After being banned from South Africa thirty years earlier for his reporting during the apartheid era, award winning filmmaker and journalist John Pilger goes back with Alan Lowey to witness the benefits that democracy has brought to its people. Pilger questions to what extent has the black majority benefited from the democratic changes in comparison to the white minority.Read More »
An outstanding three-part BBC4 series that looks at how the Art Nouveau movement flourished in the burgeoning cities of Europe at the end of the 19th century. Aired March-April 2012.
Episode 1: Paris
BBC cultural correspondent Stephen Smith explores the delicious objects of Parisian Art Nouveau. He delves into the city’s Bohemian past to learn how some of the 19th century’s most glamorous and controversial figures inspired this extraordinary movement. Revealing the story behind Alphonse Mucha’s sensual posters of actress Sarah Bernhardt, looking at the exquisite jewellery designer Renee Lalique and visiting iconic art nouveau locations such the famous Maxim’s restaurant, the programme builds a picture of fin-de-siecle Paris.Read More »
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Shot on the film’s set, gives a fascinating insight into the making of Nostalghia and includes interviews with Tarkovsky, the cast and crew.Read More »
The story of Venezuelan revolutionary, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez
Review:
A television production in format but not form, Olivier Assayas’ ambitious Carlos spans many years and many hours in recasting the life story of Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal. With a script that hews closely to the facts of the life of Illch Ramírez Sánchez (who adopted the “Jackal” moniker once he became a revolutionary), this action-oriented drama finds its talented director in territory that he recently explored with his similarly themed, but entirely fictional, works Boarding Gate and demonlover. Just as those two movies depicted espionage as a globalized phenomenon, Calros shows the international face of terrorism. Like those movies, this globe-trotting epic has as many scenes set in anonymous airports as in identifiable cities. Even more peculiarly, though, like those genre exercises, Carlos offers a kinky combination of sex and guns that, making this more titillating and exciting than standard biopic fare.Read More »
short documentary on the production of rayon, shot in Torviscosa (Italy). It portrays the production of this new synthetic fabric in the small town of Torviscosa, entirely built following strict fascist canons.Read More »
New York Portrait
Hutton’s sketchbook of mid-1970s New York, edited in three parts over twelve years, is a chronicle of indelible impressions and an act of urban archeology. The artist evokes the city’s delicate rhythms, tonal contrasts, and shifts of scale—scrims of white mist and black smoke, of gauze, cloud, and fluttering pennant; the shadowy geometries of tenements and water towers; palimpsests of graffiti, skywriting, and painted signs; ecstatic sunlight glinting off the wings of homing pigeons as they traverse a pillowy sky; the slight rustle of a homeless man’s shirt; the flowery patterns of rainwater draining from a flooded street; a blimp’s lazy progress between two buildings whose balconies resemble film sprockets; and a winter fog rolling over the sandy rivulets of Coney Island, making of it a lunar park, removed from time.
Part I
1978–79.
Part II
1980–81.
Part III
1990.Read More »
Promotional omnibus film, made for the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy, featuring portraits of 12 Italian cities.
For all those who will not be going to Italy for a vacation this year… here is the next best thing. A who’s who of Italian directors anno 1990 turn their cameras on a specific Italian city. Most of these (very) short films do not have dialogue of any kind, and rely instead solely on the beauty of the images and music to depict the various cities.Read More »
A non-fiction documentary made between 1943 and 1947 about a barge trip down the Po River, looking at the relationship between individuals and their environment.Read More »
Made in Milan is a 1990 short documentary film about fashion designer Giorgio Armani preparing for a show and discusses his ideas about fashion, his family history and the city of Milan it was directed by Martin Scorsese.Read More »