Documentary

Synopsis
White-tiled rooms, neon lighting; on the walls black and white photographs from an exhibition entitled ,Vernichtungskrieg’ (War of Extermination) documenting the atrocities committed by the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front. Against this background, Ruth Beckermann and cameraman Peter Roehsler have filmed former soldiers talking about their experiences beyond the bounds of ,normal’ warfare. With a mixture of helplessness, impotence, shame, opportunism and undiminished fanaticism, witnesses from that time tell of atrocities such as the shootings of Russian prisoners-of-war, the murder of Jews and abuse of women. The differing accounts of these events demonstrate how selective perception was even in this most inhuman and brutal of environments.Read More »

Queen is a ribald hour-long documentary about a “Miss All-American Beauty” contest held in New York in 1967. So what, you say? Well, it happens that all the contestants are male transvestites — and some of them are real knockouts. Alternately hilarious and depressing, Queen was considered the cutting edge of obscene outrageousness when originally distributed by Grove Press (the publishers of several above-the-counter “alternative” magazines of the 1960s). Nowadays it’s practically kid stuff, thanks to the surfeit of TV tabloids and Fox Network sitcoms.allmovie.comRead More »

PLOT DESCRIPTION
The Forgotten Village in this powerful 68-minute documentary is an unnamed, poverty-stricken Mexican community. Living in deplorable conditions, the villagers must not only contend with the elements but with their own lack of inner resourcefulness. In grim detail, the film records the life-cycle of a typical peasant family, from birth to death. Perhaps as a sop to the Mexican authorities, the film ends with the assurance that new government programs have been placed into effect to help the unfortunates depicted on screen. The narration for The Forgotten Village was written by novelist John Steinbeck and spoken by Burgess Meredith, who in 1939 starred in the film version of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »

Quote:
Notes on Marie Menken explores the almost forgotten story of the legendary artist Marie Menken (1909-1970) who became one of New York´s outstanding underground experimental filmmakers of the 1940s through the 1960s, inspiring artists such as Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger, and Gerard Malanga. She was a probable role model of Edward Albee´s “Who´s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and ended up
as a Warhol Superstar.Read More »

The life and work of the poet and sculptor, Umberto Bellintani, seen through his correspondence with the art critic and historian, Alessandro Parronchi. The letters reveal the brotherly trust uniting the two friends, as well as the deep sensitivity that inspired the poet’s lines. Acclaiming the harmony of two artistic sensitivities, the film blends the beauty of poetry in words with that of poetry in images.Read More »

Synopsis:
In this documentary on the Rastafarians in Jamaica (homeland of the Rastafari par excellence — the late Bob Marley), director Alan Greenberg interviews some Jamaicans whose conversations suggest that the smoking of ganja, the worship of Haile Selassie (the former Ethiopian emperor) as a god, and the goal of Jamaican self-realization is their own kind of unified field theory. A young, poverty-stricken teenager listens to the reggae music on his radio as though it will magically lead him to a better future, and a pineapple cutter living in the “baddest” area of the island dreams of fomenting tourism in his exotic surroundings. The May, 1981 funeral of Marley himself brought Christian and Rastafarian beliefs together in tribute to the island’s hero, providing one of the most poignant vignettes in the Land of Look Behind.Read More »

Three men, three continents: Bob, an American, Steve, a Brit and Yamada, who is Japanese, dare to take on new beginnings and personal journeys – in the autumn of their life. Impressive cinema with images that remind us of the loneliness and melancholy in Wim Wenders’ films.

Quote:
It’s evening in an empty parking lot, and we see the motorhome in which a retired man will go on a long journey and leave his old life behind. He runs through a checklist of all the things that need to be done before he leaves his hometown. Although clearly a metaphor for taking stock as the end of life approaches, it is used with subtlety. Read More »

About the film
Following his promising debut in the 1960s with the documentaries Moravian Hellas (1963) and Elective Affinities (1968), director Karel Vachek spent the majority of the 1970s and 1980s as a political persona non grata, at times working various blue-collar jobs and at times in emigration, without completing a single film project. He was rehabilitated only following the events of 1989, which permitted him to return to Prague’s Krátký Film studio. The societal events surrounding Vachek’s return to filmmaking in 1990 have much in common with those over twenty years earlier, in 1968, that allowed him to make Elective Affinities. In 1990, Czech and Slovak society was facing its first democratic parliamentary elections since 1945.Read More »

Quote:
In Iran, since the 1979 Islamic revolution, women are no longer allowed to sing in public as soloists – at least in front of men. Defying censorship and taboos, the young composer Sara Najafi is determined to organize an official concert for solo female singers.

In order to support their fight, Sara and her friends invite three French female singers, Elise Caron, Jeanne Cherhal and Emel Mathlouthi, to join them in Tehran and collaborate on their musical project, re-opening a musical bridge between Europe and Iran.Read More »