Dumka

In the short documentary GERD HANSEN, 55 Jochen Hick talks about an aging gay masseur and the times before AIDS. The film was premiered at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in 1987 and received the Prize of the German Film Critics.

In a wordless story with semi-surreal stage sets, a poor black man ventures from his ramshackle rural home to the big city, where a dancing girl in a dive two-times him. He returns to his home and wife's arms.

The ultimate Bobby Jones golf series reaches its climactic conclusion on board a speeding train to oblivion.

Johann Lurf‘s film Endeavour slides between documentary, avant-garde film, and science-fiction. This highly singular combination of materials and techniques gives the viewer of Endeavour a feeling of flight, as the film continually evades the gravity of genres and definitive definitions. Lurf uses NASA footage from a day and a night launch of the space-shuttle that follows the booster rockets from take-off to splashdown.

A 2008 short made in accompaniment with Our Beloved Month of August, documenting Gomes's and his crew's hapless search, during 2007's carnival, for one of Arganil's most storied and elusive characters (who does, in fact, ultimately appear as an interviewee/player in the finished film). Paulo "Miller" is known for taking a dangerous jump into the Alva from a bridge each year during carnival, but what this film is about is, in keeping with the free-roving feature, much less the subject himself than Gomes and co.'s inability to pin him down; not only does he not do his famous jump during this year's carnival, but an ostensible technical/audio failure (as with the feature, it's very difficult to say how much of this film is "fact," how much invented) during Gomes's initial on-camera meeting with Paulo "Miller" leads to five minutes of lip-readers attempting to decipher their conversation.

An incident from the early days of Québec's quiet revolution, tailor-made for the cartoonist. It is the story of a Montréal commuter train, a unilingual ticket collector and a bilingual passenger. The passenger appears on screen himself to describe his bid to have tickets requested in French as well as in English. What ensued, and how even the railway president became involved, is illustrated with wit and humor.

Steve is an upwardly mobile entrepreneur who believes he has come up with the next big thing - the next Rubik's Cube. "It's going to be bigger than Betamax!". The film covers his journey home from a super successful day at the office where he's all but closed the biggest deal of his life. Just a couple of mobile phone calls on the way home and it's in the bag. However, as he races back to celebrate with his wife and kids, we witness his fall from apparent certain victory to increasing infuriation - everyone's suddenly stopped taking his calls. His anger and desperation boils over when he can't get anyone on the phone....not his secretary, his investors, or his wife. All the while, the Zombie Apocalypse is happening around him; he's just too self absorbed to notice it... until he gets home.

Alex is annoyed when he loses out on being picked as class president. When visiting a local antique shop he finds a magic lamp, with three singing Genies, who grant him three magical wishes.

This documentary about the 70s porn legend attempts to verify his existence as there are practically no Asian male porn stars in the history of American adult cinema. A controversial mystery akin to Bigfoot and alien abduction, Dick Ho was so well endowed that rumors arose of a conspiracy within the porn industry to eliminate any knowledge of his existence. Includes alleged film footage and testimonials from porn veterans.

This film was made by Bass' company as a presentation to AT&T executives. It would have extended to be shown to the public, but a number of his ideas in the film were not ultimately adopted, like his phone booth designs, and men's and women's uniforms. But a great many of the design were adopted—including, most memorably, the telephone vans and hardhat designs of the 1970s. Bass designed down to the details, showcasing in this film a myriad of ideas, like Yellow Pages book designs, cufflinks for executives, and flags. (AT&T Archives)

Photographer Helmut Newton talks about his work.

The life of the French seer and some of his selected quatrains are reviewed.

This short documentary examines the complex range of issues affecting urban transport in developing countries. After examining cost and available technology, as well as the different needs of the industrialized middle class and the urban poor, the film proposes some surprising solutions.

A series of ten shots, three minutes in length, of various locales in Munich.

In November 1937, Judy Garland sang "Silent Night, Holy Night" with the St. Luke's Episcopal Church Choristers of Long Beach, California. MGM filmed the event in color for use in their 1937 Christmas trailer. The trailer opens with a shot of a small rural church in the snow, lighted up in the dark of night - a Christmas card effect. The camera then moves inside where we see Judy singing at the front of the choir.

A classic NFB documentary about the Golden Gloves boxing tournament, the Canadian amateur's hope for success in the boxing world. This Gilles Groulx film shows three Montreal boxers in training. In behind-the-scenes interviews they talk about their ambitions and what prompted them to take up the sport. - NFB

This short documentary takes us to St. John's Cathedral Boys' School, at Selkirk, Manitoba, one of the most demanding outdoor schools in North America. As the school can’t accommodate every student wishing to enroll, boys of 13 to 15 years old are put through an initiation tougher than they have ever faced. They paddle canoes through some 500 kilometers of wilderness in 2 weeks, portaging and camping all the way, thereby learning vital outdoor lore, cooperation and self-confidence.

Comments on the background and popularity of disc jockey "Emperor" Bob Hudson, who bases his shows on the idea that radio is a fantasy.

“Kim's nieces shot this video and Kim and I put it together for Kill Rock Stars' first VHS video comp. I guess we made it in the mid/late 90s. Always reminded me of a Sympathy for the Devil/Le Gai Savoir take on Tony Oursler's "EVOL" or something. Our master was on S-VHS. It's all we could afford.” —Katie Erdman

This short documentary is a portrait of the early era of computing and the process and implications of the digitization of large amounts of information. Examining the arduous work of assessing and documenting the geographical landscape, including sampling and analysis of soil, forestry, timber, wildlife, resources, industrial sites, and many other aspects, we see that human beings alone couldn't handle the vast amount of information that is collected. A new kind of computer (an “instant library”), the Canada Land Inventory Geo-information System, was developed to help manage and develop Canadian land. This film examines the workings of this new and mysterious machine.