Documentary

After fleeing Vietnam by boat in 1975, Hoa Thi Le and Hue Nguyen Che arrived in the Philippines and were cast as extras in Apocalypse Now.Read More »

Il Cinema Ritrovato wrote:
Alfred Machin started at Pathé in 1908, in the department called “Service de Voyage”. Its staff had their travel expenses covered by the company and were paid per film accepted (“bande accepté”) so it was a kind of freelancing. The frequency of hunting films, especially from distant countries, is some indication of the popularity of this genre a hundred years ago. According to the Pathé catalogue, Machin was also responsible for Chasse à L’hippopotame, Chasse à l’aigrette, Chasse à la giraffe, Chasse au marabout, Chasse aux singes, and Chasse aux éléphants.Read More »

Quote:
Joris Ivens’ Rain left a lasting impression on Bergmann-Michel. The main motif of the lyrically edited film is a single rain shower, filmed over a period of two years. As a working portrait with photos, drawings, collages and sequences from the films rediscovered for this purpose, Mein Herz schlägt Blau – Ella Bergmann-Michel combines her artistic biography with her cinematic commitment to social reform. The essay by Jutta Hercher and Maria Hemmleb tells of the grotesque collages influenced by natural science, of pacifist hopes, photographic experiments and the film working group in New Frankfurt. Mein Herz schlägt Blau begins in the Schmelzmühle, the meeting place of artist friends and, during the Nazi era, an ‘underground’ retreat. – Fischfang in der Rhön comes closest to Bergmann-Michel’s free artistic work and combines it with a documentary perspective. The encounter with Ivens’ Regen echoes.Read More »

A documentary depicting the day- and nighttime behaviors of African animals.Read More »

Jewish life in Poland before World War II. The Vladimir Medem Sanatorium stood as the embodiment of health and enlightenment in striking contrast to the grim images of urban Polish-Jewish poverty.Read More »

“Palestine Vaincra (Palestine Will Win)” is regarded as the first French documentary film made in support of the Palestinian liberation movement. Shot in 1969 by Jean-Pierre OLIVIER de SARDAN in a student dorm, the film blends historical testimonies by Palestinians, photographs, stock footage, maps, and music. The documentary centers on the 1968 Battle of Karameh, while also tracing the complex story of the past five decades of Palestinian resistance against oppression and colonialism.Read More »

Filmed in his studio in 1988, in front of Benoît Jacquot’s camera, the painter Robert Motherwell, then aged 73, retraces the main creative stages of his work and describes very precisely his way of working: the importance of the choice of brush , of the support, of the paint used, the accidents which occur and which determine the work… He engages in a discourse on art in the serene atmosphere of his studio in Greenwich. He describes the principles of psychic automatism and comments on the different periods of his work to which dozens of retrospectives, including one in Paris in 1977, have been devoted throughout the world. A rigorous portrait that reveals the painter with his doubts and convictions.Read More »

Quote:
The film is characterised by atypical landscape shots, with views of nature being distorted without technical effects. Close-ups, details and overhead shots without a horizon create an impression of flatness. Flora and fauna are transformed into graphic elements through symmetrical reflections.

‘Fischfang in der Rhön’ is reminiscent of Ella Bergmann-Michel’s experimental landscape photographs on the one hand and her collages on the other, in which she layered coloured transparent papers on top of each other.Read More »

Quote:
Ella Bergmann-Michels’ second film, ‘Erwerbslose kochen für Erwerbslose’ (The Unemployed Cook for the Unemployed), was commissioned by the Frankfurt Association of Soup Kitchens, which had run out of funds to provide thousands of unemployed people with hot meals as the economic crisis worsened. The film was shown as a supporting feature in many Frankfurt cinemas and in street screenings at the Frankfurt Hauptwache.Read More »