The Dangers of the Fly is an educational film made by Ernesto Gunche and Eduardo Martínez de la Pera, also responsible for Gaucho Nobility (1915), the biggest blockbuster of Argentinean silent cinema. De la Pera was a talented photographer, always willing to try new gadgets and techniques. This film experiments with microphotography in the style of Jean Comandon's films for Pathé and it is part of a series which included a film about mosquitoes and paludism and another one about cancer, which are considered lost. Flies were a popular subject of silent films and there are more than a dozen titles featuring them in the teens and early twenties.
Profile of famed dance director Busby Berkeley's career, in particular "The Gang's All Here"
This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.
A documentary film that highlights two street derived dance styles, Clowning and Krumping, that came out of the low income neighborhoods of L.A.. Director David LaChapelle interviews each dance crew about how their unique dances evolved. A new and positive activity away from the drugs, guns, and gangs that ruled their neighborhood. A raw film about a growing sub-culture movements in America.
Out of State is the unlikely story of native Hawaiians men discovering their native culture as prisoners in the desert of Arizona, 3,000 miles, and across the ocean, from their island home.
A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.
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.
Baltimore City officials asked drug kingpin Melvin Williams to stop the riots happened following Martin Luther King's assassination. After helping the authorities out, Williams was then labeled a threat, framed and incarcerated by a hypocritical society.
Released on DVD as part of The Criterion Collection's "Martha Graham: Dance on Film" collection.
The protagonists of this docudrama are old farmers who migrated to Banat after the First World War, in 1922. The film is focused on a couple of important events in their impressive lives, which are woven into lively scenes and stories full of wise instances. Their statements become spontaneous recounts of the lives of people in this region.
Dance for All
Mysteries of the Unseen World transports audiences to places on this planet that they have never been before, to see things that are beyond their normal vision, yet literally right in front of their eyes. Mysteries of the Unseen World reveals phenomena that can't be seen with the naked eye, taking audiences into earthly worlds secreted away in different dimensions of time and scale. Viewers experience events that unfold too slowly for human perception
An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.
The documentary portrayed one of the most established dance companies in Hong Kong which has a history of over four decades. With a tradition of blending Chinese dance and ballet together in the training, the dance company has set sail to re-evaluate its artistic essence by adapting new physical disciplines and philosophy, picking up different cultural traces, meditation and Chinese martial arts. Through monologues of the company members, the film unveiled their fears, self-doubts, and findings in their quest to refine their dance forms and express their cultural roots. It's an uncertain journey towards the cultivation of inner peace and the essence of movement and stillness.
An Austrian director followed five successful African music and dance artists with his camera and followed their lives for a year. The artists, from villages in Ghana, Gambia and Congo, were the subjects of Africa! Africa! touring across Europe, but they have unbreakable roots to their homeland and their families. Schmiderer lovingly portrays his heroes, who tell their stories about themselves, their art and what it means to them to be African with captivating honesty. The interviews are interwoven with dance scenes and colourful vignettes set to authentic music.
To popularize the idea of automobile travel, Ford Motor Company produced Ford Educational Weekly, a film magazine distributed free to theaters. One 1916 series featured "Visits to American Cities." In this episode, Los Angeles is featured at the very beginning of the boom created by oil, movies and aircraft. On the occasion of its centennial in 1953, Ford donated its film to the National Archives and Records Service; this copy derives from a fine grain master printed from the Archive's preservation negative. Music by Frederick Hodges.
Jan Hus – Cesta bez návratu
From the rains of Japan, through threats of arrest for 'public indecency' in Canada, and a birthday tribute to her father in Detroit, this documentary follows Madonna on her 1990 'Blond Ambition' concert tour. Filmed in black and white, with the concert pieces in glittering MTV color, it is an intimate look at the work of the icon, from a prayer circle before each performance to bed games with the dance troupe afterwards.
According to the official history of Afghanistan, ruthless destruction has always prevailed over art and creation; but there is another tale to be told, the forgotten account of a diverse and progressive country, seen through the lens of innovative filmmakers, a story that survives thanks to a few brave Afghans, a small but very passionate group that secretly fought to save a huge film archive that was constantly menaced by war and religious fanaticism.
An account of the life and work of the Polish writer Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), a key figure in science fiction literature involved in mysteries and paradoxes that need to be enlightened.