Film historians, and survivors from the nearly 30-year struggle to bring sound to motion pictures take the audience from the early failed attempts by scientists and inventors, to the triumph of the talkies.
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 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.
Tracking missing socks in the European Union.
Los 5 Faust de F. W. Murnau
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 film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.
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 Roma beggar on his knees raises many extreme emotions: guilt, rage, sympathy and frustration. Most people just walk on by, but there is always someone willing to help. In this film, the director follows the confrontations between the Roma beggars from Romania and Finnish people, and is forced to question, over and over again, her own ideas about helping.
The documentary dives intimately behind the scenes of the Finnish National Opera and sucks the viewer in like the best of thrillers. The three hours fly by, even for those who aren’t necessarily interested in opera as an art form.
William K.L. Dickson brings his hat from his one hand to the other and moves his head slightly, as a small nod toward the audience. This was the first film produced by the Edison Manufacturing Company to be shown to public audiences and the press.
Goodbye Tornio is a vivid depiction of being young, fearlessly following your dreams and figuring things out on your own as you go. Eighteen-year-old Vilma celebrates her graduation from high school, with toasts from loving parents and parties with best friends, before leaving her hometown in Lapland and moving to the big city.
Experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.
Short documentary released in 1907.
A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.
In the Finnish forests was an unclimbed route called the Lappnor project. It was considered to be the hardest climbing route in the world and perhaps impossible for a human. Nalle Hukkataival, a strong Finnish climber took up the challenge. It required almost four years of total commitment and his efforts were followed by hundreds of thousands of climbers around the world. When Nalle finally succeeded, it blew away the whole climbing world like nothing before. The first 9A boulder was climbed! The documentary follows Nalle's journey from the very beginning, all the way to the first ascent almost half a decade later. It captures the incredible dedication that was needed to deal with all the variables and to take that last step to open the next level of climbing.
"All sounds travel in waves much the same as ripples in water." Educational film produced by Bray Studios New York, which was the dominant animation studio based in the United States in the years surrounding World War I.
Elephants disrupt the lives of a family deep in the jungles of Northern Siam, and an entire village.
At the beginning of Sumadijska street in the vicinity of Slavija Square on the 11th August 1913, the Serbian victorious army from the Second Balkan War led by the Crown Prince Alexander Karadjordjevic was given a huge welcome by the highest military and political authorities of Serbia and Belgrade, representatives of civil organizations and national institutions, as well as several tens of thousands of people from Belgrade, Serbia and Vojvodina.
Finnish men in sauna, speaking straight from the heart.