Documentary

An ultra-rare two-part documentary made for French TV about Georges Perec, directed by his former partner Catherine Binet (who is mostly known for her only feature film, The Games of Countess Dolingen of Gratz). It features a mixture of archival footage, scenes from Perec’s films and to-camera readings of excerpts from his work by various actors and friends of the author (Michael Lonsdale, Marina Vlady, Alain Cuny, Sami Frey, Edith Scob, Harry Mathews and others). Some consider this to be the best documentary about the author that has been made so far.Read More »

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Locked away in an apartment in the Lower East Side of Manhattan for fourteen years, the Angulo family’s seven children—six brothers named Mukunda, Narayana, Govinda, Bhagavan, Krisna (Glenn), and Jagadesh (Eddie), and their sister Visnu—learned about the world through watching films. They also re-enact scenes from their favorite movies. They were homeschooled by their mother and confined to their sixteenth story four-bedroom apartment in the Seward Park Extension housing project. Their father, Oscar, had the only door key and prohibited the kids and their mother Susanne from leaving the apartment except for a few strictly-monitored trips on the “nefarious” streets.Read More »

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Marlon E. Fuentes’ Bontoc Eulogy is a haunting, personal exploration into the filmmaker’s complex relationship with his Filipino heritage as explored through the almost unbelievable story of the 1,100 Filipino tribal natives brought to the U.S. to be a “living exhibit” at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. For those who associate the famous fair with Judy Garland, clanging trolleys, and creampuff victoriana, Bontoc Eulogy offers a disturbing look at the cultural arrogance that went hand-in-hand with the Fair’s glorification of progress. The Fair was the site of the world’s largest ever “ethnological display rack,” in which hundreds of so-called primitive and savage men and women from all over the globe were exhibited in contrast to the achievements of Western civilization.Read More »

Werner Schroeter was one of the most significant proponents of New German Cinema. Schroeter was diagnosed with cancer in 2006. At the time, he was working for the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf gallery on a musical piece entitled ‘Schönheit der Schatten’ (The Beauty of Shadows) based on the works of Robert Schumann and Heinrich Heine. For Schroeter, oscillating between hope and trepidation, it marked the beginning of a race against time. In her film, Elfi Mikesch, who photographed a number of Schroeter’s films and who collaborated closely with him to create his vision, provides us with an intimate insight into Schroeter’s artistic output during the remaining four years of his life. Read More »

About the film:
Imagine an airspace into which a bomb has been dropped. The bomb has not reached the site of its detonation, but there is no way to stop its speedy approach. The time between the bomb’s release and its explosion is neither the future (for the ineluctable destruction has not yet happened) nor the past (which is unavoidably about to be extinguished). The flight time of the bomb thus describes absolute nothingness, the zero hour, consisting of all the possibilities that in just a moment will no longer exist. Thus, this story will end before it has begun; here it is told in defiance: an architectural journey from Berlin through Arromanches, Rome, Wrocław, Görlitz, Paris, Bologna, Madrid, Buenos Aires, Atlántida, Montevideo, Mexico City, Brasilia, Tokyo, Saipan, Tinian, Tokyo, San Francisco, Dallas, Binz and Mexico City back to Berlin – into the abyss.Read More »

Synopsis:
The film presents 17 extant buildings by Italian master-builder Pier Luigi Nervi in Italy and France and 10 examples of Ancient Roman architecture made of Opus caementitium.Read More »

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A modest chair in the semi shade of a derelict place… An old man wearing a black shirt sits on that chair and starts talking with a calm voice: “Fiz um curso de engenharia elétrica, depois fui fazer o serviço militar e a partir daí dei caminho à minha vida como mercenário” (I did a course in electrical engineering, then I did my military service and from there started my life as a mercenary). Thus begins the 2012 acclaimed documentary Terra de Ninguém (No man’s land in Portuguese) directed by Salomé Lamas. [Terra Nullius: Confessions d’un mercenaire, 2014].Read More »

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Following the 2016 presidential election, Frederick Wiseman’s documentary dissects small-town America to understand how its values impact and influence the political landscape of the nation.Read More »

A homeless musician finds meaning to his life when he starts a friendship with dozens of parrots.
In San Francisco, there are at least two flocks of largely wild parrots who flock around the city. This film focuses on the flock of cherry-headed conures (and a lonely blue-headed one named Connor) who flock around the Telegraph Hill region of the city and their closest human companion, Mark Bittner . Through his own words, we learn of his life as a frustrated, homeless musician and how he came to live in the area where he decided to explore the nature around him. That lead him to discovering the parrot flock and the individual personalities of it. In a cinematic portrait, we are introduced to his colorful companions and the relationship they share as well as the realities of urban wild life that would change Bittner’s life forever.Read More »