Atlanta Nat Convention

This silent film from 1948 "The Creation of Life" briefly demonstrates how a fetus forms and graphically shows different types of births. It was made by Sherwood Picture Corp., and may have been sold both to schools and professional organizations for medical education, and to the public for shock value. (Several similar birth films were sold in this era through home catalogs and photography shops.) Summary: By means of diagrams, conceptions and pregnancy are explained. Views of various methods of delivery are shown. Created by: T. Marc Sherwood

Documentary short film depicting the filmmaking activity at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood, featuring dozens of stars captured candidly and at work.

Andy Warhol directs The Factory regular Louisa "Jackie" Foster for a screen test.

Taken in 1896 on the Boulevard (upper Broadway) on the occasion of a bicycle parade in the heyday of the wheeling craze. Old-fashioned horse cars lend interest to the scene.

Shows masked mental patients enacting various schizophrenic symptoms as they were understood at the time. A disturbing film that raises questions about the condition and treatment of its subjects. (archive.org) “Abstract: This film describes and demonstrates four types of schizophrenia. Filmed at various New York institutions, it shows patients singly and grouped in large, outside recreational areas. Some patients are blindfolded. Symptoms shown include: social apathy, delusions, hallucinations, hebephrenic reactions, cerea flexibilitas, rigidity, motor stereotypes, posturing, and echopraxia.” (Guide to Mental Health Motion Pictures)

Six years after the Berlin Wall fell and five years after German unification this documentary looks into the fast changes in architecture and street life of Berlin Mitte and stays in tune with a piano piece of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Mudos testigos is a cinematographic collage made from all the surviving material of Colombian silent films, re-editing the images in such a way as to create a single imaginary film: the impossible love story of Efraín and Alicia that traces the convulsive first half of the twentieth century in Colombia. Compiled by the late Luis Ospina and finished posthumously by Jeronimo Atehortúa.

Florence is a contemplative study of light and shadows, textures and planes, that makes beautiful use of the tonal qualities of black and white film. (mubi.com)

Expeditions in the Western Canadian Arctic

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On September 11, 1929, the first Termez-Dushanbe train arrived at the newly built station in the Tajik capital. However, not only the train was the first that day - the shots of the arrival of the locomotive, as well as people waiting for it with excitement, became the basis of the first Tajik film.

A contemplative, seemingly timeless record of the years Hutton spent in Southeast Asia while working as a merchant seaman. Jon Jost writes, "The film is rich with truly wonderful visions: a thick, white porcelain cup perched on a ship's rail, the tea within swaying gently in sync with the ship while the sea rushes by beyond…the faces of crewmen posing awkwardly but also movingly for the camera; a cockfight on ship; scenes from a bucolic pre–Pol Pot Phnom Penh. Images has the haunting elegiac resonance of Eugène Atget's Paris, the echo of a time and place that was." - MoMA

Peter Hutton's New York trilogy. An act of urban archaeology, a chronicle of indelible impressions of the city.

Events that took place in the capital of the Tajik SSR, the city of Dushanbe in 1929.

Documentary that details the daily habits of beavers and their interaction with the ecosystem at large. Filmed mostly in Digby County, Nova Scotia.

“Tai Chi II,” similarly to Elam’s “Tai Chi Bowling” and “Tai Chi,” focuses on movement. Through a sequence of close-ups, Elam coyly records portions of several individuals practicing tai chi, primarily focusing on the practitioners’ extremities as they float about. Distinct from its affiliates, “Tai Chi II” finds the action taking place outside.

Elam records several men moving boxes and furniture as they track across her backyard.

Elam's husband prepares vegetables at the sink.

At home, outdoors. Street shots.

Elam films her close friend, Chuck Kleinhans.