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.
The film consists of three sequences shot by a fixed camera: the first shows the balcony of a hospital with patients (soundtrack from the film "Vivre sa vie" by Jean-Luc Godard), the second is a scraped wall and the third is a crossroad with pedestrians and cars (sound taken from the film "The Time-Machine " by George Pal).
Follows dub poet master Linton Kwesi Johnson out of the recording studio onto the Brixton streets.
Afro-American men and women express their views on why some Black men are travelling from the US to Brazil to find sex partners.
Between the French La Nouvelle Vague and the Italian Neorealismo, Europe had been undergoing a continuous cinema transformation since the 1950s, while the ailing American studio system groaned under its own weight and inertia. New Hollywood had arrived with Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, and already by 1968 it was changing how Hollywood thought and acted. The student film scene was getting ready to explode, and it knew it.
Werner Herzog's documentary film about the "Grizzly Man" Timothy Treadwell and what the thirteen summers in a National Park in Alaska were like in one man's attempt to protect the grizzly bears. The film is full of unique images and a look into the spirit of a man who sacrificed himself for nature.
Shortly after German reunification, three residents of a quiet area north of Berlin talk about their plans and attempts at new economic beginnings amid the changes brought by the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In the Briançonnais mountains, in France, men and women on the roads of exile find the courage to cross the passes on foot, risking their lives. Arrived at the end of a long journey, exhausted, they do not know if they could settle down somewhere to start their life over. It is this transitional time that "The Adventure" tells. Ossoul, the Sudanese poet, Mamadou, survivor of an icy night at the Col de l'Échelle, Charlotte, Mother Courage and others are gradually getting back on their feet and settling to embark on a new life. Filmed over three years, "L'Aventure" is a story of resilience, friendships and revealed emotions. The portraits are drawn and deepened until everyone can recognize themselves in the other, put themselves in their place and understand them.
Employing experimental techniques, Emshwiller magically moved through a collection of objects and artifacts in order to capture the spirit of George Dumpson and his backyard museum.
German writer Uwe Johnson lived for several years in the 1960s on Manhattan’s Upper Westside where he got to know his neighborhood very well, observing the goings-on in the streets, cafeterias, and parks. In 1968 German Television agreed to co-produce a film for broadcast featuring interviews with various neighborhood characters.
Hansjürgen Pohland's short documentary is an audiovisual study that captures events and people on the streets on film. The special feature of the work is that the people and objects are portrayed exclusively through their shadows.
In 2015, a new spanish political party, named Podemos, made history by becoming the third force of the parliament, just two years after its creation. This is how it happened.
Like the best USIA films, The Wall distills political events into an emotionally clear and compelling ideological "story". In 1962 Walter de Hoog gathered footage from U.S. and German newsreel sources and crafted this taut short film about the first year of the Berlin Wall. Straightforward, keenly balanced narration portrays Berliners as "accepting the wall but never resigned to it". The extraordinary footage of the first escapes was propaganda enough-- His challenge was to make the politics human.
Three arrested and detained undocumented immigrants must navigate the system to fight impending deportation.
A fantasia of post-indoctrination, immigration, and iconography. A pageant of wanderers and searchers: Mormon missionaries, a pioneer, polygamists, scouts, hunters, church-goers, and an aspiring prophet walk and walk and walk. A pilgrimage of memory, history, ancestry, and place.
The Bridge is a controversial documentary that shows people jumping to their death from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco - the world's most popular suicide destination. Interviews with the victims' loved ones describe their lives and mental health.
A farming community gathers on a plateau on the border of three regions for the funeral of traditional agriculture. It’s a film to ward off the disappearance of a millenary culture.
Footage of Québec City locations and the artwork of well-known Quebec animator Frédéric Back are used to tell the tale of Champlain’s life in New France – from his first explorations and settlement to his death in 1635.
Short documentary presents a high-tension soccer match from the perspective of an ever-vigilant referee.
Las cosas simples