Crabs and Shrimp

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.

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.

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.

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.

In 1926, Buster Keaton was at the peak of his glory and wealth. By 1933, he had reached rock bottom. How, in the space of a few years, did this uncontested genius of silent films, go from the status of being a widely-worshipped star to an alcoholic and solitary fallen idol? With a spotlight on the 7 years during which his life changed, using extracts of Keaton’s films as magnifying mirrors, the documentary recounts the dramatic life of this creative genius and the Hollywood studios.

An appreciative, uncritical look at silent film comedies and thrillers from early in the century through the 1920s.

A film by Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince, shot in late October 1888, showing pedestrians and carriages crossing Leeds Bridge.

A documentary from Erkki Karu, one of the earliest pioneers of Finnish cinema: This government-produced propaganda film introduces the nature, sports, military, agriculture and capital of Finland.

An evocative portrait of people having orgasms, lingering on the silent classical face of ecstasy.

A documentary about some of the comedians of the silent era featuring clips from their films and biographical information.

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.

Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen's legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients. But the film itself is far from serious-- instead it's a witches' brew of the scary, gross, and darkly humorous.

Photo sequence of the rare transit of Venus over the face of the Sun, one of the first chronophotographic sequences. In 1873, P.J.C. Janssen, or Pierre Jules César Janssen, invented the Photographic Revolver, which captured a series of images in a row. The device, automatic, produced images in a row without human intervention, being used to serve as photographic evidence of the passage of Venus before the Sun, in 1874.

What starts off as a conventional travelogue turns into a satirical portrait of the town of Nice on the French Côte d'Azur, especially its wealthy inhabitants.

The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.

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.

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

A troupe of gypsies takes a traveler along with them on their day trip.