The Police Tapes is a 1977 documentary about a New York City police precinct in the South Bronx. The original ran ninety minutes and was produced for public television; a one-hour version later aired on ABC. Filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond spent three months in 1976 riding along with patrol officers in the 44th Precinct of the South Bronx, which had the highest crime rate in New York City at that time. They produced about 40 hours of videotape that they edited into a 90-minute documentary.
For early aviators, conquering the forces of gravity was a daunting challenge. But black aviators had an additional challenge - conquering the forces of racism. Meet the men and women who took to the skies throughout the 20th century, proving to a segregated nation that skin color doesn't determine skill level. From biplanes to commercial jets, and from barnstormers to war fighters, meet the path-breaking pilots who opened the skies for all -- and contributed in countless ways to the development of aviation.
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)
A day in the city of Berlin, which experienced an industrial boom in the 1920s, and still provides an insight into the living and working conditions at that time. Germany had just recovered a little from the worst consequences of the First World War, the great economic crisis was still a few years away and Hitler was not yet an issue at the time.
On January 26, 1950, a US Airforce troop plane left Anchorage for Montana with 44 people on board. The crew of the Douglas C-54 Skymaster #2469 was supposed to check in every half hour along the route. As the aircraft crossed into Yukon, they radioed the tiny outpost of Snag to say that there was ice forming on the wings, but otherwise all was well. After that, the Skymaster disappeared. And to this day no sign of the aircraft or its passengers has ever been found. This fascinating Yukon-shot documentary tells the stories of the victim’s families and an intrepid group of Yukoners striving to give those families closure by searching every summer in hopes that the Skymaster will finally turn up.
At any given moment hundreds of people are soaring above us in a 747. From the moment the very first jumbo jet took off in 1969, it has been the aircraft against which all others are judged. But its 45-year journey has been anything but smooth. This is the definitive story of the Boeing 747, from its milestones and triumphs to its turning points and disasters. Witness its history through rare archival footage and tales from pilots, engineers, designers, and passengers who were there when it all began.
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
Short subject on how fashion is created-- not by the great couturiers, but on the street.
Discover what makes Air Force One faster, more secure, more comfortable, and more capable than any other comparable plane.
Experiments on the crystallization of various inorganic substances: crystallization from solution, crystallization from melt and vapour phase, mixed crystal formation, oriented growth, change from a metastable into a stable phase.
Short film about the movement patterns of protozoa
The De Havilland Comet was the world's first passenger jet airliner. But less than two years into service, two aircraft blew up in mid-air, killing all aboard. PM Winston Churchill ordered an assemblage of experts to discover what went wrong - in the process, inventing many of the air crash investigation techniques still used today.
Andy Warhol directs The Factory regular Louisa "Jackie" Foster for a screen test.
Nazi propaganda short about paratroopers
Panair do Brasil revives the story of the most important commercial aviation company in Brazil, between 1930 and 1965, with its commercial daring in establishing routes to the four corners of a continental country, taking the adventure of air transport to never-before imagined places, as well as the first international routes. Four decades after it closed its doors, it still retains a marked presence in the country's collective imagination for its pioneering spirit and stories of heroic deeds and for the bewilderment which was aroused by the facts surrounding its closure during the military regime.
Documentary about Borneo, the island of beauty, passion and demons
An eccentric history buff lives in a cabin in the woods but spends most of his time flying his biplane.
The X-15 was the last in a line of manned rocket-powered research airplanes built during the 1950s to explore ever-faster and higher flight regimes. Nineteen years before Space Shuttle, the X-15 showed it was possible to fly into, and out of, space. Launched from the wing of a modified B-52 bomber, the ship rocketed higher and faster than any manned aircraft of the time. There had never been anything like the X-15; it had a million-horsepower engine and could fly twice as fast as a rifle bullet. In the joint X-15 hypersonic research program that NASA conducted with the Air Force, the Navy, and North American Aviation the aircraft flew over a period of nearly 10 years and set unofficial speed and altitude records, in a program to investigate all aspects of piloted hypersonic flight. Information gained from the highly successful X-15 program contributed to the development of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo piloted spaceflight programs as well as the Space Shuttle program.
Documentary on the former border patrol sergeant Klein. Klein deserted in 1961, defected to the enemy and betrayed state and military secrets. He was caught by the security forces.
"[Hutton’s] latest urban film, New York Portrait, Chapter III, takes on a unique tone in relation to Hutton’s ongoing exploration of rural landscape. The very fact that Hutton is dealing with older footage, with archives of memory more than immediacy, gives it a different texture than his earlier New York films. Hutton always found the presence of nature in the city, not only in his many shots of sky and vegetation, but also in the geometry and texture of the city itself, which seemed to project an independence from the human." (Tom Gunning)