Documentary

Several biographical facts: Oleg Nikolayevich Karavaychuk (1927) played the piano for Stalin as a child prodigy, attended the Leningrad Conservatory and in the course of his career primarily wrote music for theatre and film – for instance, for Paradjanov and Muratova. In Russia, he is admired for his music and his playing, but also for his unique and eccentric personality. At the age of 89, Karavaychuk is still a controversial and puzzling figure in Russian culture. Who is this man, who looks as if he stepped out of a story by Gogol?
The beautiful film that the young Andrés Duque made about him is a gift to the viewer, a gift from an old artist who wants to be reconciled with the world and who transports us away from reality with words, gestures and piano playing, free of social conventions, to a world where clashing dissonants have a liberating beauty. – IFFRRead More »

Sixteen mustangs, four men, one dream: to ride border to border, Mexico to Canada, up the spine of the American West. The documentary tracks four fresh-out-of-college buddies as they take on wild mustangs to be their trusted mounts, and set out on the adventure of a lifetime. Their wildness of spirit, in both man and horse, is quickly dwarfed by the wilderness they must navigate: a 3000-mile gauntlet that is equally indescribable and unforgiving.Read More »

“Hitler’s Folly” explores what might have happened if Adolf Hitler’s art career had been more successful and instead of becoming an evil dictator, he was inspired to become an animator like Walt Disney.Read More »

In 1964 author Samuel Beckett set out on one of the strangest ventures in cinematic history: his embattled collaboration with silent era genius Buster Keaton on the production of a short, titleless avant-garde film. Beckett was nearing the peak of his fame, which would culminate in his receiving a Nobel Prize five years later. Keaton, in his waning years, never lived to see Beckett’s canonization. The film they made along with director Alan Schneider, renegade publisher Barney Rosset, and Academy Award-winning cinematographer Boris Kaufman, has been the subject of praise, condemnation, and controversy for decades. Yet the eclectic participants are just one part of a story that stretches to the very birth of cinema, and spreads out to our understanding of human consciousness itself.Read More »

This short documentary film reveals the inner workings of the Brothers’ studio.Read More »

Appeal of Heinrich Lohse, Reichskommissar of Ostland – a call for Latvians to join the national legion. [December 24, 1943]Read More »

Werner Herzog’s exploration of the Internet and the connected world.
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Quote:
“Long before the advent of Slavoj Zizek, U.S. academic Joan Braderman in 1986 offered a bracing exercise in standup theory and comic deconstruction in this half-hour unpacking on video of the most successful nighttime soap opera on television, which is said to be the favorite series of one hundred million people in 78 countries. Utilizing some of the special effects of codirector and coeditor Manuel De Landa to project herself literally into Dynasty and thereby critique its cultural and ideological underpinnings, Braderman manages to mix appreciation with scorn in almost equal quantities.“ Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago ReaderRead More »

Reforms have offered opportunity in Cuba but the children of the Revolution are unsure of the best route forward. For a half-dozen drag racers, this means last-minute changes to their beloved American muscle cars, as they prepare for the first sanctioned race in Cuba since 1960. Punctuated by a lively Cuban soundtrack, Havana Motor Club offers a fascinating glimpse at the resilience and ingenuity of the competitive spirit.Read More »