Documentary

EAI writes:
Made in 1976, TVTV’s close-up look at Hollywood’s annual awards ritual mixes irreverent documentary with deadpan comedy. TVTV’s cameras go behind the scenes to follow major Hollywood figures (including Steven Spielberg, Michael Douglas, Lee Grant, Jack Nicholson, and many others), capturing them in candid moments—inside their limousines, dressing for the ceremony, backstage at the awards. Lily Tomlin appears as a fictional character watching the televised Oscar ceremony in her suburban home. Tomlin, nominated for best supporting actress in Robert Altman’s Nashville in 1975, is also seen as she attends the actual awards ceremony. With Tomlin serving as a fulcrum between Hollywood’s insiders and outsiders—the adoring fans, the workers who serve the stars, those overlooked by the awards—TVTV records the lead up to and letdown after the ceremony, revealing the vagaries of fame and stardom.Read More »

Synopsis
In August 1991 a failed coup d’e´tat attempt (known as Putsch) led by a group of hard-core communists in Moscow, ended the 70-year-long rule of the Soviets. The USSR collapsed soon after, and the tricolour of the sovereign Russian Federation flew over Kremlin. As president Gorbachev was detained by the coup leaders, state-run tv and radio channels, usurped by the putschists, broadcast Tchaikovsky’s swan lake instead of news bulletins, and crowds of protestors gathered around Moscow’s White House, preparing to defend the stronghold of democratic opposition led by Boris Yeltsin, in the city of Leningrad thousands of confused, scared, excited and desperate people poured into the streets to become a part of the event, which was supposed to change their destiny. A quarter of a century later, Sergei Loznitsa revisits the dramatic moments of August 1991 and casts an eye on the event which was hailed worldwide as the birth of “Russian democracy.” What really happened in Russia in August 1991? What was the driving force behind the crowds on the Palace Square in Leningrad? What exactly are we witnessing: the collapse or the regime or its’ creative re-branding? Who are these people looking at the camera: victors or victims?Read More »

Qute:
It’s no surprise that in undertaking his first 3D project (one third of 3X3D, a triptych that also includes Peter Greenaway and Edger Pêra), Jean-Luc Godard would do so much that everything else yet shot in the format looks meager and infantile by comparison (even the few notable filmmakers to have explored 3D’s potential fall short of Godard’s ambitions: Scorsese, Herzog, Paul W.S. Anderson). Also, it should not have been a surprise that 3D would make perfect sense for Godard’s layering of texts and superimpositions, which command an even greater effect with the extra dimension. All of Godard’s films, are, to an extent, about images, and here as much as ever he concerns himself with the apparatus, perspective, history (through images) and specifically 3D and digital’s impact on these things, as well as on cinema itself.
Adam CookRead More »

When seminal documentarian Ed Pincus, considered the father of first person non-fiction film, is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he and collaborator Lucia Small team up to make one last film, much to the chagrin of Jane, Ed’s wife of 50 years. Told from two filmmakers’ points of view, ONE CUT, ONE LIFE challenges the form of first person documentary. Ed and Lucia’s unique approach to filming offers a vulnerability and intimacy rarely seen in non- fiction, questioning whether some things might be too private to be made public. The film is an intense, raw, and sometimes humorous exploration of the human condition which invites the viewer to contemplate for themselves what is important, not only at the end of life, but also during.Read More »

On the opening night of its annual 31 Days of Oscar festival, TCM presents the world premiere of “And the Oscar Goes To…”, a documentary tracing the history of the Academy Awards. The documentary is one of a series of programming events leading up to the TCM 20th anniversary in April 2014. In telling the story of the gold-plated statuette that became the film industry’s most coveted prize, And the Oscar Goes To… traces the history of the Academy itself, which began in 1927 when Louis B. Mayer, then head of MGM, led other prominent members of the industry in forming this professional honorary organization. Two years later the Academy began bestowing awards, which were nicknamed “Oscar” and quickly came to represent the pinnacle of cinematic achievement.Read More »

Quote:
The north of Portugal. A country way of living that resists, against the odds. Around these two components is woven, through the seasons, the story of the inhabitants of an isolated hamlet. Men and women from different generations, caught between hard work and dreams of emigrating. A film that is remarkably shot and edited. A representation of the world falling between nostalgia and comedy.Read More »

Quote:
A new feature documentary by Göran Hugo Olsson

Concerning Violence is a bold and fresh visual narrative from Africa based on archive material from Swedish documentaries 1966-1987 covering the most daring moments in the struggle for liberation from colonial rule. This powerful footage is combined with text from Frantz Fanon’s landmark book The Wretched of the Earth – written in 1960 and still a major tool for understanding and illuminating the neocolonialism happening today, as well as the unrest and the reactions against it.

“Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.”Read More »

Storyline:
In February 2009 a group of Danish soldiers accompanied by documentary filmmaker Janus Metz arrived at Armadillo, an army base in the southern Afghan province of Helmand. Metz and cameraman Lars Skree spent six months following the lives of young soldiers situated less than a kilometer away from Taliban positions. The outcome of their work is a gripping and highly authentic war drama that was justly awarded the Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique at this year’s Cannes film festival. But it also provoked furious debate in Denmark concerning the controversial behavior of certain Danish soldiers during a shootout with Taliban fighters. The filmmakers repeatedly risked their lives shooting this tense, brilliantly edited, and visually sophisticated probe into the psychology of young men in the midst of a senseless war whose victims are primarily local villagers. Yet more disturbing than scenes in which Taliban bullets whiz past their cameras is the footage of the young soldiers as each tries, in his own way, to come to terms with putting his life constantly on the lineRead More »

Synopsis:
During the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, Wenders asks a number of film directors from around the world to get, each one at a time, into a hotel room, turn on the camera and sound recorder, and, in solitude, answer a simple question: “What is the future of cinema?”.Read More »