The final 17 years of American singer and musician Karen Carpenter, performed almost entirely by modified Barbie dolls.
An educational film about power sources that’s rendered as a lyrical meditation on heat and vapor, The Four Elements is a poetic and avant-garde documentary Curtis Harrington made for the United States Information Agency.
During World War II, the propaganda engine of the U.S. government made a pivotal decision with unforeseeable results: they tapped John Huston to shoot war documentaries with an expressly patriotic spin. Few could guess the degree to which Huston's documentaries would depict the sheer brutality and horror of modern warfare - particularly his Let There Be Light and The Battle of San Pietro. The films served (by default) as cinematic protests, even as they graced new and brilliant heights within the scope of American documentary. (Indeed, Light was banned by the government for 35 years). Midge Mackenzie's 1998 documentary John Huston: War Stories explores this little known facet of Huston's career, intercutting clips from the various documentaries with a Huston interview shot just prior to his death.
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.
¿Por qué morir en Madrid?
Based on a revolutionary play supposedly written by the Eternal President of the Democratic People's Republic, Kim Il-sung, and rumored to have been co-directed by Kim Jong-il. This revolutionary work is also popular among the Chinese, especially those who lived through the Cultural Revolution, and have fond memories of revolutionary antics.
6-18-67 is a short quasi-documentary film by George Lucas regarding the making of the Columbia film “Mackenna's Gold”. This non-story, non-character visual tone poem is made up of nature imagery, time-lapse photography, and the subtle sounds of the Arizona desert.
In the small town of Kansk, the Krasnoyarsk Territory many years in a row there is an international festival of short experimental films, which has a strong reputation throughout the world. "Russia as a dream" is an international project, shot by a team of authors and united directors, artists, poets. Each of the guests of the 14th International Kan Video Festival held in 2015 was invited to participate in the creation of a general film, the theme of which was the relationship of man and landscape, civilization and nature, reality and sleep.
"My last image of Jonas."—Ken Jacobs
Rather pointless, rather stilted, fetid; not what we want us going after.
The story of how newspapers were distributed during the Blitz, stressing the importance of an accurate and objective press on the home front.
This film describes a psychological state "kin to moonstruck, its images emblems (not quite symbols) of suspension-of-self within consciousness and then that feeling of falling away from conscious thought. The film can only be said to describe or be emblematic of this state because I cannot imagine symbolizing or otherwise representing an equivalent of thoughtlessness itself. Thus the actors in the film, Jane Brakhage, Tom and Gloria Bartek, Williams Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Olovsky and Phillip Whalen are figments of this 'Thought-Fallen Process', as are their images in the film to find themselves being photographed."
In this fascinating Oscar-nominated documentary, American guitarist Ry Cooder brings together a group of legendary Cuban folk musicians (some in their 90s) to record a Grammy-winning CD in their native city of Havana. The result is a spectacular compilation of concert footage from the group's gigs in Amsterdam and New York City's famed Carnegie Hall, with director Wim Wenders capturing not only the music -- but also the musicians' life stories.
Social democracy propaganda film about future dreams for Denmark in 1960. Although Denmark is free again, the former opponent and worker, Svend, is disillusioned: "It is all something soft". The dream of the future is incarnated by a young woman, Karen, who shows Svend the visions of a better life in the 'youth's land'. There are homes and a nuclear-powered car for everyone.
This remarkable documentary dedicates itself to an extraordinary chapter of the second World War – the psychological warfare of the USA. America’s trusted cartoon darlings from the studios of Warner Bros., Paramount, and the “big animals” of the Disney family were supposed to give courage to the people at the homefront, to educate them, but also to simultaneously entertain them. Out of this mixture grew a genre of its own kind – political cartoons. Insightful Interviews with the animators and producers from back then elucidate in an amusing and astonishing way under which bizarre circumstances these films partially came into existence.
The Kafkaesque world of Cuba under Castro's rule is brought to light in this reconstruction of the 1989 trial and execution of General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, the highest-ranking general and hero of the revolution, and commander of the Angolan and Ethiopian campaigns.
An anthology of one-minute films created by 51 international filmmakers on the theme of the death of cinema. Intended as an ode to 35mm, the film was screened one time only on a purpose-built 20x12 meter public cinema screen in the Port of Tallinn, Estonia, on 22 December 2011. A special projector was constructed for the event which allowed the actual filmstrip to be burnt at the same time as the film was shown.
A collection of television celebrities pitch United States Savings bonds.
In a culture where cremation is unusual, cemeteries fill up rapidly. In Latin America and in some other places, to solve the problem, remains are frequently exhumed. In Cuba, two year after interment. Relatives are invited to observe the little ritual. The music of the film is drawn from requiems from different periods. Twelve pieces by seven different composers are quoted. Together, they make up a traditional requiem, although only a few passages from the "dies irae" have been included, and other sections are slightly abbreviated.