Film about Sakamoto Ryōma. The focus is on Oryo, the maid who became Ryoma’s wife and lived with him for one year before his death.
The Man Who Assassinated Ryoma is a movie about a haunted blood-thirsty Bakufu officer who might have killed Ryoma Sakamoto.
Ryôma Sakamoto unites the Choshu and Satsuma clans and paves the way for the Meiji Restoration.
Story of the last three days in the life of Sakamoto Ryoma (1836-1867), the imperial loyalist who tried to unite the Choshu and Satsuma clans and prepared the way for the Meiji Restoration (1868).
A single bullet cuts through Kyoto in the last days of the Tokugawa shogunate right before the restoration of imperial rule. Who plotted to assassinate Tokugawa Yoshinobu, who is about to become the last shogun of Japan? Was it the faction wanting to overthrow him or the rebels within the shogunate? Mutual enemies Sakamoto Ryoma, the wandering samurai, and Hijikata Toshizo, a deputy leader of the Shinsengumi and vassal of the Tokugawa clan, receive a secret order to track down the culprit. They are given a mere two days.
A biographical story of Tomoatsu Godai, the influential entrepreneur of the Meiji era who laid the foundation of the modern Japanese economy.
A documentary from Erkki Karu, one of the earliest pioneers of Finnish cinema: This government-produced propaganda film introduces the nature, sports, military, agriculture and capital of Finland.
Arvo Pärt is regarded as one of the most original avant-garde composers. This documentary shows Pärt as a deeply spiritual man whose work is bound up with his religious beliefs. Both he and his music defy classification, and he is determined to preserve his aura of mystery.
At a blind school in the Czech Republic, the children exuberantly show off their remarkable talents – as musicians, as radio announcers, as daredevil bike riders and, most extraordinary of all, as photographers. Why take pictures of a world you can’t see? To capture memories, of course, that sighted people can describe back to them. Miroslav Janek’s documentary is a true eye-opener about the resilience, adaptability and creativity of children, faced with whatever challenge the world throws at them.
Several characters realize their personal way to build their own identity from the choice of genre. Transsexual, transgender, crossdressing – the defining of terminologies different ways of looking at yourself are constantly rising, portraying a universe of possibilities, expanding the boundaries of the possible and permitted.
Black Hole Radio is an installation that consists of taped confessions of callers of the New York City Phone Confession Line and video images. The Phone Confession Line is based on anonymous callers ringing to confess on things they had done or thought like adultery, theft, murder or regrets. Thereafter anybody could call and listen to the confessions. Although making a confession was free, listening to a confession costs money. After Cohen got his hands on the confessions, he used them as an audio heartbeat to accompany video-images of every day life in New York City he had taken over the years. This installation is a portrait of the city with its dark secrets, hushed voices and nocturnal images. In this way Cohen tries to bring across an experience to the viewer that relies on absence, waiting and the effort to hear something in the dark.
Pop Goes the Easel was Ken Russell’s first full-length documentary for the BBC’s arts series Monitor. It focused on 4 British Pop Artists - Peter Blake, Peter Philips, Pauline Boty and Derek Boshier.
Oceanographers have been gripped by a new spirit of discovery and have undertaken the biggest population census of ocean species ever conducted - a "Census of Marine Life". The quest: to find out when and where it all began. Where did the water come from? How was life created in the oceans? And how did it evolve to the enormous diversity we see today? Join National Geographic as we travel more than 4 billion years into the past to uncover how oceans and marine life came to exist.
Ken Howard hosts a series of role-playing vignettes (featuring some of Hollywood's top stars) to help parents and children deal with typical family situations involving the use of illegal drugs.
When Don Joyce and Negativland discovered their mutual love for “found” sounds, an intensely collaborative creative partnership was cemented. It continued non-stop for the ensuing decades, with Don endlessly scanning the airwaves of radio and television, along with his massive LP collection, for new material, day by day, week by week. “It was Don who took the idea of reshaping previously recorded words – in a pre-sampling age – and ran with it to an extent and depth never before heard, and never equaled. ‘Recontextualization’ became his weapon, with the 1/4” tape machine and razor blade his ammunition, and the radio ‘cart player’ – an entirely forgotten piece of broadcast history using endless-loop tape cartridges, which he used until he death – his delivery system.” -Negativland
In 1996, electric cars began to appear on roads all over California. They were quiet and fast, produced no exhaust, and ran without gasoline... Ten years later, these cars were destroyed.
Documentary on the creation of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film "Chime"
Narrated by actor and ocean conservationist Ted Danson, this film reveals a frightening truth about our oceans. An Ocean Mystery: The Missing Catch follows the work of the world's premier fisheries scientist, Dr. Daniel Pauly, as he investigates how close we are to a global crash in fish populations.
An intimate portrait of Jack Chambers, a major figure in the Canadian cultural landscape. This lyrical film includes the full range of his work from the age of thirteen until his death. The story is told in Chambers' own words through narration, and balanced by interviews with people who were close to Chambers at different times in his life.
The plains of Africa have always been a hotbed of predator action, but lurking in its rivers is perhaps its most elusive killer: the Goliath tigerfish. Legends say they are man-eaters, that even crocodiles fear them. Locals call them "demon fish" but angling legend Andy Coetzee calls them something else: an obsession. He dives into the predator-infested Okavango Delta and the treacherous Congo River on a mission to finally land what is considered to be the hardest fish in the world to catch.