A labyrinthine portrait of Czech culture on the brink of a new millennium. Egon Bondy prophesies a capitalist inferno, Jim Čert admits to collaborating with the secret police, Jaroslav Foglar can’t find a bottle-opener, and Ivan Diviš makes observations about his own funeral. This is the Czech Republic in the late 90s, as detailed in Karel Vachek’s documentary.
A labyrinthine portrait of Czech culture on the brink of a new millennium. Egon Bondy prophesies a capitalist inferno, Jim Čert admits to collaborating with the secret police, Jaroslav Foglar can’t find a bottle-opener, and Ivan Diviš makes observations about his own funeral. This is the Czech Republic in the late 90s, as detailed in Karel Vachek’s documentary.
2000-12-16
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A provocative and poetic exploration of how the British people have seen their own land through more than a century of cinema. A hallucinated journey of immense beauty and brutality. A kaleidoscopic essay on how magic and madness have linked human beings to nature since the beginning of time.
This Pixar documentary short follows Sarah Vowell, who plays herself as the title character, on why she is a superhero in her own way. (This short piece is included on the 2-Disc DVD for "The Incredibles", which was released in 2005.
In 2010, an obsessed gamer designed the perfect game of Sim City. Achieved through a repeating pattern of clustered high rises, “Magnasanti” exposes the hellish consequences of top-down civic design. In his new documentary, John Wilson explores how New York City is creeping closer and closer to realizing this fictional metropolis.
Commissioned by French television, this is a short documentary on the neo-classical statues found throughout Paris, predominantly on the walls of buildings, holding up windows, roofs etc.
If cinema is the art of time, Linklater is one of its most thoughtful and engaged directors. Unlike other filmmakers identified as auteurs, Linklater’s distinction is not found on the surface of his films, in a visual style or signature shot, but rather in their DNA, as ongoing conversations with cinema, which is to say, with time itself. A visual essay produced by Sight and Sound.
Documents the lives of infamous fakers Elmyr de Hory and Clifford Irving. De Hory, who later committed suicide to avoid more prison time, made his name by selling forged works of art by painters like Picasso and Matisse. Irving was infamous for writing a fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. Welles moves between documentary and fiction as he examines the fundamental elements of fraud and the people who commit fraud at the expense of others.
Depicting the biography of a corrupt banker poses a cinematic dilemma. How can the intentions of an individual systematic contexts and historical eventualities be brought into harmony? Thomas Furhapters nearly one hour film Michael Berger Eine Hysterie turns this problem outward by not covering up the moment of speculation. The subject of the film, Austrian investment banker Michael Berger, who became a dollar millionaire through a risky hedge fund, remains a chimera an absent individual who also cannot be captured through his crime.
The genius Spanish painter Salvador Dalí undertakes an amazing journey through the unknown mental territories of Upper Mongolia in search of a giant hallucinogenic mushroom while paying an experimental tribute to the French poet Raymond Roussel (1877-1933), a visionary and eccentric writer, precursor of the surrealists and much admired by them.
A very personal look at the history of cinema directed, written and edited by Jean-Luc Godard in his Swiss residence in Rolle for ten years (1988-98); a monumental collage, constructed from film fragments, texts and quotations, photos and paintings, music and sound, and diverse readings; a critical, beautiful and melancholic vision of cinematographic art.
Penthesilea, the first of six films made by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, traverses thousands of years to look at the image of the Amazonian woman in myth. It asks, among other questions, is the Amazonian woman a rare strong female image or is she a figure derived from male phantasy? The film explores the complexities of such questions, but does not seek any concrete answers.
A visual essay that highlights top-down shots from Wes Anderson's filmography.
A long-hidden, personal doc about leaving a beloved house by the late, revered Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira.
A lone passenger is reflected in the windows of a train crawling through layers of textures towards Minsk. During his absence, the city has not changed: all the streets are frozen, long-gone voices can be heard in the empty rooms and around the corner you can find yourself in a video game from your childhood.
Filmmaker Kogonada unpicks what defines the Golden Age of Italian cinema with a side-by-side comparison of two edits of the same film, one according to Italian director Vittorio De Sica, and the other according to Hollywood producer David O. Selznick.
Korean film critic Jeong Sung-il’s camera explores the work of Wang Bing, a Chinese director who won international fame with his film Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks. Jeong’s attempt to pry into Wang’s filmmaking secrets leads to the question: “What is film?”
An atmospheric essay, which is an alternative version of Count Dracula, a film directed by Jess Franco in 1970; a ghostly narration between fiction and reality.
This film essay about mushrooms and their connections to other living things tries to use the structure of mushrooms to explain nature, science, and civilization, all the while searching for various analogies, such as the similarities between mycorrhiza and other structures.