Cavalcade of Archery

A visual essay by filmmaker and critic David Cairns. Recorded for Arrow Video in 2023. Included as a special feature on the 2024 Limited Edition Blu-ray and DVD release of The Shootist.

A short lyrical document about an ancient Oriental discipline, this film moves from the streets of China, where the people practice Tai-Chi daily, to North America, where the same movements are executed by a solitary figure in a park.

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time.

Warsaw's Central Railway Station. 'Someone has fallen asleep, someone's waiting for somebody else. Maybe they'll come, maybe they won't. The film is about people looking for something.

Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.

Photomicrography reveals the unusual structure and behavior of the Venus's flytrap, the trumpet plant, the cobra plant, the common pitcher plant, the sundew plant and the utricularia.

1645. Guadeloupe. Ibátali, a Kalinago native and wife of a French colonist, leads Olaudah, an escaped African captive, on a journey where he may lose his freedom and his life. She is ready to sacrifice him to save her own skin. But their wounds bring them together. Will this be enough to make them something other than what colonisation has decided they should be: a savage to be exterminated, an African to be enslaved?

Commissioned by the U.S. Office of War Information, this short film features conductor Arturo Toscanini leading the NBC Symphony Orchestra, tenor Jan Peerce, and the Westminster Choir in Verdi’s Inno delle nazioni. Originally composed in the 1860s as a musical tribute to Europe, Toscanini expanded the score to include The Star-Spangled Banner and The Internationale in honor of the Allied struggle and Italian partisans. Filmed in NBC’s Studio 8H, the documentary interweaves performance with scenes of Toscanini at home, emphasizing his anti-fascist stance and celebrating the liberation of Italy. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.

A dog trains for the battlefield and becomes a crucial part of the United States military. This 1945 short documentary film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short, One-Reel.

This "Theater of Life" documentary was produced in cooperation with the International Committee, YMCA. It focuses on the work of Dr. Spencer Hatch, as he shows residents of small Mexican villages how to make their land better able to grow food and make them more independent.

This short is one of Paramount's "Popular Science" series (number L6-5, or the fifth one of the 1946-47 production season) and begins by showing moon rockets, weighing 30 tons, a flight in the ionosphere, with mounted color cameras recording pictures hundreds of miles above the earth. Coming back to earth, it discourses on modern bathroom fixtures, and then demonstrates a one-man hay-bailer.

This short documentary, presented and directed by MGM sound engineer Douglas Shearer, goes behind the scenes to look at how the sound portion of a talking picture is created.

During the Revolutionary War, Emily, her daughter Sarah and her two young grandchildren have to look after themselves and run the family farm while the men fight for the patriots' cause. With winter approaching, crops dwindling and food shortages mounting, the women face their greatest fears when three lost British soldiers storm into their house demanding food, drink and anything else they can get their hands on.

A non-narrative voyage round Sedlec Ossuary, which has been constructed from over 50,000 human skeletons (victims of the Black Death).

Carefully picked scenes of nature and civilization are viewed at high speed using time-lapse cinematography in an effort to demonstrate the history of various regions.

Vedec krásou očarený - Anton Augustín Baník

Zip, a 17 year-old Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) baseball pitcher, faces the tragic circumstances of the World War II internment of 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry. Set in a relocation camp in the summer of 1943, this film chronicles the journey of an American family torn apart by a forced and unjust incarceration, a father's decision that challenges his son to find strength, and ultimately his son's triumph through courage, sacrifice and the All-American game of baseball.

Pereda returns with a small, mysterious and moving tribute to Chantal Akerman, conceived as a series of joyful impossible letters addressed to the great disappeared from the cinema, to answer her fictional question about renting her bright apartment in Coyoacán.

Two men and one woman addicted to videogames are interviewed to tell their stories. In this documentary, they are animated characters resembling the ones on computer games.

Mia recounts her most intimate confessions, uncensored, in her first approach to a totally new world of domination and submission.