Starting in 1881 this film shows the personal battle between Lenin's Ulyanov family and the royal Romanovs that eventually led to the Russian revolution.
A documentary about the cultural effect of film censorship, focusing on the tumultuous times of the teens and early 1920s in America.
Short documentary on a central african tribe called 'The Chillouks'.
Finnish filmmaker and artist Sami van Ingen is a great-grandson of documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty, and seemingly the sole member of the family with a hands-on interest in continuing the directing legacy. Among the materials he found in the estate of Robert and Frances Flaherty’s daughter Monica were the film reels and video tapes detailing several years of work on realising her lifelong dream project: a sound version of her parents’ 1926 docu-fiction axiom, Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age.
In 1858 Charles Darwin struggles to publish one of the most controversial scientific theories ever conceived, while he and his wife Emma confront family tragedy.
These two views were taken during the celebrations given in 1896 on the occasion of the millennium of the foundation of the kingdom of Hungary. Horsemen and men on foot parade, all dressed in historic uniforms.
Take two towns steeped in war, tragedy and violence add a deep passion for local football and pit them against each other and you have one hell of a Derby Day. It's the South Coast derby. Perhaps the rarest played major derby in the UK and certainly one of the most ferocious, thanks to two cities and sets of fans who have a hell of a lot of passion, pride, and personality as well as an edge you wouldn't want to cross. It's Portsmouth v Southampton for the first time in seven years, in the third round of the Carabao Cup and just like every other time they've met, there’s going to be scenes.
This documentary shows how the Berliner workers lived in 1930. The director Slatan Dudow shows through images: a) the workers leaving the factory; b) the raise of the rents; c) the "unpleasant" guest, meaning the justice officer that brings the eviction notice; d) the fight of classes of the houses of capitalists and working classes; e) the parks of the working class; f) the houses of the working class, origin of the tuberculosis and the victims; g) the playground of the working class; h) the swimming pool for the working class, ironically called the "Baltic Sea" of the working class; i) the effects of humidity of basement where a family lives, with one member deaf; j) one working class family having dinner while the capitalist baths his dog; k) the eviction notice received from an unemployed family and their eviction.
Gilles Groulx's first film shot in 1955 with a camera borrowed from his brother and edited during his spare time when he worked as an editor at the Radio-Canada news service a few years before he joined the NFB. Silent film, presented as its author left it, where the soil and the dialectic of Groulx's work are already there: documentary realism, the social space to be explored, daily life, the relationship between individual and society, social disparities, the consumer society, seduction and happiness.
A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.
In the 19th century, China held the monopoly on tea, which was dear and fashionable in the West, and the British Empire exchanged poppies, produced in its Indian colonies and transformed into opium, for Chinese tea. Inundated by the drugs, China was forced to open up its market, and the British consolidated their commercial dominance. In 1839, the Middle Empire introduced prohibition. The Opium War was declared… Great Britain emerged as the winner, but the warning was heeded: it could no longer depend on Chinese tea. The only alternative possible was to produce its own tea. The East India Company therefore entrusted one man with finding the secrets of the precious beverage. His mission was to develop the first plantations in Britain’s Indian colonies. This latter-day James Bond was called Robert Fortune – a botanist. After overcoming innumerable ordeals in the heart of imperial China, he brought back the plants and techniques that gave rise to Darjeeling tea.
Madrid, Spain, 1949. The Circo Americano arrives in the city. While the big top is pitched in a vacant lot, the troupe parades through the grand avenues: the band, a witty impersonator, the Balodys, acrobats, jugglers, acrobatic skaters, clowns and… Buffallo Bill.
A documentary about some of the comedians of the silent era featuring clips from their films and biographical information.
Za práva ľudu
An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.
Finland’s first nature documentary. The filmmakers’ expedition leads them all the way to the Åland Islands and the Karelian Isthmus.
The first woman to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera and possibly the first woman to appear in a motion picture within the United States. In the film, Carmencita is recorded going through a routine she had been performing at Koster & Bial's in New York since February 1890.
A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.
Short documentary released in 1907.
This film records the vast public response to the early death of Vera Kholodnaya, the first star of Russian cinema.