Experimental film fragment made with the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, using 3/4-inch wide film.
Set in Charles Town, West Virginia, Halter Off offers an unapologetic look at one man's shot at a second chance. Angelo Jackson, a 50-year old horse trainer with a checkered past, is looking to redeem himself after being one charge away from a life sentence in prison. Banned from the track and with the odds against him, Angelo is facing the biggest race of his career against mentor and legendary horse trainer, James W. Casey. As Angelo finds himself downs on his luck and with the system he is working for working against him, he puts it all on the line to win the race of his life.
Screen song from Fleischer Studios
Bruce Baillie's Mr. Hayashi might be thought of as a putative East Coast story transformed by a West Coast sensibility. The narrative, slight as it is, mounts a social critique of sorts, involving the difficulty the title character, a Japanese gardener, has finding work that pays adequately. But the beauty of Baillie's black-and-white photography, the misty lusciousness of the landscapes he chooses to photograph, and the powerful silence of Mr. Hayashi's figure within them make the viewer forget all about economics and ethnicity. The shots remind us of Sung scrolls of fields and mountain peaks, where the human figure is dwarfed in the middle distance. Rather than a study of unemployment, the film becomes a study of nested layers of stillness and serenity.
A short documentary about Tehran's taxi drivers and their problem with the new taxi meters.
Four children want to invite their friends to a picnic, but they don't know how to use the telephone. Suddenly, the room goes dark and the phone becomes large enough for them to climb into. They walk through a tunnel and meet a man named Telly, who takes them into the world of Telezonia, where they are shown various kinds of telephones. They meet several costumed characters, such as Question Mark, who teaches them how to answer the phone; Q and Z, who show them how to use the phone book; and Exclamation Point, who teaches them how to place a call. By the time they leave Telezonia, they are full-fledged telephone users.
A short musical film
This short documentary zooms in on Churchill, Manitoba, on the western curve of Hudson Bay. The town boomed for a while after it became the railhead seaport for the shipment of Prairie grain. It also changed the way of life of the Native Indian and Inuit population.
This short documentary profiles 27-year-old Scoggie Watson, a Cape Breton stalwart who clings to the things he cherishes most: the waters of Lake Bras d'Or, his hand-built sailboat, his freedom, and the friends who stayed in Cape Breton instead of leaving for the big cities.
When best friends Benji (Peter Carroll) and Ruben (Nick Trivisonno) decide to make a film about the man on the moon, they don’t realize they’re signing up for the end of the world as they know it. But when a love triangle develops on set and the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur, the boys must reckon with their developing feelings for each other or face an uncertain future. Produced by and starring high school students from Interlochen Arts Academy in Interlochen, Michigan, HOW THE MOON FELL FROM THE SKY AND NO ONE EVEN NOTICED is a testament to the power of young artists who work together to achieve what no one thought possible.
Searching for the root of generational trauma, the director takes a camera into his estranged grandfather’s funeral.
Documentary film about artist Henri Matisse
In the Kalapalo cosmogony (an ethnic group that lives in the Xingú Indigenous Park), water is as old as humans and is the source of life. That is where all their sustenance comes from, their food, their drink, their joy. The idea of using water as a dumpster, of poisoning water is a dystopia. In this documentary Chief Faremá —from Caramujo village on the banks of the Kuluene River— tells us about the birth of water and warns us about the consequences of disrespecting it.
A pizza delivery man is constantly late for work. His boss gives him one last chance to keep his job. When he arrives at the delivery address, he meets his ultimate idol, the rock star Charly Dopamine and his girlfriend Lucy.
Speed has always played a particularly important role in railroads. New, ever better technologies have been developed throughout history. Engineers have come up with many ideas to make trains faster. This short film recalls the most striking record-breaking journeys in Germany and abroad.
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.
Images from 2000s music videos are transferred onto the film strip, torn and abstracted until the visuals convulse and shift—a tactile, poetic exploration of materiality, memory, and medium.
While shooting “Flying over blue field” we lived in Birtonas sanatorium hotel. I was watching treatment procedures. People were plunging into bubble, mud and mineral water baths. They were going circles singing, were standing under cold water spouts. All this seemed like a sacred ritual, that frees from scurf of life. They were naked, like just born, without any signs of standing in society. Movie – silent impression about tired people "harbour".
On a summer day in the 1950s, a native girl watches the countryside go by from the backseat of a car. A woman at her kitchen table sings a lullaby in her Cree language. When the girl arrives at her destination, she undergoes a transformation that will turn the woman’s gentle voice into a howl of anger and pain.
This short cautionary training film examines dangers associated with earthmoving equipment operation, showing many simulated accidents on construction sites.