Varieties of Sweet Peas

Cómo empezar una película sobre Javier Aguirre(es)

Bola de Nieve(es)

Documentarian Jose Sanchez-Montes turns his attention towards the late Cuban musician Ignacio Villa, known throughout the world as Bola de Nieve (Snowball), with this 2003 biographical documentary entitled simply Bola de Nieve. A master pianist, Bola de Nieve was a mainstay through the middle portion of the 20th century, with his music almost omnipresent in South America cinema throughout those formative decades. With Bola de Nieve's famous statement "I'm a sad person, but my songs sound happy" in mind, Sanchez-Montes also looks at the influence of the musician's African heritage and homosexuality upon Bola de Nieve's unique musical style.

Oxígeno para vivir(es)

Walls(en)

A day in the life of Mr. Istvan and Ms. Magdi, neighbors for many years, is narrated by the building of Budapest where both live. The walls surrounding them reveal their small passions, stories and routines.

The Russians Machine(es)

The Dangers of the Fly(es)

The Dangers of the Fly is an educational film made by Ernesto Gunche and Eduardo Martínez de la Pera, also responsible for Gaucho Nobility (1915), the biggest blockbuster of Argentinean silent cinema. De la Pera was a talented photographer, always willing to try new gadgets and techniques. This film experiments with microphotography in the style of Jean Comandon's films for Pathé and it is part of a series which included a film about mosquitoes and paludism and another one about cancer, which are considered lost. Flies were a popular subject of silent films and there are more than a dozen titles featuring them in the teens and early twenties.

Dickson Greeting(xx)

William K.L. Dickson brings his hat from his one hand to the other and moves his head slightly, as a small nod toward the audience. This was the first film produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company to be shown to public audiences and the press.

The Botany of Desire(en)

Featuring Michael Pollan and based on his best-selling book, this special takes viewers on an exploration of the human relationship with the plant world — seen from the plants' point of view. Narrated by Frances McDormand, the program shows how four familiar species — the apple, the tulip, marijuana and the potato — evolved to satisfy our yearnings for sweetness, beauty, intoxication.

Men Boxing(xx)

Experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.

Breaking Plates(en)

A unique hybrid of documentary, silent film, drama and dance, 'Breaking Plates' puts revolutionary women of the past on the screen with present day filmmakers. Contemporary women talk to characters from 100 years ago, reanimate their antics and emulate their mayhem moves. As early 21st century performers step into the clothes of their early 20th century counterparts, battling their haywire machines, exploding gags, and eruptive bodies, they learn to wield humour as a weapon against the structures that contain them today.

Aus dem Leben der Inder(de)

Short film about Indian people

Machine Plate(es)

Dawn of hope(am)

Film about the Ethiopian famine of I984/85 and the measures taken to combat it

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni: filmbiografía de Antonio Maenza(es)

Slotsarkitekt Thorvald Jørgensen Paa Christianborg Slots Stilladser(en)

View over the castle island of Holmen's Church and the Stock Exchange from the top of Christiansborg, where architect Thorvald Jørgensen is seen at Christiansborg slotting scaffolding, and with builders in the courtyard. The architect is also seen with stonemasons in the yard.

Monica in the South Seas(fi)

Finnish filmmaker and artist Sami van Ingen is a great-grandson of documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty, and seemingly the sole member of the family with a hands-on interest in continuing the directing legacy. Among the materials he found in the estate of Robert and Frances Flaherty’s daughter Monica were the film reels and video tapes detailing several years of work on realising her lifelong dream project: a sound version of her parents’ 1926 docu-fiction axiom, Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age.

The Funeral of Vera Kholodnaya(ru)

This film records the vast public response to the early death of Vera Kholodnaya, the first star of Russian cinema.

Among Wild Birds(xx)

Finland’s first nature documentary. The filmmakers’ expedition leads them all the way to the Åland Islands and the Karelian Isthmus.

Les héritiers(fr)

Gilles Groulx's first film shot in 1955 with a camera borrowed from his brother and edited during his spare time when he worked as an editor at the Radio-Canada news service a few years before he joined the NFB. Silent film, presented as its author left it, where the soil and the dialectic of Groulx's work are already there: documentary realism, the social space to be explored, daily life, the relationship between individual and society, social disparities, the consumer society, seduction and happiness.

Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge(xx)

A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.