Documentary

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Routine Pleasures makes of its investigation of “men and imagination” in 1980s America “a small-scale epic,” in Gorin’s words, a remake of Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939). Gorin’s principal subject is a group of model train enthusiasts who meet weekly at the Del Mar Fairgrounds in Southern California: their miniature landscapes preserve a lost, perhaps illusory America, and their obsession curiously entwines work and childhood. Gorin weaves this subject with another: his friend and mentor Manny Farber. Farber doesn’t appear, except in photographs; but his paintings and words (and such preoccupations as Jimmy Cagney) do; and Gorin, again assuming the persona of bemused investigator, shuttles between these strands with effortless ingenuity.Read More »

1986, Chornobyl disaster. Couples, friends, and a risk-taking journalist are woven into the larger framework of the disaster. Panic follows.Read More »

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THE WAR, a seven-part documentary series directed and produced by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, explores the history and horror of the Second World War from an American perspective by following the fortunes of so-called ordinary men and women who became caught up in one of the greatest cataclysms in human history.Read More »

The world’s first trial against German war criminals took place in Kharkov in December 1943.
Trial opened 15th December – 18th December defendants were executed.

The film covers the trial of three Germans and one Russian:
Corporal of German Secret Field Police Reinhard Retzlaw.
Captain of the German Military Counter-Espionage Service Wilhelm Langheld.
SS Obersturmbannführer, Company Commander of the SD Sonderkommando Hans Ritz.
Collaborator, assitant to SD Sonderkommando, driver of the “gas van” Mikhail Bulanov.Read More »

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Herzog takes a film crew to the island of Guadeloupe when he hears that the volcano on the island is going to erupt. Everyone has left, except for one old man who refuses to leave. Herzog catches the eeriness of an abandoned city, with stop lights cycling over an empty intersection.Read More »

A documentary record shot on the 24th and 25th July 1944 of the concentration camp in Majdanek. Comparable to Resnais’ Nuit et bruillard, it’s filled with images of such staggering awfulness that they take on an almost abstract quality – one might regard the images of mountains of shoes, spectacles and hairbrushes as beautiful if one was unaware of the horrifying reality behind them.Read More »

Shot with stunning elegance and clarity, NAKED SPACES explores the rhythm and ritual of life in the rural environments of six West African countries (Mauritania, Mali, Burkino Faso, Togo, Benin and Senegal). The nonlinear structure of NAKED SPACES challenges the traditions of ethnographic filmmaking, while sensuous sights and sounds lead the viewer on a poetic journey to the most inaccessible parts of the African continent, the private interaction of people in their living spaces.Read More »

“White people don’t understand that there are two laws and two different kinds of custom in Australia… White people have different laws from Aboriginal people.”

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The Borroloola Aboriginal Community is made up of four language groups from the gulf region of the Northern Territory. The people live within a tribal structure and all decisions concerning this film were made within this structure.
The opening words of the film are spoken by Leo Finlay, a prominent member of the Borroloola community:
“I suppose you know these two, Alexander and Caroline. Last year was in Sydney and asked them to come down to make film in Borroloola for our own people. They’re here in Borroloola now and we’re glad that they came to make this film. They been apply to the government to get some money to make this film which was real good. So its our film and we’re going to make really good film out of it.”Read More »

Synopsis:
For some, the Korean War was a clear example of American imperialism. For others, it was a valiant effort on the part of the UN and the Koreans to quash the spread of communism. For all Koreans, it was a tragedy. The country was not just divided; it was devastated. The death toll was astronomical, and the destruction profound. Many engage in assigning blame for the war according to their political beliefs, but this is a useless exercise. The point is that the human rights situation in North Korea today is catastrophic. KIMJONGILIA is the first film to let North Korean refugees tell their stories in their own words.Read More »