Documentary

Human not human is not only the best Italian “experimental” film of the 60’s, but also one of the richest and most involving documents of “cinema of protest”. – Lino Miccichè

Schifano’s cinema is, as his paintings, spontaneous and gesture-based, quickly objectifying the world, and at the same time deeply thougth-out, and progresses by building up pictures and sounds.
Dissolves and pulsing images of television broadcasts plunge us in a completely unstable state of vision, allowing the author to avoid choosing, including in the same space different visions and distant, fragmentary, expanded timeframes.
If anything, the choice is left to the viewer and, from this point of view, “Human not human” becomes almost an interactive film, one that needs to be mentally rebuilt.Read More »

IMDB Review:
Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi is a film with no actors, no storyline, and no dialogue. The only things we see during the experimental documentary’s 87 minutes are natural landscapes, images of cities, and real people going about their regular lives. Yet from the very beginning, when we see the title of the film appear in blood-red characters and hear the voice of a bass soloist chanting the title like an incantation, it is difficult not to be swept away in captivation.Read More »

Wild Relatives follows the matrix of hierarchies and relationships involved in a transaction of seeds between the Norwegian town of Longyearbyen in Svalbard, an island in the Arctic Ocean, and the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.Read More »

Plot (source IMDB): In the 20’s an enthusiast radio amateur, Fyodor Lbov, experiments one of the first short-waves radio in the city of Gorky.Read More »

This three-part documentary by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill explores D.W. Griffith’s career.Read More »

A very personal journey, almost like a diary, with hand held camera Kowalski travels along the oldest highway in Polan, built by Hitler. While travelling along the highway Kowalski meets the people that now ply their trade their. The
the director uses his camera to cut a swath through Hitler’s legacy from a new perspective.Read More »

Quote:
When history has a different script from the one in your films, who wouldn’t invent a country to fool themselves? The collapsing sets of Tito’s Hollywood of the East take us on a journey through the rise and fall of the illusion called Yugoslavia. Exploring the ruins of the forgotten film sets and talking to directors, producers, policemen and Tito’s projectionist about the state run film studios and Tito’s personal love for cinema and it’s stars, ‘Cinema Komunisto’ uses film clips to go back to the film when ‘His story’ became the official history.Read More »

Stars of the 1940s and 1950s, were they cast for their mutual affinities or for their commercial appeal? If and when they were re-starred years later, did the magic still work? Did sparks still fly? The movie business, a machine that manufactured romance and desire at the same time that it documented the process of aging. A meditation on youth and beauty, aging and box office.Read More »

A mix of documentary and scripted footage on the Bowery, New York City’s skid row. Against a backdrop of men (and a few women) drinking in bars, talking and arguing, and sleeping on sidewalks, we have the story of Ray. He is younger and more vigorous than most on the Bowery. He arrives in Manhattan with a suitcase and a little money in his pocket. On his first night, he drinks himself into a stupor, falls asleep on the sidewalk, and is robbed of his suitcase. Over the next two days, we follow both Ray and the thief, who befriends him. Is there any hope Ray can get out of town and restart a life of work and sobriety, or is he stuck on the Bowery? Can the good thief help?Read More »