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A video letter to Nancy Holt, made in homage to a shared interest in terminal lakes, framed views, monuments and time. Filmed on and around the Great Salt Lake, Mono Lake and Meteor Crater.
Filmed in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), An Introduction to Scientology is the only televised interview given by L. Ron Hubbard. In this interview, LRH explains the history of Scientology, its status as a religion and its benefits on human society.
A homage to Bruce Weber's Favourite things, these being mixing film, photography and classic movies. With portraits of a lesbian jazz singer and a 16-year-old wrestler.
In 2013, online clay animator Robert Benfer scammed hundreds of fans out of thousands of dollars and has continued to become less of the independent film icon he used to be, though his unique influence on video creators remains to this day. This film not only sheds light on how Benfer's films impacted young filmmakers, but also how a talented independent artist can fall from grace no matter how obscure they are.
Nearly half a century ago, Carmen Ignarra arrived to Mexico after leaving behind her Cuban homeland, in the hopes of becoming the greatest Caribbean actress in Hollywood. But the American dream tur- ned out to be more difficult than she’d thought, and her brief initial success was followed by a slow, painful decline. Today, at 80, the woman who was once Cuba’s most beautiful actress lives totally forgotten in an old mansion in Monterrey. There she survives thanks to her tenants—strange men who she is constantly blaming for mysterious thefts and disappearances. Laura, a young woman also from the Caribbean, arrives at the mansion to work as an assistant in cleaning and housekeeping. With her she brings a video camera and the secret intention of making a documentary about the diva. Together they talk about the past, about wasted talent and lost loves.
A portrait of the personal journey of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano during his third presidential campaign. It is a moment in contemporary history told from the experiences of the defeated opposing political group. A fundamental piece of the history of Mexico that usually does not reach the public, for it is not written by the victorious; it’s akin to being invited backstage at an unimaginable performance. This story lacks scandal or corruption. It shows how politics takes place in the highest levels in Mexico and shows the human side of a popular leader.
Stop for Bud is Jørgen Leth's first film and the first in his long collaboration with Ole John. […] they wanted to "blow up cinematic conventions and invent cinematic language from scratch". The jazz pianist Bud Powell moves around Copenhagen -- through King's Garden, along the quay at Kalkbrænderihavnen, across a waste dump. […] Bud is alone, accompanied only by his music. […] Image and sound are two different things -- that's Leth's and John's principle. Dexter Gordon, the narrator, tells stories about Powell's famous left hand. In an obituary for Powell, dated 3 August 1966, Leth wrote: "He quite willingly, or better still, unresistingly, mechanically, let himself be directed. The film attempts to depict his strange duality about his surroundings. His touch on the keys was like he was burning his fingers -- that's what it looked like, and that's how it sounded. But outside his playing, and often right in the middle of it, too, he was simply gone, not there."
This feature documentary is a profile of Canadian press tycoon Roy Thomson, whose single-minded attention to business brought him riches, power, and even a baronetcy in England. A native of Timmins, Ontario, Thomson had a tremendous career as publisher, television magnate, financier, and owner of many newspapers, including leading London dailies. The film is a frank study of an equally frank man.
This short documentary is the portrait of an 88-year-old woman who lives alone in a log cabin without running water or electricity in the Williams Lake area of British Columbia. The daughter of a Shuswap chief, Augusta lost her Indian status as the result of a marriage to a white man. She recalls past times, but lives very much in the present. Self-sufficient, dedicated to her people, she spreads warmth wherever she moves, with her songs and her harmonica.
Nino Ferrer has had several lives: hits that made him famous; a dark but artistically fruitful period; a hidden life -of his own making- breaking away from showbiz. All these facets are concentrated in a brilliant, complex, skinned character. "It looks like Nino Ferrer" is a film rich in international archives (TSR, RTSI, Rai...), rare documents (Super 8 films of the Ferrer family) and even unpublished films (Nino Ferrer as an actor in an advertisement for Italian cheese). The film is also punctuated by the memories of famous musicians such as Manu Dibango as well as by the singer's successes and his live performances (L'Olympia, L'Arche de Noé).
We admire beauty; we recoil from bodies that are marred, disfigured, different. Didier Cros’ moving, intimate film forces us to question what underlies our notions of beauty as we join a talented photographer taking stunning portraits of several people with profound visible scars which have dictated certain elements of their lives but have not come to define their humanity. The subjects' perceptions of themselves are dynamic, unexpected, and even heartwarming. This is an unforgettable journey to be shared with the world.
Portrait of Augustinas Baltrušaitis, film and theatre director, as well as actor, who fell into obscurity and has now been relegated to the margins of society, as a result of specific political circumstances. Countdown is a film about the limits of memory, the effects of the implacable passage of time, and a hope that surpasses time.
Portrait of swiss based Club "Café Mokka" and its club manager MC Anliker
Anouchka is a 30 year old screenwriter who works in a wine bar for a living. She traces her last 15 years of alcoholism thanks to a screenplay she wrote.
When Ines died, she left a very particular legacy, 10 books that read 'For my children'; it was the story of her life. Marked by a youth idyllic love, Ines was forced to marry a violent and womanizer man with whom she had 20 children. In the 50s, she managed to get divorce and 20 years after her death, Luisa, great-granddaughter of INES, reads, rescues and makes visible her history.
A surprisingly intimate portrait of how the dream of running one’s own business can take on monstrous contours. Managed by the father of one of the singers, over the course of five years the girl band 5Angels had reached the gates of pop fame. But it is a path paved not only with the songs of Michal David, but also with the dogged determination of a man who loses any notion of where his role as manager ends and his role as parent begins. An emotionally moved Karel Gott, five angelic girls, and one overly involved father, thanks to whom the behind-the-scenes pre-Christmas atmosphere melts away just as rapidly as the fat should disappear from the belly. “A singer can’t be a lard bucket!”