Documentary

Synopsis:
The American filmmaker James Benning has been one of the outstanding exponents of the structural film since the mid-1970s. Bennings artistic position has been strongly influenced by mathematics and by the creativity of mathematical thinking. With his new project 13 Lakes, James Benning goes one step further towards reducing things to a minimum. The film focuses on thirteen large American lakes (including Salton Sea, Lake Powell, and Lake Michigan) along with their geographical and historical relationship to the landscape. This documentary film was occasioned by 13 Lakes, and was shot in California, Arizona, and Utah. It accompanies the artist for a week as he searches for locations and as he films the first two shots for his own film.Read More »

From: Cinema On Cinema: Self-reflexive Memories in Recent Italian History Films, by Tiziana Ferrero-Regis
Nanni Moretti’s documentary, La cosa (The Thing, 1990), represents the painful transformation of the PCI (Italian Communist Party) through the voices of the party’s members who met throughout Italy to discuss the changes proposed by the PCI’s leadership. From the confronting debates depicted in La cosa, the re-evocation of the history of the Italian Left and of its founding principles emerge as a background, creating a nostalgic longing for a style of politics that had disappeared in Italy.Read More »

Probably writer-director Peter von Bagh’s masterpiece in the documentary genre, a personal love letter to the city of Helsinki as it once was and as it might have been, taking the form of a collage of film clips, photographs, paintings, song and music fragments, quotations from Finnish writers and von Bagh’s own musings, read by himself and the actors Erja Manto and Sulevi Peltola. A real treat, not to be missed by any fan of Finnish cinema or the “city symphony” genre.Read More »

In the months following the terrorist attacks in Paris, the youth has taken the night. A community has risen, that looks for belonging in a world they don’t understand and seek to change the rules. Led by new faces and unheard groups, with their values and ideals, they open a new dialog, challenge the state and get ready for a new kind of revolution.Read More »

Quote:
When he started as a comedy writer for the “Late Show with David Letterman,” Steve Young had few interests outside of his day job. But while gathering material for a segment on the show, Steve stumbled onto a few vintage record albums that would change his life forever. Bizarre cast recordings – marked “internal use only” – revealed full-throated Broadway-style musical shows about some of the most recognizable corporations in America: General Electric, McDonald’s, Ford, DuPont, Xerox. Steve didn’t know much about musical theater, but these recordings delighted him in a way that nothing ever had. While tracking down rare albums, unseen footage, composers and performers, Steve forms unlikely friendships and discovers that this discarded musical genre starring tractors and bathtubs was bigger than Broadway. – Official siteRead More »

Quote:
Observes the creative process and thinking of Alfredo Jaar, of the the most relevant artists in contemporary art. His work deals from the migration in the frontier of Mexico and the US, to the genocide in Rwanda and the chilean coup d’etat in 1973. He sees art as the “last place” of freedom in modern society and from that idea he unfolds his work as an act of resistance.Read More »

Frank Lloyd Wright tells the story of the greatest of all American architects. Wright was an authentic American genius, a man who believed he was destined to redesign the world, creating everything anew. Over the course of his long career, he designed over eight hundred buildings, including such revolutionary structures as the Guggenheim Museum, the Johnson Wax Building, Fallingwater, Unity Temple and Taliesin. His buildings and his ideas changed the way we live, work and see the world around us.Read More »

A Danish documentary about Greenland. Filmed by Janus Sørensen for Elfelt Film. Peter Elfelt takes an important place in the history of Danish cinema as being probbly the first documentarist in Denmark and a great deal of his films are about Greenland.

Hard to find much info on this one. Janus Sørensen has filmed several greenlanders, hunters, ships, lots of nature, settlements, dogsleds, kayaks, camps etc.

No intertitles, no audio. Just a series of beautiful locations. The black/white looks amazing in the Greenlandic context.Read More »

They come at night and everybody steps out. They light torches and remember those who have walked these streets before them. In the coming hours, the city will be on lockdown: an eclipse appears and meteors start to fall…Read More »