Documentary

From tankmagazine
“Fashion, I’ll have nothing of it,” announces Wim Wenders in the opening to his 1990 fashion documentary Notebook on Cities and Clothes. It was the year after the Berlin Wall fell, and there is a sense in his introduction, of the German film-maker defending a subject his critics might view as superficial. In a voiceover, Wenders explains that he had been invited to make a short film about the fashion industry by the Centre Pompidou. And while initially dismissive, he found that the idea grew on him – “After all, why not examine fashion… Maybe fashion and cinema had something in common.”Read More »

‘Bobby Fischer Against the World’ is the first documentary feature to explore the tragic and bizarre life of the late chess master Bobby Fischer. The drama of Bobby Fischer’s career was undeniable, from his troubled childhood, to his rock star status as World Champion and Cold War icon, to his life as a fugitive on the run. This film explores one of the most infamous and mysterious characters of the 20th century.Read More »

Our first film was Pina, the documentary on contemporary dancing directed by Wim Wenders. I’m so glad to have chosen Wim over Bono, though, because Pina is an impressive and audaciously original piece of filmmaking.
Pina is an essay on the life and work of renowned choreographer Pina Bausch. Pina appears in some archival footage, and several members of her dance troupe testify to her ingenuity and artistic inspiration. The spirit of Pina, however, lives on in her dances: the film offers four of Bausch’s famed dances in their entirety, but dispersed and intercut throughout the film.Read More »

Quote:
Channel 4 – 26 May 2011

Colin Blanchard, Vanessa George, Angela Allen, Tracy Lyons and Tracey Dawber provoked widespread revulsion and made international headlines after their sexual offences against children came to light in 2009.

With unique access to the police investigation, Cutting Edge is the first film to take an in-depth forensic look at this criminal web, detailing how it operated, and what motivated the five people within it.

This carefully crafted, sensitive and revealing documentary uses police interviews with the offenders, and first-hand testimonies from family members of the offenders and the parents of a possible victim.Read More »

Johan van der Keuken films in India, in Kérala, various situations of teaching or training: courses of a school of dance, songs, martial arts, a vedic school, a scene of theater. In counterpoint, the circulation of the money through the route of a small busy lender of countryside of village in village. It is a filmic movement which collects the gasoline of a civilization, the permanence of certain values of harmony and artistic discipline.

Note: Grand Prix with the Festival of Brussels, 1989.Read More »

1990-1991: “Face Value” Awarded the Dutch Press Prize, Netherlands

Rejecting linear narrative storytelling, the director offers us an epic on humanity and cultural diversity in Europe through a multitude of appearances, a cartography of faces, the reflection of an imaginary Europe made up of London, Marseille, Prague and the Netherlands.Read More »

New York, Geneva, Hong Kong and Amsterdam are major hubs of the world’s economy. Great amounts of money circulate there, and whereas poverty is ubiquitous in the streets of New York, Geneva carefully protects its wealth behind impeccable facades.
No one is unaffected by the myth of the all-powerful Dollar: the under-privileged struggle to survive talking about their unattainable dreams, while businessmen, from the safe distance of their offices, lay down the tenets of their financial theories.Read More »

Synopsis
Slow Action is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film which exists somewhere between documentary, ethnographic study and fiction. Slow Action applies the idea of island biogeography – the study of how species and eco-systems evolve differently when isolated and surrounded by unsuitable habitat – to a conception of the Earth in a few hundred years; the sea level rising to absurd heights, creating hyperbolic utopias that appear as possible future mini-societies.Read More »

Storyline
This documentary of repressive political realities in Cameroon begins with the 1990 publication of an open letter to President Biya calling for a national conference – and the immediate arrest of the letter’s author and publisher. The narration then examines the nation’s colonial history, beginning with the first German missionary in 1901, the establishment of schools, French occupation following World War I, the paucity of books written by and published by Cameroonians, and the repression of the CPU, a leftist organization of the 1950s and 1960s. Cameroon and its people are the lark, its feathers plucked first by colonialism and then by native strongmen: ‘Alouette, je te plumerai.’ Written by jhaileyRead More »