Documentary

Year one at the Teddy McArdle Free School in Little Falls, New Jersey, where all classes are voluntary and rules are determined by vote. Wilder is there from the beginning to end of the school year, documenting and observing founder Alexander Khost, eleven-year-old Jiovanni, seven-year-old Lucy, along with an entire indelible cast of young personalities as they form relationships, explore their surroundings and intensely debate rule violations, until it all comes to a head. APPROACHING THE ELEPHANT is a portrait of unfettered childhood and human relationships.Read More »

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Having taken on flamenco (“Sevillanas”) and tango (“Tango”), Carlos Saura tackles a third great melancholy music style, directing “Fados,” a celebration of Portugal’s classic, lamenting acoustic folk songs. The film combines fado performances from top artists, dance from Portugal, Brazil and Cape Verde and archive footage. In the song centrepieces, artists deliver contemporary versions of fado classics. Lined up fadistas include young female star Mariza as well as Grammy award-winner Carlos do Carmo. Renowned diva Amália Rodrigues is remembered through arquive footage while the exploration of fado’s influences and roots gives opportunities to embrace prestigious Brazilian performers Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque and the emerging Cape Verdean star Lura.Read More »

“A riveting. all-elbows and knuckles documentary about the proto-punk warriors known as the MCS” – NY Times

“The film is a touching, detailed portrait of an important and often overlooked band” – SF Chronicle

Premise: This documentary examines the career of the Detroit rock group, the MC5 (1964-1972), a hard-edged rock band that emerged amidst the political turmoil of the late 1960s. As the band’s popularity grew, their chance at broader popularity was challenged by their ties to counterculture individuals like John Sinclair (leader of the left-wing revolutionary group, the White Panthers) whose presence made the band controversial targets for the police, government, FBI, etc. Establishing a fast, guitar-fueled loud rock sound that would influence the punk bands just a few years later, the MC5 eventually faded into obscurity, but they have maintained a cult following ever since.Read More »

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In Echigo in Japan the snow often lies several feet deep well into May covering landscape and villages. Over the centuries the inhabitants have organized their lives accordingly. In order to record their very distinctive forms of everyday life, their festivals and religious rituals Ulrike Ottinger journeyed to the mythical snow country – accompanied by two Kabuki performers. Taking the parts of the students Takeo and Mako they follow in the footsteps of Bokushi Suzuki who in the mid-19th century wrote his remarkable book “Snow Country Tales”.Read More »

“Tells the story of a group of Chilean children who discover a larger reality and a different world through the cinema. Each Saturday, Alicia Vega transforms the chapel of Lo Hermida into a film screening room as she conducts a workshop for children under the auspices of the Catholic church. The hundred or so children involved had never seen a movie, and in the workshop they see and learn about the cinema: photograms and moving images, projection, camera angles and movement, film genres, and much more. And they watch movies: Chaplin, Disney, Lamorisse’s ‘The Red Balloon,’ the Lumieres’ ‘The Arrival of the Train to the Station.’ Finally, each child designs his own film with drawings. And then, for the first time in most of their lives, the children got to the movies in downtown Santiago.” [from the video container] – Written by Fiona KelleghanRead More »

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A personal study of Japan at the time of the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, as seen through the eyes of a Japanese girl.Read More »

Synopsis
This year marks the 38th anniversary of the seminal music documentary, HEARTWORN HIGHWAYS, a film that explored and captured the nascent roots of the Outlaw Country movement in the mid-70s. HEARTWORN HIGHWAYS REVISITED celebrates the authenticity and express the feelings of the legendary original, via a community of contemporary “outlaws” living and creating music in Nashville, Tennessee.Read More »

Seven unique state intersections along Nebraska’s border.
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The twenty-seven minute Vulgar Fractions (2011) employs a less linear but equally indexical method of visual inquiry. Shot at seven different state intersections along the Nebraska border, the film moves between these disparate locations with casual impetus, observing different seasons and unique landmarks with a patient, detailed sense of discovery. Rappmund, who was born in Wyoming, appears to have a deep affection for the sounds and spirit of the less traversed corners of the American landscape, the unrepresented but no less storied regions of the country, whether that’s the heartland depicted in Vulgar Fractions, the treacherous West Coast terrain of Psychohydrography, or the volatile northern expanses of Topophilia. Without a comparable focal point to that of Psychohydrography, Rappmund’s time-lapse effect is left in Vulgar Fractions to animate the small details (clouds, leaves, light, snow) coloring these state lines, signs of life amidst otherwise serene locales. (Source: mubi)Read More »

From Village Voice: In 1962, beloved and controversial poetess Forugh Farrokhzad went to Azerbaijan and made this short film on the grounds of a leper colony, presaging in 22 minutes the entirety of the Iranian new wave and the international quasi-genre of “poetic nonfiction.” It’s a blackjack of a movie, soberly documenting the village of lost ones with an astringently ethical eye, freely orchestrating scenes and simply capturing others, while on the soundtrack Farrokhzad reads her own poetry in a plaintive murmur—this in the same year as Vivre sa Vie and La Jetée. (Chris Marker has long been a passionate fan, as has Abbas Kiarostami, whose The Wind Will Carry Us owes its title and climactic verse to Farrokhzad.) It was the only substantial piece of cinema Farrokhzad ever made. Five years later, having already attained near legendary status in Iran for her writing, she was killed in a car crash at the age of 32, guaranteeing her posthumous fame as a feminist touchstone for generations of angry Persian women.Read More »