1950s Soho beats with far more energy than its 21st century counterpart in this vivid time capsule.
A documentary film about the Brazilian town of Toritama, the self-proclaimed capital of jeans. The workers of the city’s self-managed small businesses only get one real break from their self-exploiting lives in the textile business: the annual Carnival.
Inside Out In The Open is an hour-long documentary about a form of jazz, popularly known as free jazz. The film is an exploration of that music through the voices and performances of over twenty such musicians, from those who were its first generation to younger musicians joining the tradition.
A short look at various seasonal activities offered in the Tyrol region of Austria.
A seventy-six-minute version of Häxan, re-edited and re-released in the United States by Metro Pictures Corporation in 1968. It is narrated by author William S. Burroughs, with a jazz score and soundtrack featuring violinist Jean-Luc Ponty.
A documentary that explores the challenges that a life in music can bring.
This Traveltalk series short celebrates San Francisco, past and present.
Based on Geoffrey Fletcher’s book, this captivating documentary exposes the real London of the swinging sixties. Turning its back on familiar sights, the film explores the hidden details of a crumbling metropolis. With James Mason as our Guide, we are led on an tour of the weird and wonderful pockets of London from abandoned music-halls to egg breaking factories.
A documentary on Dizzy Gillespie's landmark visit to Cuba and his performance at the Fifth International Jazz Festival in Havana, Cuba. Filmed in 1985 with Arturo Sandoval and Sayyd Abdul Al Khabyyr.
Vienna’s Prater is an amusement park and a desire machine. No mechanical invention, no novel idea or sensational innovation could escape incorporation into the Prater. The diverse story-telling in Ulrike Ottinger’s film “Prater” transforms this place of sensations into a modern cinema of attractions. The Prater’s history from the beginning to the present is told by its protagonists and those who have documented it, including contemporary cinematic images of the Prater, interviews with carnies, commentary by Austrians and visitors from abroad, film quotes, and photographic and written documentary materials. The meaning of the Prater, its status as a place of technological innovation, and its role as a cultural medium are reflected in texts by Elfriede Jelinek, Josef von Sternberg, Erich Kästner and Elias Canetti, as well as in music devoted to this amusement venue throughout the course of its history.
The neon sign ‘Circus’ illuminates the wide street of Naples’ suburbs: four circus families were abandoned by the institutions, and now they’re awaiting the pandemic will disappear, like a magic show. The circus has stopped, but their lives go on.
Although it was actually an impersonal commissioned film, the director's style is clearly recognizable. Once again he manages to make something that is normal very strange: the dancing people in costumes are filmed in such a way that they look bizarre and absurd. Jan de Bont's camerawork shows a series of color images of dancing people, edited to the rhythm of the music. Halfway through the film, a lonely clown can be seen among the dancing crowd, accompanied by sad music. This clown is played by Ditvoorst himself.
A documentary about the legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday (1915-1959). There exist many myths and legends about the Jazz Singer Billie Holiday — one of the greatest voices of the last century. Most of them tell the story of the tragic victim of drugs, alcohol, men, color, or the circumstances of her upbringing. To some extent she contributed herself to these legends, especially in her autobiography "Lady Sings the Blues". In recent years, more and more records and reports have shown a different picture of her. These statements of confidants, colleagues and friends clean up with many of the legends and show a strong personality who has been anything but a pitiable victim. Billie Holiday was a strong-willed and determined person and a very complex personality who did not correspond to the classic victim type.
An essay film that interweaves meditations on travels with stories of journeys in China across a century: A student expedition into the heart of China in the 1930s, a young traveler's visions of the melancholic landscapes of his homeland, the narratives of movements in early Chinese silent films. Through these fragments of travelogues, the film explores the nature of consciousness in motion and what it means to use archives, images, and cinema as documentations as well as vehicles for travel.
A doctor and party visit the villages of eastern Manipur in India's far north east.
Hear the Lama band, see the sacred dances: welcome to Sikkim, in the shadow of the Himalayas.
This official travelogue of a royal tour follows the Prince on a series of regimental displays and a tiger hunt.
An astonishing English tourist’s view of street life in pre-partition Srinagar and Kashmir.
A scenes from a tour of Manipur State and a women's bazaar in Imphal.