The epic and poetic tale of the early years of Italian cinema, from 1896 to 1930: how peplum was born, how the first stars shone, how many daring filmmakers were able to create an original style amalgamating literature, theater, painting and opera; a tale of splendor and decadence.
a documentary and a fiction about reflecting on "pre-cinema".
Kogonada looks at how the motif of doors reverberates through Robert Bresson's work.
Unique film of the Impressionist painter Edgar Degas captured walking down a street in Paris in 1915.
Three children living in a displacement camp in northern Uganda compete in their country's national music and dance festival.
Featuring previously unissued photographs and video archives as well as interviews of his friends and partners in crime, this documentary tells how the kid from the poor suburbs turned superstar photographer. It draws the intimate portrait of the life and work – being so closely interwoven – of and artist fiercely determined to be purveyor of happiness.
A series of 12 short movies from the start of the twentieth century. These movies were the first adult movies, and, according to the film-maker Michel Reilhac, show that "the modern porn industry did not invent anything – everything had already been filmed by our great-grandparents."
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, abstraction - that most quintessentially modernist innovation - maintains a peculiarly contradictory position. Used, on one hand, by post-modernist artists as just one more quotable style amongst many, it is on the other hand still considered an elitist or hermetic language by audiences intimidated by its lack of recognizable subject matter. Yet ultimately, abstraction continues to be a viable creative path for contemporary artists of all generations, many of whom embrace it as the most inclusive and fundamentally resonant of artistic languages. Filmed at the artists' studios, the Dia Center for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Museum during their exhibition, "Abstraction in the Twentieth Century."
An actuallity film of a fairground carousel in action. Filmmaker unknown but it has been suggested it is R.W. Paul. The film was made on Hampstead heath, London, UK.
Exploring the transformative impact of artificial intelligence in an industry of imagination, “ARTIFICIAL: Media Production in an Age of AI” delves into how AI tools are currently revolutionizing various stages of media production and examines the balance between technological advancement and human creativity, attempting to spark conversation about the future of storytelling in an age of progress. It also addresses the possibility of government regulation and the broader ethical concerns implicit in the immense capabilities of AI technology. The documentary integrates extensive research, survey results, and insightful interviews with industry professionals.
From award-winning director Phil Grabsky comes this fresh new look at arguably the world’s favourite artist – through his own words. Using letters and other private writings I, Claude Monet reveals new insight into the man who not only painted the picture that gave birth to impressionism but who was perhaps the most influential and successful painter of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite this, and perhaps because of it, Monet’s life is a gripping tale about a man who, behind his sun-dazzled canvases, suffered from feelings of depression, loneliness, even suicide. Then, as his art developed and his love of gardening led to the glories of his garden at Giverney, his humour, insight and love of life is revealed. Shot on location in Paris, London, Normandy and Venice I, Claude Monet is a cinematic immersion into some of the most loved and iconic scenes in Western Art.
Do you ever wonder why you are the way you are? One day I decided to ask myself this question and I have been struggling to put the answer together ever since. “Enough of Myself” is my visualization of this process. When I finally had the headspace to consider my own emotions, it turned out to be a lot harder than I had thought. When you start to examine your own thoughts and patterns, the digging doesn’t stop. You keep digging deeper and finding new connections that you might have preferred stay hidden. But to ignore these things is to give in to them. Growth requires a certain level of vulnerability, not just towards others but towards yourself as well. To grow beyond those negative patterns, you need to look them in the eye first. In my film I tried to capture this emotional process in an array of animations. I hope that I haven’t just captured my own emotional process, but some deeper universal emotions as well.
Taking its lead from French artists like Renoir and Monet, the American impressionist movement followed its own path which over a forty-year period reveals as much about America as a nation as it does about its art as a creative power-house. It’s a story closely tied to a love of gardens and a desire to preserve nature in a rapidly urbanizing nation. Travelling to studios, gardens and iconic locations throughout the United States, UK and France, this mesmerising film is a feast for the eyes. The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism features the sell-out exhibition The Artist’s Garden: American Impressionism and the Garden Movement, 1887–1920 that began at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and ended at the Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut.
A documentary on the Z Channel, one of the first pay cable stations in the US, and its programming chief, Jerry Harvey. Debuting in 1974, the LA-based channel's eclectic slate of movies became a prime example of the untapped power of cable television.
Katolícka moderna
A documentary-essay which shows Costică Axinte's stunning collection of pictures depicting a Romanian small town in the thirties and forties. The narration, composed mostly from excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, tells the rising of the antisemitism and eventually a harrowing depiction of the Romanian Holocaust.
"Fly too high and you will burn, go too low and you won't breathe." Daedalus weaves a tale of ambition and caution through an ancient myth, set in a nation below sea level. Shot in just seven consecutive days during the summer of 2023, it concludes the first volume of Bliss, a playlist of sounds and shapes. As the master craftsman gifts his son wings and wisdom, the film delves into the perilous dance between striving for greatness and the suffocating pull of stagnancy. This chaotic exploration bridges the warnings and epiphanic thoughts of 20th-century thinkers with the responses of today's dreamers.
Lost Boundaries is comprised of footage shot by Julien on location, in England in the summer of 1985, during the making of the Sankofa film and video collective's first experimental feature film The Passion of Remembrance (1986), which he co-directed with Maureen Blackwood, another member of the collective. In recapturing those moment Lost Boundaries both deconstructs and foregrounds the means of 16mm film production while weaving together a fragile community of Black artists and actors who came to prominence at a time when debates in film theory - such as those of the Screen film journal and of "third cinema" discourses where cinema was intertwined within (Brechtian) filmmaking practices - were at the forefront of forging a new politics of artistic representation. A Black avant-garde.
A brief portrait of famous and brave bullfighter Manuel Benítez el Corbobés; an account on still photos of his triumphs and failures.
Examines the history and legacy of the photo Guerrillero Heroico taken by famous Cuban photographer Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez. This image has thrived for the decades since Che Guevara's death and has evolved into an iconic image, which represents a multitude of ideals. The documentary film explores the story of how the photo came to be, its adoption of multiple interpretations and meanings, as well as the commercialization of the image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara.