Documentary

Hear My Cry“ depicts the startling story of Ryszard Siwiec, a man who, on a Polish national holiday in September 1968, immolated himself in front of thousands of people in a stadium in Warsaw. He performed this desperate act of self-burning as a protest against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces. The world, however, kept silent. His name and deed received no front page newspaper coverage. Why? „Hear My Cry“ is a human story, a story of mankinds love of freedom, a story which portrays mans eternal need to escape from the constraints of totalitarianism.Read More »

For this Swiss-German documentary, filmmaker/Sinologist Ulrike Koch sneaked cameras into Tibet in order to film four men and 160 yak in a 2,000-year-old ritual — the annual spring pilgrimage to gather raw salt at remote lakes, a three-month Himalayan trek. Camping along the way, they engage in prayers, talk, and songs. Following nomadic traditions, the saltmen make the return trip with salt in backpacks made from yak pelts. In addition to Tibetan chanting, the film’s music includes a post-production blend of Hamburg musicians and native Tibetans. After a digital video transfer to film, the 108-minute documentary was shown at several 1997 film festivals, including (Sundance, Vienna, Taormina, and Pusan). ~ Bhob StewartRead More »

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New York City’s Monterey is a residence hotel; the residents we see are older, most live alone. The camera, usually stationery, begins with a look into the lobby. The film ends with a panorama from the hotel’s rooftop. There’s no soundtrack. The lobby is clean with granite floors. Men wear hats. People enter and exit an elevator. The camera looks out from within the elevator as doors open and close. People sit alone and motionless in their apartments. There are long shots of empty halls. Paint peels. The flooring on upper levels is linoleum. Hall lights are florescent. Doors open a crack then close. The film provides the feeling of what it’s like to live there.Read More »

Musician Jonny Greenwood travels to Rajasthan, where he performs with a multitude of Indian musicians.Read More »

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The day-to-day life of a Parisian astrologer, who has been residing in the same Montmartre apartment for over 50 years.Read More »

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People’s associations with flora goes back a long way, taking us back to our own roots as well as to new ways of life and creative potential that reveal themselves as we deal with plants. ‘Wild Plants’ is a film that follows these clues and takes us to urban gardens in Detroit, to Native American philosopher Milo Yellow Hair in Wounded Knee, to the wild plantations of Zurich’s legendary ‘Guerilla Gardener’ Maurice Maggi, and to the innovative horticulture cooperative ‘Les Jardins de Cocagne’ in Geneva.Read More »

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They talk about the beautiful game, but for Laurentiu Ginghina, it’s not enough. Football must be modified, streamlined, freed from restraints; corners are to be rounded off, players assigned to zones and subteams, norms revised. In retrospect, he first realized that the rules of football were wrong when he was tackled during a game in his youth, in the summer holidays, on another pitch now covered in snow, but in Vaslui, not Bucharest. The tackle hit so hard it fractured his fibula, a year later his tibia broke too, on New Year’s Eve 1987, he had to walk home in the snow and no one helped him.Read More »

At the Tropic of Cancer in the desert of San Luis Potosi, Mexico, various families survive by hunting animals which they sell on the freeway.Read More »

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A documentary on the chaotic production of Werner Herzog’s epic Fitzcarraldo (1982), showing how the film managed to get made despite problems that would have floored a less obsessively driven director.

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Les Blank’s “Burden of Dreams” is one of the most remarkable documentaries ever made about the making of a movie. There are at least two reasons for that. One is that the movie being made, Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo,” involved some of the most torturous and dangerous on-location shooting experiences in film history. The other is that the documentary is by Les Blank, himself a brilliant filmmaker, who is unafraid to ask difficult questions and portray Herzog, warts and all.Read More »