Believe It or Not #12

Games with muscles, games with power, SM games. The naked body employed as a prop. Perceptions of one's own body are the focus of Body-building, and it leaves the good-girl role far behind, sometimes in striking poses, sometimes in martial dress.

A 91-year-old Polish Holocaust survivor donates his violin of 70 years to a local instrument drive, changing the life of a 12-year-old schoolgirl from the nation’s poorest congressional district, and unexpectedly, his own.

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Benjamin and Awad run Sudan's national film archive. The two men, who have worked together for more than 40 years, are devoted to protecting their country's visual memories. Home to some 13,000 films, the archive preserves pivotal moments of Sudan's turbulent history and is one of the largest in Africa. But the archive is in a fragile state. Following years of neglect and poor storage, many film reels are turning to dust in Sudan's unforgiving tropical climate. The two friends are determined to turn it around and embark on a mission to save the old films. Will they succeed in preserving Sudan's visual history for future generations before it's too late?

In the hills of rural Pennsylvania, the leader of a local militia must prepare his men for the turbulent political landscape of 2020 while at war with his own conscience. For over ten years, 48-year-old Iraqi War Veteran and machinist Christian Yingling has commanded a troop of private militiamen and women concerned with the government’s infringement on their constitutional rights. The group practices paramilitary drills, stockpiles food and ammo, and attends gun rights rallies in preparation for a doomsday scenario. Now that a worldwide pandemic has hit, followed by a summer of racial injustice protests and a Presidential election like no other, Christian—out of work and nearly out of money—must confront his allegiance and choose to act or not.

As the only work in this medium by Richter, the film was created for the exhibition Volker Bradke that took place on 13th December 1966 at Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf. For the purpose of this exhibition, Gerhard Richter addressed the person Volker Bradke in different mediums. In addition to photographs, a banner and a large-scale painting Volker Bradke [CR: 133], the film had been screened. Richter transferred one of the stylistic features of his paintings of that time into film: the blurring.

A group of people are standing along the platform of a railway station in La Ciotat, waiting for a train. One is seen coming, at some distance, and eventually stops at the platform. Doors of the railway-cars open and attendants help passengers off and on. Popular legend has it that, when this film was shown, the first-night audience fled the café in terror, fearing being run over by the "approaching" train. This legend has since been identified as promotional embellishment, though there is evidence to suggest that people were astounded at the capabilities of the Lumières' cinématographe.

Working men and women leave through the main gate of the Lumière factory in Lyon, France. Filmed on 22 March 1895, it is often referred to as the first real motion picture ever made, although Louis Le Prince's 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene pre-dated it by seven years. Three separate versions of this film exist, which differ from one another in numerous ways. The first version features a carriage drawn by one horse, while in the second version the carriage is drawn by two horses, and there is no carriage at all in the third version. The clothing style is also different between the three versions, demonstrating the different seasons in which each was filmed. This film was made in the 35 mm format with an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and at a speed of 16 frames per second. At that rate, the 17 meters of film length provided a duration of 46 seconds, holding a total of 800 frames.

Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording "Daybreak Express", this is a five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City.

Self portrait

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.

Many cities or countries have a distinct malaise. They are places that could be Portugal, so sunk in a painful longing of the past, and where each tension of the present is only the tip of an iceberg that is explained in successive retreats that can go straight until origin of the species, at least. This feeling common to many latitudes is often presented as a diagnosis, a denial of a painful present as opposed to the desire to return to a glorious past.

An attempt to erect a virtual memorial for the victims of the Bosnian war, using archive material, videos and statements from survivors in a 3D animation.

A 20-minute documentary film about the Kyrgyz people living by the Narym River.

Glauco Mattoso, a blind sadomasochistic poet, agrees to participate in a documentary about his own life, but the conditions he imposes raise difficulties to the work of the young director.

A documentary that introduces FIT Hives, a student-run organization whose mission is to educate the FIT community about the importance of bees to the environment, the use of bee-derived resources in the industries related to the majors at FIT and its goal to put a beehive on the roof. FIT Hives is a recipient of an FIT Innovation Grant which also supported the making of this documentary.

A boy from the desert tries to sell a sand rose in the big city.

Short documentary by Peter Fleischmann

Some game trolls in the United States make a sport of getting other players “swatted” live during the game: they find out someone’s name and address, fake his caller ID, and make a bogus 911 call. The next thing you know, a SWAT team armed to the teeth is bursting into his house and giving him the fright of his life. This is all streamed live on camera, of course, so everyone can be in on the joke. Swatted is a cinematic exploration of this phenomenon based on 911 calls by offenders, YouTube videos of games and raids, and first-hand accounts of what it’s like to be swatted.