Documentary

Not surprisingly, Jørgen Leth became fascinated by Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), an African-American anthropologist, dancer and choreographer living in Haiti. Dunham was politically engaged and a powerful personality. Unfortunately, at the time it proved impossible to raise the money to produce a film portrait. This pilot has survived on a battered VHS cassette. Footage from a dance seminar in East St. Louis is complemented with interviews with Dunham and other black dancers. The producer Terry Carter is working on having the planned Dunham film accomplished.Read More »

Synopsis
One of the myths surrounding the creation of Vietnam involves a fight between two dragons whose intertwined bodies fell into the South China Sea and formed Vietnam’s curving S-shaped coastline. Influential feminist theorist and filmmaker Trinh T. Minh-ha’s lyrical film essay commemorating the 40th anniversary of the end of the war draws inspiration from ancient legend and from water as a force evoked in every aspect of Vietnamese culture. Read More »

In the American corporate media, Castro is always played up as some kind of monster. The corporate media (and a host of draconian laws help) prevent us from hearing what he has to say. This documentary is excellent if anything but to give us a chance to hear what Castro has to say.Read More »

Plot
The Chinese government provides the villages in the mountains of Sichuan (China) with films. The main character of this film is a projectionist who, 37 years ago, used to carry his old projector on foot and bicycle. He would display a small screen across the road or between trees in front of a farm… It’s the same today except that he rides a motorcycle, carries a large screen and that the films travel two thousand kilometers from Beijing to Chengdu by satellite, before he picks them up on his motorcycle. Up in the mountains, people bring a stool out on the road and watch. That story takes place in Beijing and the beautiful mountains covered with bamboos above ChengduRead More »

Quote:

There are always people who say: you can’t change people by force. Them, they say: it’s not so clear, we know our business and have a lot of time.

The former central preventive prison for political prisoners of the former GDR Ministry of State Security (Stasi) in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen was not an ordinary place of detention. This building, which did not appear on the maps of East Berlin and which still bears traces of Germany’s recent history (Nazism, Soviet occupation, communist dictatorship), has the grim particularity of having as many interrogation rooms as detention cells. Read More »

Filmed just eight months after The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, THE T.A.M.I. SHOW introduced rock ‘n’ soul youth culture to America in the first concert movie of the rock era. One of the rarest and most sought-after performance films from its time, the 1964 concert event featured future Rock and Roll Hall of Famers The Rolling Stones, James Brown, Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson And The Miracles, The Supremes and many other American and British Invasion hitmakers in their prime.Read More »

Feature-length documentary on Lon Chaney, featuring new interviews (notably with Chaney biographer Michael F. Blake), unseen footage of Chaney, and excerpts from old interviews with Chaney contemporaries who have since passed away.
A TCM original production, included in the DVD boxset “TCM Archives – Lon Chaney Collection”.Read More »

Quote:
I began El Valley Centro in November of 1998; I was driving through the Great Central Valley looking for places to film. I wasn’t going to start shooting for at least six months; I wanted to just look and listen – to get to know the Valley well before I would make images. But almost immediately I came across an oil well fire with flames high into the sky. I returned home for my Bolex and Nagra. Determined that landscape is a function of time, I let a full roll of 16mm film (100 feet) run through the camera. At that moment I knew I would make a portrait of The Great Central Valley using 35 two and a half minute shots.Read More »

Nathaniel Dorsky’s films are precise articulations of cinematic qualities: the surprise of an edit, the composition of framing, and the flash of the image. Dubbed the “filmmaker’s filmmaker”, Dorsky’s work captures the fleeting moments of everyday life in its poetic chaos in such films as Pneuma (1976-82), Triste (1974-96), Alaya (1976-87), and Variations (1992-98). Using a spring-wound Bolex and 16mm reversal stock film, Dorsky’s films operate in the realm of the purely visual.Read More »