A portrait of the visionary Dutch artist M. C. Escher (1898-1972), according to his own words, taken from his diary, his correspondence and the texts of his lectures.
The Magic Lantern is a non-narrated celebration of early cinema and silent-film imagination, exploring the early work of pioneers such as Georges Méliès, Eadweard Muybridge, Segundo de Chomón, and Émile Cohl.
Life and art of Carlos Cruz-Diez.
This documentary on the "youth movement" of the late 1960s focuses on the hippie pot smoking/free love culture in the San Francisco Bay area.
"...I was playing it at the Cinematheque, and it got a lot of word of mouth in town. Everybody liked it because we used this really neat trick to put these images on Pat Barrington’s body as she was doing a belly dance. It was just perfect, and it was an the height of the LSD period and all the hippies loved it." - Ed DePriest
Magical enhanced 3D illusions never before seen on video! Set to captivating music recorded on Dolby surround.
With her pioneering work on Optical Illusions, a police consultant probes into the unconscious of her subjects to help her solve cases.
Unterwasserparadies: Rotes Meer
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.
Megacities is a documentary about the slums of four different metropolitan cities.
The story of Catholic iconoclast Michael Pfleger who made it his mission to transform the drug ravaged south side Chicago community surrounding his parish. In so doing, Father Mike has run directly into conflict with the local Catholic hierarchy. The film explores issues of racism, the power of the media, and the tension between Pfleger's 'gospel of the streets' versus traditional Church theology.
For most of his life, Dirk has been searching for the woman of his dreams. After several failed relationships and a burnout, he finally seems to have found the love of his life, Jenny: the perfect match at first sight – but somehow fundamentally different…
Feature-length documentary as part of Pierre Perrault's Abitibian Cycle. The filmmaker questions the past and present of Abitibi and draws up, face to face, the promises of colonization in the 1930s and the great disappointment caused by the closing of the land in the 1970s. There are witnesses to the heroic era, including the cultivator Hauris Lalancette, as well as extracts from films by Father Maurice Proulx (1934-1940).
This moving documentary profiles the ups and downs - and everything in between - of the life of Brother Anthony Jan Thomas Penera. "Brother Tony" was many things to many people - metaphysical teacher, guide, psychic reader, gardener, radio talk show host and occasionally controversial in his views.
A comedy documentary about performing stand-up comedy for U.S. Troops stationed in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq. Heartfelt interviews with top professional comedians are woven in with filmmaker Jordan Brady's first-hand experience going to the Middle East. While traveling (Spring 2016) brutal terrorist attacks in Brussels, Turkey and Iraq remind us of the dangers in thew world, and underscore the mission to provide laughter for the men and women serving the military.
Ostensibly searching for an emotional connection with her aging father, the woman contemplates her own inherited culture and familial touchstones. Her North American pop culture sensibility fuses with a distorted Japanese perspective to create a surreal interpretation of a “Japan of the imagination.” This fictional landscape is peppered with invented Japanese myths, ruminations on memory loss, the temporal space of digital photography and the ghosts of inherited imagination.
Workplace is a documentary made by Gary Hustwit, in association with R/GA, for the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.Workplace is about the past, present, and future of the office. It looks at the thinking, innovation, and experimentation involved in trying to create the next evolution of what the office could be. The film follows the design and construction of the New York headquarters of digital agency R/GA (in collaboration with architects Foster + Partners) who have been experimenting with how physical and digital space can better interact. Digital technology has radically changed how and where most of us work, but the physical spaces we work in haven’t kept up with that transformation.
What if you temporarily took leave from the safety of everyday life to battle through a challenge that scares you? What if your only worries were riding, finding food and water and a place to sneak a few hours of sleep? What if you forgot your self-imposed limits just to see what you were truly capable of for once? What if you were a racer at heart? Why wouldn't you want to take on the toughest races on the planet?
Documentary filmmaker Bruce Brown, himself a competition-level surfer, follows surfers Michael Hynson and Robert August on an around-the-world surfing adventure. With Brown's wry, sardonic narration and a twangy, guitar-driven instrumental soundtrack by The Sandals playing over the silent footage, Mike and Rob leave their California home to visit Hawaii, Australia, South Africa and other secluded surfing spots in a search for the surfer's holy grail that Brown dubs "The Perfect Wave.”