Documentary

Short documentary with varied footage from Iran. The Shah’s regime commissioned several soft-propaganda films of this nature from European filmmakers during the 1970s. Its existence and production is more remarkable than the film itself.Read More »

Fritz Kortner performs a monologue.Read More »

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Tango Negro: The African Roots of Tango by Angolan filmmaker Dom Pedro explores the expression of Tango’s Africanness and the contribution of African cultures in the creation of the tango. Tango was a reflection of the social life of the slaves that were taken to South America – including Argentina and Uruguay – mostly from central Africa, particularly from the former Kongo Kingdom. Director Dom Pedro reveals the depth of the footprints of the African music on the tango, through this rich movie combining musical performances and interviews from many tango fans and historians in Latin America and Europe, including the renowned Argentinean pianist Juan Carlos Caceres.Read More »

Patrick Bokanowski’s extraordinarily intimate portrait of Henri Dimier at work focuses as much attention on the personality of the materials as on the painter himself. Only fitting, as Dimier repeatedly insists that the artist’s vocation is to let the paper “be aware of itself” and takes obvious pleasure showing the proper way to sharpen a pencil. Dimier demonstrates several playful exercises to cultivate an all-important sense of spontaneity while he approaches teaching as another opportunity for improvisation. “If you lose your momentum you lose your freedom,” Dimier opines. And indeed Bokanowski’s portrait exemplifies the benefit of sustained attention. – Max GoldbergRead More »

Here we have a fascinating documentary on the Communist musicals that strove to be ideologically correct and entertaining at the same time. The focus is on musicals from East-Germany and the Soviet Union but there are also references to musicals from Czechoslovakia and Romania.

Interviewees: Erich Gusko, Karin Schröder, Brigitte Ulbrich, Helmut Hanke, Hans-Joachim Wallstein, Maya Turovskaya, Chris Doerk, Frank Schöbel & Margarita Andrushkevitch.Read More »

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Follows Dan, a young Venezuelan man currently living in Lisbon, who collects magic mushrooms in the forest and distributes them in the city to those in need of help – like a New Age Robin Hood – using pigeons as carriers.Read More »

A documentation of the interior of a Singaporean tower block, from bottom to top.Read More »

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With this documentary on the plots and sub-plots of the universe of food, Moullet moves away from comedy to become a pioneer of today’s trend to analyze the forms of globalization by looking at a small cultural field. In his survey going from our everyday menu to the exploitation of Third World workers, the genesis in the title provides the basis for this political essay: by following the history of a meal’s ingredients, an intelligent map of the workings of the global world is charted.Read More »

Synopsis:
An unprecedented look inside the private world of J.D. Salinger, the reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye.Read More »