Artificial

Microcosmos(fr)

A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.

Earth: One Amazing Day(en)

An astonishing journey revealing the awesome power of the natural world. Over the course of one single day, we track the sun from the highest mountains to the remotest islands to exotic jungles.

No Otter Zone(en)

The Southern Sea Otter was historically abundant along the California coastline until intense hunting pressures reduced their numbers to near-extinction levels. But now the otters are coming back, and with them they bring the potential for drastic change to the modern-day economics and ecology of the Santa Barbara Channel.

Gaga for Dada: The Original Art Rebels(en)

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the surreal art movement, comedian Jim Moir (a.k.a. Vic Reeves) presents this documentary exploring the history of Dadism and the lasting influence it has had on himself and others.

Soup Cans and Superstars: How Pop Art Changed the World(en)

Alastair Sooke champions pop art as one of the most important art forms of the twentieth century, peeling back pop's frothy, ironic surface to reveal an art style full of subversive wit and radical ideas. In charting its story, Alastair brings a fresh eye to the work of pop art superstars Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and tracks down pop's pioneers, from American artists like James Rosenquist, Claes Oldenburg and Ed Ruscha to British godfathers Peter Blake and Allen Jones. Alastair also explores how pop's fascination with celebrity, advertising and the mass media was part of a global art movement, and he travels to China to discover how a new generation of artists are reinventing pop art's satirical, political edge for the 21st century.

Hello My Dear(tr)

The documentary is titled after Arkadaş Z. Özger’s poem “Hello My Dear” which had caused much controversy in the period it was first published. Considered to be in defiance of heteronormativity, the said poem includes references to the poet’s personality, his family, his relationship to the society, and his “unexpected” death, which came three years after its publication. Today, 50 years after it was written, the documentary follows these same lines in the poem utilising cinematic elements. The documentary also rediscovers the poetics; reaches out to the family, the comrades, the friendships, departing from the official historical accounts, cognizant of his experience of otherness, in pursuit of the “lost” portrait of Arkadaş Z. Özger.

Empire of the Nude: The Victorian Nude(en)

The Victorian era is often cited for its lack of sexuality, but as this documentary reveals, the period's artists created a strong tradition surrounding the classical nude figure, which spread from the fine arts to more common forms of expression. The film explains how 19th-century artists were inspired by ancient Greek and Roman works to highlight the naked form, and how that was reflected in the evolving cultural attitudes toward sex.

The Garden Cadences(de)

Jone is ready to fly. She finds herself at the beginning of something new, but before she moves on, there needs to be a closure. Jone is one of Mollies, the queer-feminist collective that had been living for a decade at a trailer park next to Ostkreuz, Berlin.

Speaking Eyes(pt)

Gauguin: A Dangerous Life(en)

Gauguin’s vivid artworks sell for millions. He was an inspired and committed multi-media artist who worked with the Impressionists and had a tempestuous relationship with Vincent van Gogh. But he was also a competitive and rapacious man who left his wife to bring up five children and used his colonial privilege to travel to Polynesia, where in his 40s he took ‘wives’ between 13 and 15 years old, creating images of them and their world that promoted a fantasy paradise of an unspoilt Eden in the Pacific. Later, he challenged the colonial authorities and the Catholic Church in defence of the indigenous people, dying in the Marquesas Islands in 1903, sick, impoverished and alone.

Adrift(no)

"Adrift" is shot on the arctic island of Spitzbergen and in Norway. It combines time-lapse photography with stop-motion animation of the landscape. Through camera-angles and framing the film gradually dislocates the viewer from a stable base where one loses the sense of scale and grounding.

PBS Nature - An Original DUCKumentary(zh)

Ducks are true originals. There are more than 120 different species of ducks in all, a fantastical group of complex characters. Ducks have a talent for survival, and life stories filled with personality and charm. Each bird is more fun than the last, and will leave you wanting more.

The Painter and the Thief(no)

When two of artist Barbora Kysilkova’s most valuable paintings are stolen from a gallery at Frogner in Oslo, the police are able to find the thief after a few days, but the paintings are nowhere to be found. Barbora goes to the trial in hopes of finding clues, but instead she ends up asking the thief if she can paint a portrait of him. This will be the start of a very unusual friendship. Over three years, the cinematic documentary follows the incredible story of the artist looking for her stolen paintings, while at the same time turning the thief into art.

Galapagos - Trauminsel im Pazifik(de)

Following in the footsteps of Charles Darwin, Heinz Sielmann traveled to the bizarre volcanic islands of Galapagos. The multi-award-winning film shows the unique wildlife on the Pacific Noah's Ark.

FUCK TV(en)

After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.

Big Cats: Fast and Dangerous(de)

The vast savannah of the Serengeti. A large part of the genus Panthera lives here. Better known as the "actual big cat". They are among the largest cat species on earth. Among them is the lion, the true predator beneath the vast African sky. 'The King of Africa', male specimens of which weigh up to 270 kg, captured in breathtaking images that show the fascinating world of the big cats. Funny, tragic and spectacular recordings also document the fastest animal in the world, the cheetah, follow leopards on your trail and experience the first days of a black panther.

Siberian Apocalypse(en)

This astounding documentary delves into the mysteries of the Tunguska event – one of the largest cosmic disasters in the history of civilisation. At 7.15 am, on 30th June 1908, a giant fireball, as bright the sun, exploded in the sky over Tunguska in central Siberia. Its force was equivalent to twenty million tonnes of TNT, and a thousand times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. An estimated sixty million trees were felled over an area of over two thousand square kilometres - an area over half the size of Rhode Island. If the explosion had occurred over London or Paris, hundreds of thousands of people would have been killed.

Grizzly Man(en)

Werner Herzog's documentary film about the "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the thirteen summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in one man's attempt to protect the grizzly bears. The film is full of unique images and a look into the spirit of a man who sacrificed himself for nature.

The Velvet Queen(fr)

High up on the Tibetan plateau. Amongst unexplored and inaccessible valleys lies one of the last sanctuaries of the wild world, where rare and undiscovered fauna lives. Vincent Munier, one of the world’s most renowned wildlife photographers takes the adventurer and novelist Sylvain Tesson (In the Forest of Siberia) with him on his latest mission. For several weeks, they’ll explore these valleys searching for unique animals and try to spot the snow leopard, one of the rarest and most difficult big cats to approach.

Joker(pt)

A student film, expressionist adaptation of Joker (2019, dir. Todd Phillips) in stop motion.