Documentary

  • Frederick Wiseman – Manoeuvre (1980)

    USA1971-1980DocumentaryFrederick Wiseman

    MANOEUVRE follows a U.S. infantry tank company through NATO’s annual fall manoeuvres in Western Europe. One purpose of these war games is to test how quickly and effectively U.S. reinforcements can come to the aid of NATO forces stationed in Europe. The various stages of the training exercise, including defensive and offensive tactics, and hypothetical wins and losses are seen from the point of view of a company fighting a simulated, conventional, non-nuclear ground and air war.Read More »

  • Marc Silver – Who is Dayani Cristal? (2013)

    2011-2020DocumentaryMarc SilverUnited Kingdom

    An anonymous body in the Arizona desert sparks the beginning of a real-life human drama. The search for identity leads us back across a continent to seek out the people left behind and the meaning of a mysterious tattoo.Read More »

  • Karel Reisz & Tony Richardson – Momma Don’t Allow (1955)

    1951-1960DocumentaryKarel ReiszShort FilmTony RichardsonUnited Kingdom

    Quote:
    Completed in 1955, Momma Don’t Allow was the first film by future feature film directors Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson, each having come from very different backgrounds. Richardson had risen up the ranks through BBC TV, whereas Reisz was programmer of the NFT (National Film Theatre) and author of The Technique of Film Editing, a standard textbook for several decades, so it’s no surprise Momma Don’t Allow is both an editorial experiment and subtle comment on class behaviour within the Wood Green jazz Club in North London.Read More »

  • Peter Emmanuel Goldman – Pestilent City (1965)

    1961-1970DocumentaryExperimentalPeter Emmanuel GoldmanUSA

    Shot on 42 St. in New York, mostly in slow motion and sometimes in negative slow motion, accompanied by original and haunting music, the film captures the depravity, loneliness, poverty, and insanity of New York. While Woody Allen’s upbeat New York exists, Goldman’s New York also exists. With beggars and drunks lying on the streets and bodies passing film Marquees in a rhythmic slow motion the film reminded me of Geroge Grosz’s paintings of Berlin in the 1920’s. All of Goldman’s films are known for their powerful imagery and Pestilent City is no exception. This is one reason the film was shown twice at the New York Film Festival. Goldman was one of the innovators of the film art, but his films have all but been forgotten.Read More »

  • Frederick Wiseman – Multi-Handicapped (1986)

    1981-1990DocumentaryFrederick WisemanUSA

    This film shows the day to day activities of multi-handicapped and sensory impaired students and their teachers, dormitory parents, and counselors at the Helen Keller School. The primary mission of the school is to meet the total and living needs of deaf and/or blind children, some of whom also have other disabilities. The film presents situations involving personal hygiene, mobility training, concepts of time and money, self help and independent living, dormitory life, recreation, sports, vocational training, and psychological counseling.Read More »

  • Sergei Loznitsa – The Invasion (2024)

    2021-2030DocumentaryNetherlandsSergei LoznitsaWar

    Quote:
    10 years after the release of his epic film MAIDAN, Sergei Loznitsa resumes his Ukrainian chronicles by documenting the country’s struggle against the Russian invasion. Shot over a 2-year period, the film portrays the life of the civilian population all over Ukraine. THE INVASION presents a unique and ultimate statement of Ukrainian resilience in the face of barbaric invasion. In the second part of his Ukrainian diptych, Loznitsa paints a monumental canvas of a nation determined to defend its right to exist.Read More »

  • Ettore Scola – Che strano chiamarsi Federico (2013)

    2011-2020ComedyDocumentaryEttore ScolaItaly

    The film, based on the personal memories of Scola, specifically focuses on the early years of Fellini’s career: his arrival in Rome, the beginnings as a cartoonist in the editorial staff of the satirical magazine Marc’Aurelio (where he met among others precisely Scola), up to his first landfall in the cinema as a screenwriter.Read More »

  • Trevor de Kock – City Slickers: A Tale of Two African Penguins (2002)

    2021-2030DocumentarySouth AfricaTrevor de Kock

    imdb wrote:
    Fifteen years ago, a handful of African Penguins, normally found only on remote islands off the Southern African coast, stumbled across on of the Cape’s most beautiful and popular tourist beaches. They swam, they saw, they conquered. And today, Boulders beach is home to more than 4,000 of these delightful, resourceful and entertaining seabirds. For the two feathered stars, Henry and Margot, it’s a tale of romance, the challenges of parenthood, separation and a penguin’s worst nightmare, oil.Read More »

  • Adam Curtis & Annabel Hobley – The Mayfair Set (1999)

    Documentary1991-2000Adam CurtisAnnabel HobleyUnited Kingdom

    From topdocumentaryfilms:
    Unreported and almost unseen approach that capital and capital markets have taken since 1945 to gradually take control of the political systems of the USA and the United Kingdom. Adam Curtis outlines several key points and analyses at great length various events and personalities.

    These so called market movers were all members of the Clermont Club in Mayfair, London. What at first seemed to be an audacious and unrealistic strategy to take control of the market economy turned into something almost unstoppable, destructive, cruel and completely bereft of feeling or scruple.Read More »

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