Documentary

Nicole Brenez for BFI wrote:
Made in Argentina in 1968, The Hour of the Furnaces (La hora de los hornos) is the film that established the paradigm of revolutionary activist cinema. “For the first time,” said one of its writers, Octavio Getino, “we demonstrated that it was possible to produce and distribute a film in a non-liberated country with the specific aim of contributing to the political process of liberation.” The film is not just an act of courage, it’s also a formal synthesis, a theoretical essay and the origin of several contemporary image practices.Read More »

SYNOPSIS
The viper is deaf and the scorpion can’t see, so it is and so shall be, the same way the countryside is peaceful and the city bustling and the human being impossible to satisfy. Lacrau demands the return “to the curve where man got lost” in a journey from the city towards nature. The escape from chaos and emotional void we call progress; matter without spirit, without will. The search for the most ancient sensations and relationships of mankind. The amazement, the fear of the unknown, the loss of basic comforts, loneliness, the meeting with the other, the other animal, the other vegetable.
A dive looking for a connection with the world. Where beginning and end are the same, but I am not.Read More »

Quote:
From a plastic bowl to petroleum, we trace back through the complete industrial process that leads to the manufacture of plastic objects. The force of the commentary composed in alexandrine verse by Raymond Queneau matches the wide screen of CinemaScope proportions.Read More »

from cinematik
Saimaa-ilmiö is probably the first properly made rock film made in Finland. Such basics as including the songs in their entirety, shooting with multiple cameras, reducing interviews to a minimum and using them to express the atmosphere, not as compulsory fillers-in, were unheard of in Finland at the time. Concentrating on the music, not everything around it, Saimaa-ilmiö captures much of the leisurely feel of the lake tour.Read More »

Quote:
Agnès Varda and JR have things in common: a passion for and the exploration of images in general, and more precisely, for places and for ways of showing, sharing, and exhibiting them. Agnès chose cinema. JR chose to create open air photography galleries. When Agnès and JR met in 2015, they immediately wanted to work together, to shoot a film in France, far from cities, during a trip in JR’s photographic (and magical) truck. Through chance encounters and prepared projects, they reached out to others, listening to them, photographing them, and sometimes putting them on posters. This film also tells the story of Agnès and JR’s friendship, which grew stronger throughout the film shoot, between surprises and teasing, and while laughing about their differences.Read More »

Quote:
I Don’t Hate Las Vegas Anymore is a real-life documentary comedy about a filmmaker who takes a road trip to Las Vegas with his father and half-brother in an attempt to prove the existence of God. He posits that if God exists, and if God is indeed omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then all the filmmaker has to do is roll the camera and let God direct the movie. But the movie isn’t going in the direction the filmmaker would like, and so the filmmaker attempts to force God’s hand by trying to persuade his father and half-brother to take Ecstasy with him. When they refuse, things quickly start to unravel.Read More »

Essay Film Festival:

Straschek was among the first cohort to graduate from the German Film and Television Academy (DFFB). He started studying film in 1966, alongside Hartmut Bitomsky, Harun Farocki, Holger Meins, Helke Sander and others. The Director of the DFFB confiscated his student film, A Western for the SDS (Ein Western für den SDS) (1967-1968), which led to an occupation of his office and eventually the dismissal of Straschek and other students in 1968.Read More »

Quote:
The love-hate relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski is utterly puzzling to outsiders. The film is about the deep trust between an actor and a director and their independently and simultaneously hatched plans to murder one another.Read More »

The Selling of the Pentagon, was an important documentary aired in primetime on CBS on 23 February 1971. The aim of this film, produced by Peter Davis, was to examine the increasing utilization and cost to the taxpayers of public relations activities by the military-industrial complex in order to shape public opinion in favor of the military…..Read More »