A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
A formally free poetic documentary filmed through a summer depression in northern Portugal.
A documentary of insect life in meadows and ponds, using incredible close-ups, slow motion, and time-lapse photography. It includes bees collecting nectar, ladybugs eating mites, snails mating, spiders wrapping their catch, a scarab beetle relentlessly pushing its ball of dung uphill, endless lines of caterpillars, an underwater spider creating an air bubble to live in, and a mosquito hatching.
Takes us to locations all around the US and shows us the heavy toll that modern technology is having on humans and the earth. The visual tone poem contains neither dialogue nor a vocalized narration: its tone is set by the juxtaposition of images and the exceptional music by Philip Glass.
In the town of Xoco, the spirit of an old villager awakens in search of its lost home. Along its journey, the ghost discovers that the town still celebrates its most important festivities, but also learns that the construction of a new commercial complex called Mítikah will threaten the existence of both the traditions and the town itself.
Starting with a long and lyrical overture, evoking the origins of the Olympic Games in ancient Greece, Riefenstahl covers twenty-one athletic events in the first half of this two-part love letter to the human body and spirit, culminating with the marathon, where Jesse Owens became the first track and field athlete to win four gold medals in a single Olympics.
Part two of Leni Riefenstahl's monumental examination of the 1938 Olympic Games, the cameras leave the main stadium and venture into the many halls and fields deployed for such sports as fencing, polo, cycling, and the modern pentathlon, which was won by American Glenn Morris.
Entre a Lei e a Luta
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.
An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.
Before Cinema Novo revolutionized the Brazilian cinematic scenery, a young craftsman and Bahian filmmaker had already paved the way for the beginning of the journey for some of the biggest and most popular films of Brazilian history. The documentary tells fragments of the story of director Roberto Pires, through snippets of his life and a journey through his body of work, interspersing archival footage, scenes of his films and an interview with his son, also a filmmaker, Petrus Pires, followed by a poetic narration and an original soundtrack inspired by his film Abrigo Nuclear.
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.
An ode to man's capacity to care for all creatures throughout their sometimes greatly protracted existence, displayed through the homegrown remedies Tom and Debbie Nicholson create for disabled animals.
La nuit de tous les mots
Montenegro is the newest European country with a proud history, one that is being falsified for current political purposes, thus creating an alternative identity. In a nation where it possible for two brothers to claim different ethnic backgrounds despite having the same parents, everything is on the table: language, church, democracy. Can the truth set Montenegro free?
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
THE MACHINE
What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.
Robert Drew shows the sights and sounds from the funeral of President John F. Kennedy in November, 1963. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2002.