Documentary

Autotranslated:
Behind the 800-year-old wall, the lives of 12 Benedictine sisters take place in Staniatki near Krakow. It is the oldest cloister convent in Poland. Its inhabitants are cheerful, elderly people who function according to the “ora et labora” rule invented over 10 centuries ago. The protagonists of the documentary – Sisters Anunciate and Benedict, who have been in the monastery for over 40 years, introduce us to life behind the wall, tell us about the experience of being a nun, as well as about passing and longing for youth. Without avoiding jokes, they show us a monastic world far from the stereotype – often touching and funny.Read More »

This film takes you on an extraordinary journey into the world of the Surrealists as the life and accomplishments of the surrealist collector, poet, and architect Edward James unfolds. For the last 20 years of his life, aided by 40 full time laborers and craftmen, he built one of the biggest and yet least known architectural monuments of the 20th century, dedicated to Surrealism and hidden in the jungles of Mexico. He created over 36 extraordinary concrete structures, some over 100 feet high, at a personal cost exceeding 5 million dollars.Read More »

SPOILER

(from an imdb review)
“Ah, PROPOGANDA! See one of the early propaganda films–worth the viewing
Author: TheMrLee

Grierson set out to make “propaganda,” and this film–with it’s voice-over proclaiming the great value of the British industrial worker, without a hint of ambiguity or doubt–fits that category well. The authoritatarian narrator feels out-of-date and unsophisticated, but the footage is well shot and interesting, and the transparency of the propaganda aspect is almost a reflief at a time when so many films have hidden agendas. “Read More »

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This documentary by German filmmaker Andres Veiel takes a look back at German politics of the ’70s and ’80s, a troubled era when the government was engaged in a war against the leftist movement known as the Red Army Fraction. The conflict is addressed by focusing on the lives and deaths of two men whose fates became tragically intertwined in 1989. Alfred Herrenhausen was a high-ranking member of the Deutsche Bank who was killed by a Red Army Fraction bomb attack. Wolfgang Grams, a radical activist, was a major suspect in the attack. Four years later, he was tracked down by police and killed. Through interviews with relatives, friends, and colleagues of both men, a clear picture of the times emerges. While the film makes no attempts to place blame or assign guilt, it does raise many questions about German politics today.Read More »

Synopsis
Stanley Kubrick was very quiet. This bewitching documentary gives us the rare opportunity to hear the rare words of a filmmaker as brilliant as he is secretive, through the interviews he gave to film critic Michel Ciment. Inspired by Kubrick’s famous travelling shots, slow camera movements take us on a walk through a labyrinthine museum, with a décor inspired by “2001: A Space Odyssey”.Read More »

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Brief piece for the television series Aujourd’hui en France (Today in France). The review of an exhibition by Miró at the Maeght Foundation offers the opportunity to approach the surrealist artist from the central themes of the filmmaker. The theater, the interrelation between the arts and the transformation of the children’s experience through art. The set turns out to be a work of Joan Miró translated into real life. First screening after her television showing in 1980Read More »

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After SEA OF YOUTH, the film team turned itself into a full-fledged collective: the Independent Screening Organization, or Jieso for short. This was the precursor to Ogawa Productions, and as the name indicates their focus was on reception. This was because they discovered there was no easy way to show SEA OF YOUTH. Jieso networked social movements and film fans across Japan to create an alternative distribution route. Their next film, FOREST OF OPPRESSION, turns to the phenomenon of students barricading themselves inside schools to various political ends. They chose Takasaki City University of Economics, and audiences were shocked by the vigor and violence of this protest in such a minor university. The film put Ogawa on the map.Read More »

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Joshua Oppenheimer is one of the world’s most renowned documentary filmmakers. His multi award-winning films The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014) have challenged and redefined perceptions about the very nature of documentary cinema.

Dušan Makavejev on THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE.

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In 1996, filmmaker Tatsuya Mori received permission to tape the inside activities of Japan’s religious cult Aum Shinrikyo—the enigmatic group that released sarin gas into Tokyo’s subway system in 1995. Focusing on the group’s bumbling, confused spokesperson Araki Hiroshi, Mori caught much more than the cult’s daily life with his camera. He captured the media frenzy that engulfed the group, the vicious tactics of undercover cops against cult members, and the anger of local residents who wanted to evict the cult from their community. Looking for more than a simple depiction of this controversial group, Mori exposes and examines the contradictions in Japanese society that would produce such a cult and then feed on it. This edgy, provocative documentary created a heated debate in Japan, where the cult still resides under a different name.Read More »