Church and the Fourth Estate

An exploration —manipulated and staged— of life in Las Hurdes, in the province of Cáceres, in Extremadura, Spain, as it was in 1932. Insalubrity, misery and lack of opportunities provoke the emigration of young people and the solitude of those who remain in the desolation of one of the poorest and least developed Spanish regions at that time. (Silent short, voiced in 1937 and 1996.)

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.

A documentary on Jan Slovak, a 55-year-old welder, who fell in love with acting. His desire began, when he got the lead role in a theatrical adaptation of the worst movie of all time, Plan 9 From Outer Space by Ed Wood Jr. The passion for theater became his destiny.

Hunter Thompson visits the set of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

The incredible true story of nature’s greatest explorers—lemurs. Through footage captured with IMAX 3D, audiences go on a spectacular journey to the remote and wondrous world of Madagascar. Join trailblazing scientist Patricia Wright on her lifelong mission to help these strange and adorable creatures survive in the modern world.

Hymn of the Nations, originally titled Arturo Toscanini: Hymn of the Nations, is a 1944 film directed by Alexander Hammid, which features the "Inno delle nazioni," a patriotic work for tenor soloist, chorus, and orchestra, composed by Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi in the early 1860s. (For this musical work, Verdi utilized the national anthems of several European nations.) In December 1943, Arturo Toscanini filmed a performance of this music for inclusion in an Office of War Information documentary about the role of Italian-Americans in aiding the Allies during World War II. Toscanini added a bridge passage to include arrangements of "The Star-Spangled Banner" for the United States and "The Internationale" for the Soviet Union and the Italian partisans. Joining Toscanini in the filmed performance in NBC Studio 8-H, were tenor Jan Peerce, the Westminster Choir, and the NBC Symphony Orchestra. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.

This "Theater of Life" documentary was produced in cooperation with the International Committee, YMCA. It focuses on the work of Dr. Spencer Hatch, as he shows residents of small Mexican villages how to make their land better able to grow food and make them more independent.

The Pax Americana takes care on our peace, ensures our comfort, guarantees our prosperity… An idyllic postcard of the new Empire.

The Making of 'The Thing'

A breathtaking quest for the dream the imposing city of Brasilia was based on, a marked contrast with the chaos of the adjacent construction workers' village. Everything about Brasilia was devised and designed, but not on the basis of some cold urban design concept: the plan proves to originate from 19th-century priest Don Bosco’s dream. The chaos and disorder of the adjacent construction workers' village Vila Amauri long stood in stark contrast to the grandeur and majestic regularity of Brasilia. Now the village has disappeared beneath the reservoir’s surface, the necessary order has been restored. All Still Orbit examines both these histories.

This short documentary, presented and directed by MGM sound engineer Douglas Shearer, goes behind the scenes to look at how the sound portion of a talking picture is created.

The Ax Fight (1975) is an ethnographic film by anthropologist and filmmaker Tim Asch and anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon about a conflict in a Yanomami village called Mishimishimabowei-teri, in southern Venezuela. It is best known as an iconic and idiosyncratic ethnographic film about the Yanomamo and is frequently shown in classroom settings.

Our Cinema

“Beneath the Concrete, The Forest” is a short experimental documentary that takes us inside an ongoing struggle inside the city of Atlanta, GA between two sides to determine the future of Weelaunee, the biggest contiguous urban forest in the country.

In Untitled (Pink Dot), Murata transforms footage from the Sylvester Stallone film First Blood (1982) into a morass of seething electronic abstraction. Subjected to Murata's meticulous digital reprocessing, the action scenes decompose and are subsumed into an almost palpable, cascading digital sludge, presided over by a hypnotically pulsating pink dot.

A vogue dancer performs at a Voodoo Carnival Ball, an important dance contest where he will have to prove himself to be accepted by the local ballroom community. Based upon the biographical story of Elvin Elejandro Martinez.

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.

Another Young Couple — borne out of a camera test for If Beale Street Could Talk, James and I asked my friends Essence and Jihaari, newly transplanted to LA to allow us into their home for an afternoon tea about their lives and loves, apart and together. We were migrating to the Alexa 65 for Beale Street and wanted to see for ourselves how that large-format sensor would affect intimate portraiture within lived spaces… in particular the faces and spaces of Black folk.

The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.

Documentarian Richard Lavoie follows the artists of the Mer Océane symposium which took place on La Grave, in the Magdalen Islands, in 1998.