Documentary

  • Chris Marker – Le Fond De L’air Est Rouge aka A Grin Without A Cat [2008 edit] (1977)

    1971-1980Chris MarkerDocumentaryFrancePoliticsThe Films of May '68

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    “extremely profound & sophisticated anthology of the 60s events conducted by one of the most unique masters of cinema. All the events are well known to us, fundamentally studied & analyzed by each of us, so Marker has to be totally frank, & he is by that matter; he never imposes his points literally, never judges nor justifies, what he does is that he constructs the sequence of the events in such manner that the facts talk for themselves & there’s no place left for accusing Marker in subjectivity.Read More »

  • Chuck Workman – What Is Cinema? (2013)

    USA2011-2020Chuck WorkmanDocumentary

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    Academy Award-winning filmmaker Chuck Workman’s documentary What Is Cinema? tackles the question of its title through over 100 clips and new interviews with Mike Leigh, Jonas Mekas, Yvonne Rainer, David Lynch, video artist Bill Viola, Robert Altman, Kelly Reichardt, Costa-Gavras, Ken Jacobs, Michael Moore, critic J. Hoberman, and others, and with archival interviews from Robert Bresson, Alfred Hitchcock, Chantal Akerman, Akira Kurosawa, Abbas Kiarostami, and more. The film also includes commissioned sequences from experimental artists Lewis Klahr and Phil Solomon. What Is Cinema? not only asks a poignant question, but chronicles the best of filmmaking today and proposes where cinema will go, and should go, in the future.Read More »

  • André Heinrich & Alain Resnais – Le Mystère de l’atelier quinze (1957)

    1951-1960Alain ResnaisAndré Heinrich and Alain ResnaisDocumentaryFranceShort Film

    Quote:
    The role of the doctor in a factory. The investigations he makes to discover the origin of ailments which attack the workers in a large chemical factory.Read More »

  • Robbins Barstow – Disneyland Dream (1956)

    1951-1960DocumentaryRobbins BarstowShort FilmUSA

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    “The Barstow family films a memorable home movie of their trip to Disneyland. Robbins and Meg Barstow, along with their children Mary, David and Daniel were among 25 families who won a free trip to the newly opened Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., as part of a ‘Scotch Brand Cellophane Tape’ contest sponsored by 3M. Through vivid color and droll narration , we see a fantastic historical snapshot of Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Catalina Island, Knott’s Berry Farm, Universal Studios and Disneyland in mid-1956. The movie was shot with a 16 mm handheld camera.

    Robbins Barstow was a pioneering maker of home movies. Disneyland Dream is one of literally hundreds of films he completed from 1929 (when he first received a camera) until his death in 2010, many of which star his immediate family.Read More »

  • José Luis Guerín – Tren de sombras AKA Train of Shadows (1997)

    1991-2000DocumentaryExperimentalJosé Luis GuerínSpain

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    Quote:
    Ostensibly framed as a restoration of a degraded found film recovered some 70 years after the sudden and unexplained death of its creator, a Parisian attorney and amateur filmmaker named Gérard Fleury at a lake in the village of Le Thuit in Normandy, Tren de sombras (Train of Shadows) is a dense, sensual, and richly textured exposition of José Luis Guerín’s recurring preoccupations: the nature and subjectivity of the image-gaze, the permeable borders between truth and fiction, the role of architecture (and landscape) as palimpsest of hidden histories. By placing the discovery of Fleury’s last shot footage of his home and family within the context of the ambiguity surrounding the circumstances of his death after a seemingly innocuous scouting trip early one morning to find suitable lighting conditions to incorporate into his home movie, the found film becomes both a curious artifact of the early days of cinema in its informally staged performances that suggest the whimsical, created illusions of Georges Méliès (in a performance of dancing ties and magic tricks), and also a non-fiction, historical record that can be deconstructed, reconstituted, and re-analyzed to glean further information into the real-life mystery.Read More »

  • Mor Loushy – Censored Voices (2015)

    2011-2020BBCDocumentaryIsraelMor Loushy

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    The 1967 ‘Six-Day’ war ended with Israel’s decisive victory; conquering Jerusalem, Gaza, Sinai and the West Bank. It is a war portrayed, to this day, as a righteous undertaking – a radiant emblem of Jewish pride. One week after the war, a group of young kibbutzniks, led by renowned author Amos Oz, recorded intimate conversations with soldiers returning from the battlefield. The recording revealed an honest look at the moment Israel turned from David to Goliath. The Israeli army censored the recordings, allowing the kibbutzniks to publish only a fragment of the conversations. ‘Censored Voices’ reveals the original recordings for the first time.Read More »

  • Franco Piavoli – Poesie in 8mm AKA Poems in 8mm [+Extras] (1954-1964)

    Documentary1951-19601961-1970Franco PiavoliItalyShort Film

    Description
    Poems in 8mm are the early works of Franco Piavoli, digitally restored. Independent short films, captured with a simple Paillard camera, involving no crew and no production. In this collection, one can find Le Stagioni (The Seasons), precursor to Il Pianeta Azzurro (The Blue Planet), Emigranti (Emigrants), a short on immigration in Milan during the Sixties, Domenica Sera (Sunday Evening), and the experimental Evasi (Convicts). These titles, up to this point unavailable to the public in an edition that respects the original state of the film. This also goes for the Piavoli’s first work, Ambulatorio (Surgery), described by the director as mere playing around with the camera. Without music and words, it is nonetheless revealing of an artistic sensibility that would soon show itself in full splendour.Read More »

  • Stig Björkman – Jag är Ingrid AKA Ingrid Bergman, In Her Own Words (2015)

    2011-2020DocumentaryStig BjörkmanSweden

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    A documentary on Ingrid Bergman, told through entries from her own private diary, letters and home movies. In her own words.

    And some interviews.Read More »

  • Franco Piavoli – Voci nel Tempo AKA Voices Through Time (1996)

    1991-2000ArthouseDocumentaryFranco PiavoliItaly

    Quote:
    An ode to the cycles of life charts the passages of infancy, youth, maturity and old age against the seasons of the year in the bucolic Lombardy village of Castellaro.Read More »

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