Documentary

Synopsis
The internationally acclaimed director and recipient of the Erasmus Award in 2007, Péter
Forgács created a documentary exploring the fate of hundred thousands of Hungarian
men and women who arrived to the United States between 1890 and 1921. To tell their
sagas Forgács weaved this grand epic from the early American cinema, found footage,
photographs and interviews. The film reveals the difficult moments of arrival, integration
and assimilation, which eventually fed the happiness of the later generations and their
fulfillment of the American dream.Read More »

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The film portrait Ulrich Seidl – A Director at Work depicts the controversial Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl at work for the first time, painting a vivid picture of the much-debated “Seidl method”.Read More »

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Two weeks before the end of his national service, Alexander Birgukov shot and killed his two commanding officers. He was sentenced to death. But when it was alleged that one of his victims had sexually harassed him, President Boris Yeltsin commuted his death sentence to a lifetime in prison. Tenderly revealing two lives lived in limbo, this film bears witness to the first and final visit of his mother, Lubyov. Incarcerated in an isolated monastery prison entirely surrounded by water, an uncertain past is recalled and contrasted to a future of unending certainty.Read More »

Plot Synopsis [AMG]
Documentary filmmaker Emil DeAntonio’s In the Year of the Pig was financed by New York society matron Mrs. Orville Schell; her fund-raising dinners earned her an executive producer credit on the completed film. An extremely radicalized view of the still-raging war in Vietnam, Pig was so unabashedly provocative that it earned DeAntonio the tireless scrutiny of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover (whose file on the filmmaker inspired yet another DeAntonio production of 1990, Mr. Hoover and I). The film’s highlight is an interview with the late general George S. Patton, adroitly re-edited to make it seem as though Patton (who died in 1945) is characterizing the boys in Nam as “a bloody good bunch of killers.” Bracketed between his Rush to Judgment (based on the highly suspect findings of JFK-conspiracy theorist Jim Garrison ) and his America is Hard to See (a chronicle of the Eugene McCarthy Presidential campaign), DeAntonio’s In the Year of the Pig is an amalgam of the best and worst elements of those two offerings. The film says what needs to be said, but it often ends up preaching only to the converted.Read More »

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Het korps Mariniers is a documentary about the Royal Dutch Navy, which Paul Verhoeven made while being assigned to the Marine Film Service as a documentary filmmaker.Read More »

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A film made in the emergency room of the traumatic surgery hospital located on Barska Street in Warsaw. Doctors attempt to help the injured in the face of frequent power shortages typical of the Polish People’s Republic. @culture.pl
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Made at the sanatorium of Sokolowsko in Lower Silesia, this film looks at individuals suffering from pulmonary disease and is a moving portrait of those living with illness. @culture.pl

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In this short film, Kieslowski tries to penetrate the world of people affected by lung disease. In style, this picture closely resembles a documentary completed four years earlier titled I Was a Soldier which gives voice to veterans who had lost their sight to war, whereas in this picture, it’s the lung disease patients whose stories we hear. The entire movie is composed of their tales. The only binding element of the story is the buckle of the movie’s landscape which places the story at a physical location, indicating its threshold – going home after their stay at the sanatorium. The statements are made directly into the camera; the director uses close up on their faces. He listens.Read More »

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A short impression composed of outtakes from Krzysztof Kieślowski’s feature film titled The Scar / Blizna (1976). @culture.pl

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Slate (1976, color, 6 min.): While some of these outtakes (from The Scar) are “bloopers”, other do not appear so. The film becomes something of an editing experiment, unified by the musical rhythm of the clapping slate.
– Joseph G. Kickasola, The Films of Krzysztof Kieslowski, 2006Read More »

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Two closely related episodes. Youths make problems for two local orchestras about to compete nationally, and in a talent competition a young girl gets stage fright, while another lies to her boss to compete.Read More »