Twenty Years of Academy Awards

This documentary focuses on 1939, considered to be Hollywood's greatest year, with film clips and insight into what made the year so special.

‘A beautiful, mysterious yet satisfying optical illusion…celebrates the early passing of a steam on the Thames. Using freeze-frame techniques, elaborate dissolves, and most of the resources on the optical table, this picture is, amongst other things, a Turner come to life. Rimmer’s concern with the surface nature of the film is most evident in this work which, in spite of its filmic complexity, is incredibly simple.’ — Donald Richie. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with Pacific Cinematheque in 2013.

A surrealist translation of Catholic devotional postcard imagery set into unsettling motion. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2008.

A lyrical recreation of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ decision at age eight to stop chopping cotton and start singing for a living. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2013.

"Taken between September 1970 and May 1971, with the unmoving camera apparently bolted to the window ledge, this film, a ten-minute eternity, chronicles what takes place within view of the lens. The backdrop is a typical New York pizza stand, the actors are selected New Yorkers who happened to be there during the half year, the plot is the somewhat sinister aimlessness of life itself." - Donald Ritchie, Museum of Modern Art, NY. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2014.

Impoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work. Alone, his wife, Sarbojaya, looks after her rebellious daughter, Durga, and her young son, Apu, as well as Harihar's elderly aunt Indir. The children enjoy the small pleasures of their difficult life, while their parents suffer the daily indignities heaped upon them.

Albert and David Maysles (Gimme Shelter) directed this 53-minute documentary about movie tycoon Joseph E. Levine (1963).

The first Studies were synchronized with records (Fischinger made a total of 13 Studies all without sound). It was only with the introduction of sound, beginning with Study No 6 that the films did full justice to this musical principle. The play of the white lines, the arcs, and the upside-down U’s running hither and thither like ballet dancers was brought into perfect synchronization with the music, and thus the films offered an abstract illustration of the melodies. Study No 6 is certainly the best of his films in terms of forms. - Hans Scheugl and Ernst Schmidt, Jr. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2001.

In ECLIPSE a child survivor wanders barefoot across a stunningly evocative landscape. Director Jason Ruscio expresses the profound loneliness of a decimated world through richly textured images that bring to mind the films of Andrei Tarkovsky – burned out interiors, hands grasping to hold each other, time-worn photographs and faceless soldiers in the snow. ECLIPSE is a remarkable meditation on the effects of war. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York University Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Film & Television in 2016.

A man who loves games and theatre invites his wife's lover to meet, setting up a battle of wits with potentially deadly results.

A young Catholic priest from Boston confronts bigotry, Nazism, and his own personal conflicts as he rises to the office of cardinal.

Satyajit Ray's poetic documentary was commissioned by the Chogyal (King) of Sikkim at a time when he felt the sovereignty of Sikkim was under threat from both China and India. Ray's documentary is about the sovereignty of Sikkim. The film was banned by the government of India when Sikkim merged with India in 1975. The ban was finally lifted by the Ministry of External Affairs in September 2010. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.

A deer, disillusioned by the consumerism that defines his life. A lizard, ostracized from society, forever wandering. A chance meeting in the middle of a field. Who will survive? And who will transcend existence? Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2009.

UCLA Student Color Film. "a documentary film of marked lyrical and experimental tendency which was photographed and recorded in a L.A. supermarket. It consists of five sequences: 1) description of people 2) Comedy 3) choreographing natural movements 4) transformation fo visual reality 5) empathy". Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011. Filmed at Shopper's Market, Santa Monica, CA.

A kinetic film sketch designed to involve the viewers muscles. The rocky seaside cliffs near Stinson Beach, California, hold the wrecked carcass of a #52 pickup that is a rusting monument to Hot Leatherette. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.

Primary is a documentary film about the primary elections between John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey in 1960. Primary is the first documentary to use light equipment in order to follow their subjects in a more intimate filmmaking style. This unconventional way of filming created a new look for documentary films where the camera’s lens was right in the middle of what ever drama was occurring. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 1998.

Beydler performs the ultimate SoCal shade-tipping, satirizing LA art-cool with comic pixillated effect. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016.

Protective Coloration shows Fisher seated at a mottled table. He wears short-sleeved hospital garb, surgical green ‘scrubs’. Nose-clips block his nostrils while a mouth-guard that looks like fake lips covers his mouth. Over the course of 11 minutes he masks his face and covers his hands with bright gear in colours that accumulate to resemble those of the standard reference chart: he puts on orange eye-caps, then a yellow bathing cap; covering his nose and mouth and the gear already there, he dons a black gas mask; a silky black sleeping mask voids his already covered eyes, a cyan blue bathing cap caps the yellow; yellow rubber gloves snap on his hands and forearms; puts on cyan eye goggles, then struggles with yet another bathing cap, hazmat orange, over the other two. A silvery transparent shower cap tops the caps, itself topped by a plastic green helmet. Finally heavy-duty magenta gloves hide most of the yellow rubber. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2008.

Short film about the Manzanar Japanese American internment camp. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011.

Short film produced by Visual Communications, the United States first Asian American film production company. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.