Intended as a publicity film for Chrysler, Rhythm uses rapid editing to speed up the assembly of a car, synchronizing it to African drum music. The sponsor was horrified by the music and suspicious of the way a worker was shown winking at the camera; although Rhythm won first prize at a New York advertising festival, it was disqualified because Chrysler had never given it a television screening. P. Adams Sitney wrote, “Although his reputation has been sustained by the invention of direct painting on film, Lye deserves equal credit as one of the great masters of montage.” And in Film Culture, Jonas Mekas said to Peter Kubelka, “Have you seen Len Lye’s 50-second automobile commercial? Nothing happens there…except that it’s filled with some kind of secret action of cinema.” - Harvard Film Archive
Various introductions corners, card games, quizes, 'Making Of', and concert 'Backstage Footage'.
A man's life is upended by increasingly threatening phone calls demanding he leave a review for a paperweight purchased online.
The magician appears upon the stage with an imp as his assistant. The imp holds a piece of cloth in his hand. At the command of the magician the cloth is suddenly transformed into a beautiful girl, clad in tights. A barrel is then introduced and the girl enters one end.
A family celebrating Eid al-Adha is terrorized by an assailant who has a very different idea of sacrifice.
A beautiful woman of affairs falls in love with a handsome young man of great promise. Fearing for his future, the man's father begs her to leave his son so that her reputation will not hold him back.
A sheep farmer whose remote and quiet life is disturbed by the arrival of both his lover and his twin sister.
A woman nearing her forties, Andrea Soriana, has always pushed aside personal questions and romantic relationships in pursuit of professional success. Now a major illness forces her to reconsider her life--work, family, friendships, men-- causing a psychological and emotional crisis pushes her toward a drastic decision.
Lilith meets the Ghastly brothers, a pair of strange ghost hunters, at boarding school. When the school falls prey to an infestation of ghosts, they go head-to-head against a horde of fearsome spirits and demonic apparitions in a supernatural battle to save the day.
Dear Enemy tells the true story of the director’s grandfather who became friends with a German officer during the WWII German occupation of Albania while hiding a partisan, an Italian soldier and a Jewish watchmaker in his cellar.
A widow and her two sons, Seitaro and Koji, live in the small town of Komori, where Buraku people are forced to reside. The two boys are continuously harassed by their teachers and classmates through their childhood as a result of their Buraku heritage. In the midst of the 1918 Great Rice Riots in Osaka, Seitaro meets with Asako, the daughter of a rice shop owner, and falls in love with her. She too is of Buraku descent. At the same period, Hideaki, an old friend of the brothers returns to Komori, and he along with Koji and the townspeople create "Zenkoku Suiheisha", the National Levelers Association, an organization pledged to build a bridge over the river of discrimination, making all people equal in every way.
With his last breath Uu's friend entrusts him with the secret of how to go to the past. Uu is an engineer and doesn't believe in miracles, but the trick works. In the past there is a pleasant, eternal summer, long hair, girls and Jenkki chewing gum. In his real life, it is autumn, his friends are bitter, the girls are married and his father is seriously ill. At the end of the day, however, Uu has to decide in which time to live his life - in the summer of the past or in the autumn of the present.
Through the summer breeze and the isolation. Time is still time, and that can't be changed. sunsets-don-t-l
Taking its title from the poem by Wallace Stevens, the film is composed of a series of attempts at looking and being looked at. Beginning as a city state commission under the name and attitude of “Unschool”, the film became a kaleidoscope of the experiences, questions and wonders of a couple of high school students after a year of experiences with filmmaker Ana Vaz questioning what cinema can be. Here, the camera becomes an instrument of inquiry, a pencil, a song.
Daniel Johnston stars in this psychedelic short film about an aging musician coming to terms with the dreams of yesteryear.
Jan Schmidt and Pavel Juráček turn their attention to the problem of Czechoslovakia's unloved cars in this whimsical documentary short.
An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.
For detained immigrants who can’t pay their bond, for-profit companies like Libre by Nexus offer a path to reunite with their families. But for many, the reality is much more complicated. “Libre” sheds light on one of many hidden costs of reunification for immigrant families.
Rated X, a short documentary about the adult industry, focuses on giving a voice to the porn actresses working within it. In a perspective of showing how these women empower themselves with their job, Rated X shows the porn industry like never before.
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
From 1957 —the year in which the Soviets put the Sputnik 1 satellite into orbit— to 1969 —when American astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the surface of the moon—, the beginnings of the space conquest were depicted in popular culture: cinema, television, comics and literature of the time contain numerous references to an imagined future.
Glauco Mattoso, a blind sadomasochistic poet, agrees to participate in a documentary about his own life, but the conditions he imposes raise difficulties to the work of the young director.
The Tŝilhqot’in Nation is represented by six communities in the stunningly beautiful interior of British Columbia. Surrounded by mountains and rivers, the Tŝilhqot’in People have cared for this territory for millennia. With increasing external pressures from natural-resource extraction companies, the communities mobilized in the early 21st century to assert their rightful title to their lands. Following a decision by the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 2007 that only partially acknowledged their claim, the Tŝilhqot’in Nation’s plight was heard in the Supreme Court of Canada. In a historic decision in 2014, the country’s highest court ruled what the Tŝilhqot’in have long asserted: that they alone have full title to their homelands.
As Black and LGBTQ+ History Month begin this February, material science clothing brand PANGAIA leads celebrations with a poetic film that honors these two communities. Following a year of isolation, and with it a deeper understanding of the importance of outdoor spaces and the environment, Wè is a portrait of the self-love and acceptance we have learned to show others and gift to ourselves.
One of several Kevin Jerome Everson pieces regarding African-American rodeo riders, SECOND PLACE brings us inside the big show. The jerkily pixilated view of a bucking bull offers an aesthetic equivalent of the cowboy's wild ride while the film's silence lends an unexpected repose to the contest. Whether anticipating a bull's blasting out of the gate or watching an old hand stretch out his back, Everson's camera is ever-attentive to the action at the edge of the frame. - Max Goldberg
Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.
Elem Klimov's documentary ode to his wife, director Larisa Shepitko, who was killed in an auto wreck.
The life and times of the mexican pianist Julieta García Rello, as told by her granddaughter.
A short documentary profiling the lives of three transgender Black men, exploring what life is like living as a Black man when no one knows you are transgender, and their journeys with gender in the years since they transitioned.
In 1967, de Andrade was invited by the Italian company Olivetti to produce a documentary on the new Brazilian capital city of Brasília. Constructed during the latter half of the 1950s and founded in 1960, the city was part of an effort to populate Brazil’s vast interior region and was to be the embodiment of democratic urban planning, free from the class divisions and inequalities that characterize so many metropolises. Unsurprisingly, Brasília, Contradições de uma Cidade Nova (Brasília, Contradictions of a New City, 1968) revealed Brasília to be utopic only for the wealthy, replicating the same social problems present in every Brazilian city. (Senses of Cinema)
Bad Boy of Bonsai is an experimental art-house documentary that focuses on Guy Guidry, a Louisiana local, and his passion for bonsai.