The Dike Builders
Nana
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.
St. Joseph Fort: Principality of Pontinha, the diamond that illuminates the Atlantic Pearl.
The Dream Is Alive takes you into space alongside the astronauts on the space shuttle. Share with them the delights of zero gravity while working, eating and sleeping in orbit around the Earth. Float as never before over the towering Andes, the boot of Italy, Egypt and the Nile. Witness firsthand a tension-filled satellite capture and repair and the historic first spacewalk by an American woman.
Short documentary on the wool industry.
A short "working class road movie".
This documentary is featured on the DVD for Captain Blood (1935), released in 2005.
In 1928, as the talkies threw the film industry and film language into turmoil, Chaplin decided that his Tramp character would not be heard. City Lights would not be a talking picture, but it would have a soundtrack. Chaplin personally composed a musical score and sound effects for the picture. With Peter Lord, the famous co-creator of Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit, we see how Chaplin became the king of slapstick comedy and the superstar of the movies.
Experiments on the crystallization of various inorganic substances: crystallization from solution, crystallization from melt and vapour phase, mixed crystal formation, oriented growth, change from a metastable into a stable phase.
Short film about the movement patterns of protozoa
A short documentary about the community within and history surrounding a historically Black Brooklyn mosque, produced in collaboration with the Jacob Burns Film Center.
Kornfeld & Wiese
Two ancient rituals passed down through sacred spaces. Two teachers, mentors, and curators. It turns out Japanese tea ceremony and rock music have more in common than you’d think.
A mockumentary about the life of the great Anastasha, a Peruvian actress who never was, following her fictional career in film and her eventual rise to stardom.
The amazing story of how the Berkeley police department, the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, an Academy Award winner and Mr. Spock from TV’s Star Trek are all connected by “Sudden Birth”, one of the most unintentionally hilarious and disturbing educational films ever created.
The film portraits the stage previous to the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, from the end of Porfirio Díaz´ government, the social volatility, the ephemeral government of Madero and the presence of the working class in the figures of Villa and Zapata, until the signing if the Constitution of 1917. All of this through moving images, filmed during those events mainly by the Alva brothers, filmmakers of that time. Those images let us perceive the contradictory and shuddered glance of the people of that period.
"The Role of Chance" ("La part du hasard") focuses exclusively on drawing and painting techniques used by the painter Henri Dimier. Shot over several weeks in the same artist's studio, the film shows works in their different phases, processes rarely explained or little known. It also addresses many practical issues (choice of paper, pigment grinding, reports drawings, put the tiles, cliches, etc) as well as broader questions of method and inspiration (use of space, the role of contours, power of suggestion perspectives, use of random processes). Patrick Bokanowski sought with this film to restore the spirit of this teaching, showing how to bend a note or sometimes revealing an essential mystery of creation.
Two countries, two restaurants, one vision. At Gabriela Cámara's acclaimed Contramar in Mexico City, the welcoming, uniformed waiters are as beloved by diners as the menu featuring fresh, local seafood caught within 24 hours. The entire staff sees themselves as part of an extended family. Meanwhile at Cala in San Francisco, Cámara hires staff from different backgrounds and cultures, including ex-felons and ex-addicts, who view the work as an important opportunity to grow as individuals. A Tale of Two Kitchens explores the ways in which a restaurant can serve as a place of both dignity and community.
Women of mature years talk about their marriage, their first time, their intimate relationship with sexuality. In the repetition of these ancestral rituals, the director questions her own lack of marriage, of children, and with it, a chain of mother-daughter relationships that is dying out.