a diverse group of Americans experiencing Europe for the first time, struggling with and laughing about cultural differences, and seeing ancient sites and legendary cities, all led by witty and inimitable Englishman Mark Tinney. For some of the tourists, this is their first venture out into the world; for others, it is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.Read More »
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During the 1990s, David Lee Hoffman searched throughout China for the finest teas. He’s a California importer who, as a youth, lived in Asia for years and took tea with the Dali Lama. Hoffman’s mission is to find and bring to the U.S. the best hand picked and hand processed tea. This search takes him directly to farms and engages him with Chinese scientists, business people, and government officials: Hoffman wants tea grown organically without a factory, high-yield mentality. By 2004, Hoffman has seen success: there are farmer’s collectives selling tea, ways to export “boutique tea” from China, and a growing Chinese appreciation for organic farming’s best friend, the earthworm.Read More »