Obsession, love, money, and postage. Freaks and Errors: A Rare Collection, is the first, independent documentary film that reveals the rarely seen, expectedly eccentric and surprisingly large world of stamp collecting.
"This tape is an exploration of my latent heterosexuality with porn star / performance artist Annie Sprinkle as instructor and sage. After assuaging my fears that I can have sex with a woman & still maintain my gay identity, Annie warms me up with some playful, sensual wrestling. She then instructs in the use of a tampon while relating men's need to make war with their inability to menstruate. For the rest of the tape, she guides me through the specifics of sexual exploration, positions of coital congress as well as post- coital ritual."
Using only nature and his immediate surroundings, filmmaker Brandon Wilson creates an experimental documentary that ignites the imagination of wandering in nature, and creates a loving portrait to the woods he calls home. Over the course of a year, Wilson set out to document— and accentuate—his surroundings through camera filters, angles, repetition, and audio. The end result is a hypnotic journey through the hidden wonders and beauties of the Northwest forests, in vivid colors and immaculate black-and-whites.
In 1977, a book of photographs captured an awakening - women shedding the cultural restrictions of their childhoods and embracing their full humanity. This documentary revisits those photos, those women and those times and takes aim at our culture today that alarmingly shows the need for continued change.
Dodging Raindrops – A Separate Reality is an episodic experimental film, in which documentary and staged scenes intertwine in a mythic-apocalyptic narrative. The film begins in Los Angeles und retraces the field trips into the Southwest assumed to have been taken by the controversial anthropologist Carlos Castaneda, a founder of the New Age movement. Taking up the anthropological concept of othering, the film casts its subjects as others inhabiting another side, another reality and another opposite. In doing so, Dodging Raindrops – A Separate Reality weaves a web of ostensible truths and untruths, of legends and utopias, of historic incidents and visions.
In the mid-1960s a new twist on contemporary rock music emerged out of San Francisco. Known as 'psychedelia', it was pioneered by a close-knit community of local bands who merged traditional American forms such as folk, country, blues and rock & roll with new sounds often developed under the influence of psychedelic drugs. Bound up with the social and cultural changes for which San Francisco was also the focal point, it was a combination that made for a radical re-imaging of youth culture. This film traces the movements, events and sounds of those heady days, and traces the story of the definitive band of the psychedelic age, The Grateful Dead. Giving time too for the involvement of Frisco's other lead players such as Big Brother & The Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, The Charlatans and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
'Ringers: Lord of the Fans' is a feature-length documentary that explores how "The Lord of the Rings" has influenced Western popular culture over the past 50 years.
A billion miles from home, running low on fuel, and almost out of time. After 13 years traversing the Saturn system, the spacecraft Cassini is plunging to a fiery death, becoming part of the very planet it has been exploring. As it embarks on its final assignment - a one-way trip into the heart of Saturn - Horizon celebrates the incredible achievements and discoveries of a mission that has changed the way we see the solar system. Strange new worlds with gigantic ice geysers, hidden underground oceans that could harbour life and a brand new moon coalescing in Saturn's magnificent rings. As the world says goodbye to the great explorer Cassini, Horizon will be there for with a ringside seat for its final moments.
The idea of suspension is evoked on shifting registers – as levitation, cessation, preservation, and suspense – and located in sites whose identities slip as we track through a space within a space.
A flicker film made with images taken in Malawi. FF was in response to an assignment given by artists Melissa Dubbin and Aaron Davidson who created the soundtrack to which they invited artists to make a “Future Film”.
In support of experiences that are essentially common, but to which language does not easily adhere, the video passes through places that are both themselves, and stand-ins for others. The title is taken from Aleister Crowley’s 1918 translation of the "Tao Te Ching."
Australien Skies2: Contact Of Interest is the second film in the critically acclaimed "Australien Skies" UFO series from documentary filmmaker Don Meers. In “Contact Of Interest” we accompany Don as he returns to Kiama in New South Wales to visit UFO contactee Liam Freaney, who appeared in the first Australien Skies film. With a collection of UFO footage, black helicopters and claims of government conspiracy, Liam’s appearance in the first film caused a great deal of excitement and controversy. However, as Don discovers, not all is well with Liam. In the time that has passed, his experiences have taken a decidedly darker turn. Contact Of Interest asks the question “Is capturing a video of a UFO the end of peoples experiences or could it be only the beginning into the far broader landscapes of this phenomenon"
Natural focus documents the natural landscape in black and white. By varying the opening of the diaphragm, re-framing with the zoom, changing film speeds, transforming the notion of time and superimposing different shots is a dialogue between fact and technological device it represents.
This is the rare UK Channel 4 documentary about Blade Runner, giving insights into it's history with interviews of Ridley Scott, the writers and nearly all the cast. Interviews with production staff, including Ridley, give details into the creative process and turmoil during preproduction. Stories from Paul M. Sammon and Fancher provide insight into Philip K. Dick and the origins of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Interweaved are cast interviews with the notable exceptions of Harrison Ford and Sean Young. Through these interviews we get a sense of how difficult and frustrating the film was to make as a result of an exacting director without allies and hot, wet, smoggy conditions; which added to the high pressure atmosphere everyone increasingly felt as the film went over budget. There is also a tour of some locations, most notably the Bradbury Building and the Warner Brothers backlot that was the LA 2019 streets, which look very different from Ridley's dark version.
JUMP! is a feature-length character-driven documentary about competitive jump rope that follows kids on five teams from around the country who push physical and psychological limits in pursuit of winning the World Championship. Part extreme sport, part art form, their moves are masterfully choreographed and bursting with rhythm, sweat and originality. These teens sacrifice everything to get where they are and each has his or her own reason to be so driven. After arduous drilling and mind-boggling performances, rivalry and collaboration have dramatic unexpected results.
Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo' goes behind prison walls to follow convict cowgirls on their journey to the 2007 Oklahoma State Penitentiary Rodeo. In 2006, female inmates were allowed to participate for the first time. In a state with the highest female incarceration rate in the country, these women share common experiences such as broken homes, drug abuse and alienation from their children. Since 1940, the Oklahoma State Penitentiary has held an annual 'Prison Rodeo'. Part Wild West show and part coliseum-esque spectacle, it's one of the last of its kind - a relic of the American penal system. Prisoners compete on wild-broncs and bucking bulls, risking life-long injuries. For inmates like Danny Liles, a 14-year veteran of the rodeo, the chance to battle livestock offers a brief respite from prison life. Within this strange arena the prisoners become the heroes while the public and guards applaud
Monsieur
There are very few icons in Argentine culture capable of appealing to both popular and elitist tastes. Leonardo Favio was undoubtedly one of them. An unseasonable Peronist attached to the liturgy of his land, the director, born in the province of Mendoza, was and artist at every craft. a Renassaince man, but above all, a filmmaker. This is how "Favio: Chronicle of a Director" recaptures him, as a man of film who fed from radio, acting, music and painting in order to build up the handful of rhapsodies with which he adorned argentinean cinematography
The film "Nights full moon" shows the tendency of moral decay in society. The main character is torn apart by internal contradictions, leading him to the path of Evil. Bans on self-identification - philosophical, existential, sexual, and then permissiveness spawn a monster that is not aware of its true nature and genuine desires. Throughout the film-trilogy, the protagonist goes through a series of temptations that ruin his soul and lead, after all, to a madhouse. In a general sense, the film allegorically shows the tragic path of the Russian lumpen intellectual, lost between the past and the present, not finding the strength to accept and comprehend the unexpected changes that happened in our country twenty years ago. In the global sense - the tragic circle of Russian history.
A bed of flowers.