Los 5 Faust de F. W. Murnau
An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.
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'.
A short, early documentary work showing insects exhibiting extreme strength and agility.
Footage of the expedition leaving Antarctica from New Zealand shot by government cameraman James McDonald. His excellency Admiral Sir Wilmot Hawksworth Fawkes, Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy's Australian Station, visits and inspects the "Nimrod."
Short documentary released in 1907.
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.
This film records the vast public response to the early death of Vera Kholodnaya, the first star of Russian cinema.
A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.
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.
Short film about the manufacture of bricks.
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.
On a market day in Kernascleden, two Breton women exchange their hair for a few coins. The hair becomes hairpieces. Last scene, an elegant Parisian removes her hat and exposes her generous wig skillfully coiffed.
It is a dramatic film, with its colossal explosion and smouldering remains. Within seconds of the chimney's collapse, crowds swarm in to inspect the site; issues of the crowd's health and safety are clearly not a concern, as people smile, wave and salute the camera.
Finland’s first nature documentary. The filmmakers’ expedition leads them all the way to the Åland Islands and the Karelian Isthmus.
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.
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.
A unique hybrid of documentary, silent film, drama and dance, 'Breaking Plates' puts revolutionary women of the past on the screen with present day filmmakers. Contemporary women talk to characters from 100 years ago, reanimate their antics and emulate their mayhem moves. As early 21st century performers step into the clothes of their early 20th century counterparts, battling their haywire machines, exploding gags, and eruptive bodies, they learn to wield humour as a weapon against the structures that contain them today.