Documentary

From the Introduction
Every age is said to have its genius. The 18th century is often called the age of philosophy. The 19th century is the age of the novel. But our own age is undoubtedly an age of the image.

Other periods had images, of course, but, in the last 100 years or so, we made more images than ever before, and they have changed not just what we see, but how we see.

This was an era that rewrote the rules of image making. Beaming pictures into our homes, manipulating them, making the impossible visible and, in the digital age, revealing them in eye-opening detail.Read More »

“McCarthy,” a new two-hour documentary chronicling the remarkable rise and precipitous fall of Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator whose zealous anti-communist crusade would test the limits of American decency and democracy, premieres Monday, January 6, 2020, 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET on American Experience on PBS.Read More »

Quote:
The world’s first movie about kids in global cinema. It’s a passionate, poetic portrait of the adventures of childhood ? its surrealism, loneliness, fun, destructiveness and stroppiness ? as seen through 53 great films from 25 countries.It includes classic movies like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and The Red Balloon, also dozens of masterpieces (many directed by women) that are almost unknown.It combines the child?s eye view of Mark Cousins? acclaimed film The First Movie, with the revelations and bold movie history of his 15 hour documentary The Story of Film: An Odyssey. Read More »

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Chicago native Howard Alk helped found Second City in 1959 and made a name for himself in the ’60s and ’70s as a documentary cinematographer, editor, and director. His debut feature, American Revolution 2 (1969, codirected by Mike Gray) looked at the Black Panther Party in Chicago; this follow-up, a profile of Panther leader Fred Hampton, unexpectedly turned into a true-crime story in December 1969 when Hampton and another Panther were fatally shot during the Chicago Police Department’s notorious raid on a Panther crash pad in West Town. The documentary (1971) presents Hampton as a charismatic figure given to violent revolutionary rhetoric, but after his death the focus shifts to Cook County state’s attorney Ed Hanrahan, whose report exonerating the police department was treated as gospel truth by the Chicago Tribune but belied by a wealth of physical evidence at the scene of the crime. As a first draft of history, this is invaluable, though its topical relevance has hardly diminished.Read More »

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 »

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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 »

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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 »