The Strength and Agility of Insects

The mute documentary-experimental film "Ten Minutes of Silence" is a film expression of the trends embodied in the painting "Black Square" by Malevich and J. Cage in music.

Long treated with indifference by critics and historians, British silent cinema has only recently undergone the reevaluation it has long deserved, revealing it to be far richer than previously acknowledged. This documentary, featuring clips from a remarkable range of films, celebrates the early years of British filmmaking and spans from such pioneers as George Albert Smith and Cecil Hepworth to such later figures as Anthony Asquith, Maurice Elvey and, of course, Alfred Hitchcock.

Down the gangway, photographers leave the deck of a riverboat in large numbers.

The official record of Mallory and Irvine's 1924 expedition. When George Mallory and Sandy Irvine attempted to reach the summit of Everest in 1924 they came closer than any previous attempt. Inspired by the work of Herbert Ponting (The Great White Silence) Captain Noel filmed in the harshest of conditions, with specially adapted equipment, to capture the drama of the fateful expedition.

The questionably unstable Darryl Donaldson goes on a quest to prove why he's Donnie Darko's #1 fan. While creating the production diaries for the film Donnie Darko, the crew also secretly produced this short satirical film that poked fun at the film, its fans, and the people behind it.

La remise des décorations

'Amy, is narrated by a model (Liisa Repo-Martell) who’s painfully uncomfortable with her own body and “old woman’s” face. Astonishing closing image is a tightly composed telephoto shot on the start of a marathon race among young schoolgirls, dashing toward and then across the screen in ultra-slo-mo, and accompanied by a girls’ chorus hauntingly singing Brian Wilson’s God Only Knows. Widely eclectic lensing and looks in various media and in color and black-and-white flow nicely from one section to the next, aided by gifted editor Mark Karbusicky.' ~ Robert Koehler, Variety - Part 7 of 7-part bio-feature Public Lighting (2004).

Consisting of a single shot, Spiders on a Web is one of the earliest British examples of close-up natural history photography. Made by one of the pioneers of the British film industry, G.A. Smith, this short film details spiders trapped in an enclosure, and despite the title, does not actually feature a web.

Madame Ondine performs a serpentine dance surrounded by big cats.

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.

Woman Draped in Patterned Handkerchiefs is a 1908 British short silent documentary film, directed by George Albert Smith as a showcase his new Kinemacolor system, which features a woman displaying assorted tartan cloths, both draped on her body and waved semaphore-style. The patterned handkerchiefs are, according to Michael Brooke of BFI Screenonline, “presumably the same cloths featured in Tartans of Scottish Clans (1906), this time shown from various angles.”

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.

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.

Encierro de toros

Documentary about the lost 1914 film "Sperduti nel buio". Film historian Denis Lotto journeys across Europe following the trail of the lost movie.

A film about the career and methods of the master silent comedy filmmaker.

A documentary about the cultural effect of film censorship, focusing on the tumultuous times of the teens and early 1920s in America.

Elephants disrupt the lives of a family deep in the jungles of Northern Siam, and an entire village.

A poetic journey through the paths and places of old Castile that were traveled and visited by the melancholic knight Don Quixote of La Mancha and his judicious squire Sancho Panza, the immortal characters of Miguel de Cervantes, which offers a candid depiction of rural life in Spain in the early 1930s and illustrates the first sentence of the first article of the Spanish Constitution of 1931, which proclaims that Spain is a democratic republic of workers of all kind.

Jean Painlevé is interested here, with the help of Eli Lotar, in crabs and shrimps. He is particularly interested in detailing their anatomy and observing their mating and fighting behavior.